Client: City of Newcastle
Artists: Megan Cope, Shellie Smith
Location: Cooks Hill, NSW
The Newcastle Art Gallery has opened the first new spaces of its $145 million expansion, showcasing the collection alongside major First Nations commissions across three new gallery spaces, the entry foyer, and central atrium.
Partridge provided structural engineering support for key installations, including Kinyingarra Guwinyanba by Quandamooka artist Megan Cope. The installation features 44 timber poles, about two metres long, adorned with empty rock oyster shells. Part of Cope’s ongoing oyster-shell-based sculptures, it explores the impact of early colonial lime-burning on Aboriginal middens and oyster reefs in Quandamooka Sea Country. Empty shells are attached to marine-resistant wooden poles in intertidal zones to help propagate new oyster reefs, creating living sculptures and ancestral technology. Partridge designed the rigging and support systems for the suspended poles in the atrium, ensuring stability while preserving the visual impact.
At the front entrance, Partridge helped design and engineer a six-metre-long suspended fish sculpture by Awabakal artist Shellie Smith and fabricator Julie Squires. The sculpture’s 30 aluminium fish form a spiralling school, visible from both the ground floor and first-floor corridor, with engineering solutions ensuring stability without compromising the artwork’s form.
These projects show the role of structural engineering in enabling complex art installations, supporting both the artist’s vision and the gallery’s architecture.
