Tamworth Regional Gallery

About the Gallery

For over 100 years, Tamworth Regional Gallery has provided access to the arts in a regional centre. The Gallery is ideally located in the heart of Tamworth’s CBD on Peel Street, close to shops, parking and the new riverside precinct.

Tamworth Regional Gallery offers a distinctive connection to place and a curatorial agenda that creates meaningful art experiences for all. The Tamworth Regional Gallery collection exists for our audiences — to comprehend the past, to navigate the present, and as a potent avenue for imagining the future. Placing art, access and audiences at the very heart of who we are guides the Gallery’s artistic and public programs. Tamworth Regional Gallery contributes positively to cultural cohesion, social wellbeing, creativity, engaged citizenship, and the economic life in Tamworth and the surrounding region. The Gallery’s purpose is to provide access to the arts in a regional centre that focuses on artistic vibrancy, social and cultural impact, cultural tourism and an arts ecosystem.

Collection Strengths

Tamworth Regional Gallery first opened on 1 June 1919 as the Tamworth Art Salon and Art Library. It was established by artist John Salvana ‘to encourage art in the country’.

The Gallery is widely recognised for its association with fibre textile art, having been building on this collection since the early 1970s. The collection includes pieces by some of Australia’s most innovative and acclaimed textile artists, as well as by local craftspeople. It has made a significant contribution to the ongoing discourse surrounding contemporary craft practice in Australia, creating an important record of the changing nature and progress of textile practice from a national perspective.

Programming Strengths

The Gallery offers a rotating program of touring exhibitions of national significance, alongside curated exhibitions of works by regional artists and exhibitions from our permanent collection. Every year, Tamworth Regional Gallery delivers a rich and varied series of workshops, lectures, artist talks, events and engaging public programs.

The public programs associated with exhibitions are core to the Gallery’s cultural programming, together with the permanent collection. As the major arts and cultural institution for the region, Tamworth Regional Gallery provides public access to a rich calendar of high-quality and innovative exhibitions and their associated public programs and activities. The Gallery provides learning experiences for a range of visitors, from young children, primary, secondary and tertiary students, and other young people, to teachers and various adult groups. The Gallery also targets our priority areas, delivering diverse programs for these audiences. Our popular and dynamic public programs seek to foster a love of the arts among people of all ages and abilities, and from all sectors of our community.

Exhibition Spaces

The Gallery houses purpose-built exhibition spaces, conservation collection storage, a retail shop, the Esther Halliday Studio and a research library, and is a fully accessible space.

The Gallery has two spacious exhibition areas with timber floors, a multi-functional lighting system that was upgraded to new LED lamps, power access in floor and ceilings and a stunning ceiling height of 4.8 metres. The Gallery Foyer is another excellent exhibition space with high visibility.

Furthermore, the inclusion of a third exhibition space at Ray Walsh House, Council’s main building for emerging and regional artists, has expanded the gallery’s capacity to exhibit a more diverse exhibition program and created new opportunities for local and regional artists.