Exhibition by Newcastle-based contemporary artist Izabela Pluta, presented with New Annual Festival, exploring themes of migration and the natural world.
Izabela Pluta opens Cavitation at The Lock-Up on Friday 25 September, and it's a big one that doesn't stop there. It's a multi-venue project presented as part of New Annual 2026, running across both The Lock-Up at 90 Hunter Street and the Canoe Pool, with a public art trail connecting the two sites. It stays open well into the new year, running through to 31 January 2027, so you've got plenty of time to work your way through it.
Pluta is a Polish-born, Australian-based artist, and Cavitation brings together sculpture, photography, moving image, tapestry and sound. The work looks at how tides, pressure and migration shape our world, and the whole thing is a major international co-commission with TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, Poland, and the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Pluta was awarded a Creative Australia Visual Art Major Commission grant to make it.
There's a personal thread running through the work, too. Pluta describes place as something continually formed through memory and lived experience, and her own childhood migration from Poland to Australia as a political refugee resonates throughout the project. That sense of movement and displacement sits right at the heart of the themes she's exploring.
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Beyond the exhibition itself, there's a full programme running alongside it: artist talks, hands-on making workshops, poetry, breathwork and meditation. Between the two sites and the trail that links them, there's more to it than just a few rooms to walk through. Entry is free, and it runs from 25 September 2026 to 31 January 2027 at The Lock-Up and the Canoe Pool.
