Image: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
The Art Gallery of New South Wales has announced ‘Brett Whiteley: Coming Home’, the first exhibition to be presented in the newly renovated Brett Whiteley Studio in Surry Hills. Opening on 25 July 2026, the display brings together works by Brett Whiteley made in the 1970s, including the 16-metre-wide ‘Alchemy’ 1972–73, and marks the reopening of the studio after extensive building upgrades.
According to the gallery, ‘Brett Whiteley: Coming Home’ will offer 80 works drawn from the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Brett Whiteley Studio. The exhibition spans paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, prints, photographs and sketchbooks, and focuses on a period after Whiteley returned to Australia following a decade of living and working abroad from 1960 to 1969.
The presentation is framed around the energy, variety and ambition of Whiteley’s practice in that decade. Gallery material describes the works as including sublime landscapes, sumptuous nudes, reflective portraits and revealing interiors, alongside ‘Alchemy’, which it characterises as an allegorical self-portrait chronicling figures and events that shaped the artist’s life. The exhibition title points to the studio’s reopening as well as Whiteley’s return home, placing the works in the building where his legacy is now interpreted.
The Brett Whiteley Studio, in Surry Hills, is one of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ dedicated venues. The gallery says the studio will open in July 2026 following renovation, with ‘Brett Whiteley: Coming Home’ as its inaugural exhibition. The venue context is important to the project: the show is not a general museum survey, but a specific presentation in Whiteley’s former studio, using works from the gallery and studio collections to map a pivotal phase in his career.
The exhibition also connects to the gallery’s broader programming around major Australian art and contemporary interpretation. In the same season, the gallery’s Artmail newsletter highlighted a range of exhibitions and events, but ‘Brett Whiteley: Coming Home’ was presented as a standalone opening at the Brett Whiteley Studio rather than as part of another venue’s program. The gallery’s own exhibition page states that the show is free to visit.
No end date is listed for the exhibition on the source material, which currently identifies it as ongoing from 25 July 2026. The gallery also notes support from principal patrons Tim Fairfax AC and Gina Fairfax AC and the Brett Whiteley Foundation.
