Australia, New South Wales, Newcastle, quirky egg sculpture by Brett Whiteley, titled 'Black Totem II' at the Newcastle Art Gallery

Manfred Gottschalk/Getty

Newcastle Art Gallery

Newcastle

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This attraction is currently closed for renovation.

Ignore the brutalist exterior, as inside this remarkable regional gallery are some wonderful works. There's no permanent exhibition; displays rotate the gallery's excellent collection, whose highlights include art by Newcastle-born William Dobell and John Olsen as well as Brett Whiteley and modernist Grace Cossington Smith. There are often child-friendly activities at weekends and school holidays.

Olsen's works, in particular, bring an explosive vibrancy to the gallery, with his generative organic swirls flamboyantly representing water-based Australian landscapes. Look out for his ceiling painting by the central stairwell and, if it's on display, his brilliant King Sun and the Hunter, a tribute to the essence of his native city, painted at age 88 in 2016.

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