Image: New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale
The New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale, New South Wales, is presenting ‘Unfamiliar Territory: Angus Nivison’, a major survey of five decades of work by the Australian contemporary painter. The exhibition opened on 31 July 2026 and remains on view through 18 October, bringing together works from public and private collections as well as pieces from Nivison’s own holdings.
Based in Walcha in the New England region, Nivison has developed a painting practice grounded in a sustained engagement with place. According to the museum, his work does not seek to reproduce the landscape as a literal image. Instead, land functions as an emotional and conceptual presence within paintings shaped by layered surfaces, restrained changes in colour and immersive fields of marks.
The exhibition is described by NERAM as the largest solo presentation of Nivison’s work to date. Its selection follows the development of an approach to abstraction that treats painting as an open encounter, allowing ambiguity, memory and contemplation to emerge through the act of looking. The survey’s title reflects the museum’s emphasis on the tension between a familiar regional environment and the unfamiliar visual territory created through Nivison’s abstract methods.
The works encompass an atmospheric register in which the physical details of the New England landscape are transformed rather than directly depicted. Subtle shifts in tone and densely worked surfaces are central to the presentation, with the paintings described as immersive fields rather than fixed views. The exhibition positions Nivison’s practice as one that continues to test the possibilities of abstraction while remaining closely connected to the places in which it has developed.
A featured work is ‘Chaos Theory (detail)’, dated 2026 and made with acrylic, graphite, gesso, pigment and fixative on polyester. The work’s materials point to the layered and process-oriented character of the exhibition, although the museum’s published information does not provide a complete checklist or installation-by-installation account of the survey.
‘Unfamiliar Territory: Angus Nivison’ opened with an evening event at NERAM on Friday 31 July. Nivison was scheduled to give an artist talk at 10:30am on Saturday 1 August. The exhibition is being held at the New England Regional Art Museum, located at 106–114 Kentucky Street, Armidale, and is listed as part of the museum’s 2026 exhibitions program.
