Cavitation: Breathing Ocean Preview and Artist Talk
New Annual Preview & Artist Talk
The opening will begin at the Newcastle Canoe Pool to view a public extension of the exhibition, followed by a lantern-lit walk down to the The Lock-Up for a conversation between Izabela Pluta, The Lock-Up Director, Alexandra Pedley and special international guest Stanisław Ruksza, curator and director of TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin.
This special preview brings together artist Izabela Pluta in conversation with Stanisław Ruksza, curator and director of TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin, facilitated by The Lock‑Up Director Alexandra Pedley.
ACCESSIBILITY
The Lock-Up offers wheelchair access at the main entrance, a unisex accessible toilet, and designated accessible street parking. Seating is available, however, if you require a seat and there isn’t one available, please let a staff member know.
The Canoe Pool offers wheelchair access at the main entrance, accessible toilets, and designated accessible street parking. Limited public seating is available.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Izabela Pluta is a Polish-born, Australian-based artist working across photography, moving image, installation and sculpture. Over the past two decades, she has developed a critically acclaimed, expanded photographic language that explores how light, pressure, duration and environmental conditions shape bodies, surfaces and systems of perception. Her work pushes the limits of photography as both medium and method, treating images not as fixed representations, but as accumulations of contact, erosion, movement and time.
Pluta’s multifaceted practice draws on embodied fieldwork, personal and public archives, oceanic cartography and 20th-century geographic publications. Diving and oceanic environments are central to her work, allowing perception to shift beyond our everyday points of orientation. Through fragmentation and reconfiguration, her works challenge linear narratives of history, migration and record-keeping and question how images and systems of mapping attempt to stabilise the world around us.
Pluta is particularly interested in the relationship between bodies and planetary systems—how tides, pressure, vibration, atmosphere and environmental change act upon both materials and lived experience. Her projects frequently unfold across immersive, site-responsive installations where photography extends into sculptural and spatial form. Attuned to the complexity of an image’s materiality, Pluta imbues other mediums with a distinctly photographic way of thinking, creating sensory environments that move between the intimate, geological and oceanic.
Pluta lives and works on Awabakal and Worimi Country in Newcastle/Muloobinba, Australia.
Image credit: Izabela Pluta, 'Floating fissure', 2020. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Cavitation and Cavitation: Breathing Ocean are major commissions initiated and led by The Lock-Up, Newcastle, presented in partnership with New Annual 2026. Izabela Pluta has been awarded a Creative Australia Visual Art Major Commission grant through the international co-commissioning partnership of The Lock-Up and TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Poland.
The Lock-Up and the project are supported by Creative Australia, Create NSW and New Annual 2026.
Collaborators and project partners include the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Adam Hulbert: sound artist, composer, researcher and performer, Astrida Neimanis, Ocean Seagull, Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Hunter Gatherer Network, Event Engineering, Heritage Stoneworks at the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure and AX Interactive.
Izabela Pluta is represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert.
This special preview brings together artist Izabela Pluta in conversation with Stanisław Ruksza, curator and director of TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin, facilitated by The Lock‑Up Director Alexandra Pedley.
ACCESSIBILITY
The Lock-Up offers wheelchair access at the main entrance, a unisex accessible toilet, and designated accessible street parking. Seating is available, however, if you require a seat and there isn’t one available, please let a staff member know.
The Canoe Pool offers wheelchair access at the main entrance, accessible toilets, and designated accessible street parking. Limited public seating is available.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Izabela Pluta is a Polish-born, Australian-based artist working across photography, moving image, installation and sculpture. Over the past two decades, she has developed a critically acclaimed, expanded photographic language that explores how light, pressure, duration and environmental conditions shape bodies, surfaces and systems of perception. Her work pushes the limits of photography as both medium and method, treating images not as fixed representations, but as accumulations of contact, erosion, movement and time.
Pluta’s multifaceted practice draws on embodied fieldwork, personal and public archives, oceanic cartography and 20th-century geographic publications. Diving and oceanic environments are central to her work, allowing perception to shift beyond our everyday points of orientation. Through fragmentation and reconfiguration, her works challenge linear narratives of history, migration and record-keeping and question how images and systems of mapping attempt to stabilise the world around us.
Pluta is particularly interested in the relationship between bodies and planetary systems—how tides, pressure, vibration, atmosphere and environmental change act upon both materials and lived experience. Her projects frequently unfold across immersive, site-responsive installations where photography extends into sculptural and spatial form. Attuned to the complexity of an image’s materiality, Pluta imbues other mediums with a distinctly photographic way of thinking, creating sensory environments that move between the intimate, geological and oceanic.
Pluta lives and works on Awabakal and Worimi Country in Newcastle/Muloobinba, Australia.
Image credit: Izabela Pluta, 'Floating fissure', 2020. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Cavitation and Cavitation: Breathing Ocean are major commissions initiated and led by The Lock-Up, Newcastle, presented in partnership with New Annual 2026. Izabela Pluta has been awarded a Creative Australia Visual Art Major Commission grant through the international co-commissioning partnership of The Lock-Up and TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Poland.
The Lock-Up and the project are supported by Creative Australia, Create NSW and New Annual 2026.
Collaborators and project partners include the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Adam Hulbert: sound artist, composer, researcher and performer, Astrida Neimanis, Ocean Seagull, Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Hunter Gatherer Network, Event Engineering, Heritage Stoneworks at the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure and AX Interactive.
Izabela Pluta is represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert.