The Hunter Valley Art Trail
Spring in the Hunter Valley means more than budburst in the vineyards this year. From 12 to 27 September, the Wollombi Valley turns into an open-air gallery for the Wollombi Valley Sculpture Festival, a biennial event and one of NSW's longest-running and largest-scale regional arts festivals since it began in 2002.
Vineyards, village greens and indoor spaces across the valley fill with sculptures from established and emerging artists, giving visitors a reason to swap the cellar door queue for a walking trail between paddocks and public art. It's the perfect excuse to follow the wider art trail threading through wine country year-round.
Just up the road at Broke, Winmark Gallery and Sculpture Park pairs a cellar door pour of estate Chardonnay with a landscaped sculpture walk through the property's grounds. Wander past David Ball's towering Biosis before stepping into the gallery itself, where paintings hang alongside the sculpture collection under the same roof as the tasting bar. It's one of the few places in the region where art, wine and landscape genuinely share the same view.
In the heart of Cessnock, Performance Arts Culture Cessnock, known locally as PACC, brings a civic energy to the trail. Alongside its theatre, live music and film program, PACC's gallery runs a rotating calendar of exhibitions from local and touring artists, open most weekdays and Saturday mornings, with a retail space stocked with artisan pieces worth browsing on the way out.
At Pokolbin, Watershed Gallery offers a quieter, more intimate stop. Owners Ron and Lyn Hammond opened the gallery in 2019, bringing decades of combined design and gallery experience to a changing lineup of career artists working across painting, ceramics, photography and sculpture, with a guest cottage on the property for those keen to linger. Open Friday to Sunday, it rewards visitors happy to slow down, wander the room and look closely at every piece on the
walls.
Four venues, four different ways to experience art in wine country, and this September, one very good reason to start at Wollombi before working through the rest of the trail at your own pace.
