Richard Lewer’s Steve begins a three-year national tour

Richard Lewer‘s Steve, one of the artist’s most significant bodies of work, embarks on a three-year national tour this week, opening at Port Pirie Regional Art Gallery in South Australia on 28th August 2026 before travelling to a further six regional venues.

Richard Lewer: Steve is a National Gallery Touring Exhibition, following the work’s presentation in Kamberri/Canberra. It will show at Redcliffe Art Gallery, Queensland; Maitland Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales; Tweed Regional Gallery, New South Wales; Manningham Art Gallery, Victoria; John Curtin Gallery, Western Australia; and Ngununggula, New South Wales, closing in October 2028. Entry is free at every venue.

Acquired for the national collection in 2024, Steve centres on a stop-animation film built from thousands of table-top paintings, photographs and Super 8 footage. In it, Lewer tells the story of a man named Steve as he and his family navigate his dementia diagnosis — a portrait of memory as something at once complex and inherently fragile.

The work takes its name from Steve Rollis, whom Lewer met a decade ago through his son Peter Rollis at a boxing gym the artist ran in Naarm/Melbourne’s north. Cleaning up at closing time one night, Peter told Lewer about his family’s experience of his father’s Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia. The film is narrated by Peter and by Steve’s wife, Christina, and offers a deeply personal account of the changes, challenges and moments of connection familiar to families living with dementia — now Australia’s leading cause of death.

‘Every now and again, as an artist, a special moment comes along that allows you to make a work that will touch so many people’s lives, and for that moment perhaps they don’t feel so alone,’ Lewer said. ‘I think the thing that will happen when people view the work, which is a celebration of Steve’s life, is they’ll probably think of their own parents, an uncle, or an aunty.’

Shown alongside the video are 14 paintings of memories drawn from the artist’s own life: his first car, a trip with art school friends to Milton, his father in hospital, the family cat Toffee. Each is painted directly onto a domestic Laminex tabletop — a surface Lewer treats as the site where ordinary life accumulates, where families gather, dinners are held, bills are paid, stories are told and significant moments are fixed in memory.

Naarm/Melbourne-based Lewer is a visual storyteller with a longstanding interest in the relationship between art and health, known for paintings, drawings and moving image works that sit with the complexities of the human condition. The tour follows his win of the 2026 Archibald Prize for his portrait of senior Pitjantjatjara artist Iluwanti Ken.

‘Richard Lewer’s practice transforms personal stories, collective memory and everyday experience into deeply human narratives, balancing humour, vulnerability and social observation with remarkable empathy,’ said Elspeth Pitt, senior curator of Australian art at the National Gallery. ‘Steve is a moving exploration of the impacts of dementia, and we look forward to sharing it with regional Australians through the national tour.’

The tour carries a public program with it. The National Gallery is supporting each regional partner to build capability in delivering art and dementia programs for their local communities, an approach informed by the Gallery’s own Art and Dementia program. Research into that program has found benefits including improvements in quality of life, wellbeing and cognitive performance, and a reduction in depressive symptoms, for people living with dementia.

‘Richard Lewer’s Steve is a deeply moving work of art that speaks to experiences shared by many Australian families,’ said Dr Nick Mitzevich, director of the National Gallery. ‘Through our Art Across Australia program, we are proud to bring this important touring exhibition and workshops to communities across the country and create opportunities for meaningful conversations about memory, care and connection.’

Richard Lewer: Steve is supported by the Australian Government through Visions of Australia.

Dates and venues

Port Pirie Regional Art Gallery, SA | 28th August – 8th November 2026 Redcliffe Art Gallery, Qld | 21st November 2026 – 21st February 2027 Maitland Regional Art Gallery, NSW | 6th March – 13th June 2027 Tweed Regional Gallery, NSW | 3rd September – 28th November 2027 Manningham Art Gallery, Vic | 10th December 2027 – 1st April 2028 John Curtin Gallery, WA | 14th April – 23rd July 2028 Ngununggula, NSW | 5th August – 8th October 2028