Powerhouse Parramatta Opens With Five Exhibitions And Festival

Western Sydney is set to welcome a major new cultural landmark as powerhouse parramatta opens its doors to the public this Saturday with a massive 23-day festival of performances, parties, talks, screenings and workshops. Encasing two towers and wrapping 30,000 square metres of interior space, the $915m building features a white lattice exoskeleton built from 12,000 tonnes of steel and 1,300 individual pieces.

Designed by Moreau Kusunoki and Genton, the venue offers massive column-free exhibition spaces up to 18 metres in height. The interior utilizes an airy colour palette with walls covered in a textured render made from 600,000 crushed oyster shells. When the venue opens, visitors will be able to explore five distinct opening exhibitions that blend science, engineering, design and art.

The $915m Powerhouse Parramatta cultural venue opens this weekend with five major new exhibitions.

The flagship opening exhibition is Task Eternal, a 2,000-square-metre celebration of flight and space travel in the main hall. It features objects such as Leonardo da Vinci sketches, an early 19th-century Indigenous boomerang, an Apollo command module and a Star Trek spacesuit. Other exhibitions include The Mall, a tribute to shopping centre history, and The Dark, an immersive children's exhibition set inside a massive replica meteorite.

Another exhibit, Overflow, features a high-definition LED display of short films by director Ivan Sen alongside a shallow pool with water that laps with the tides of the river. The museum has invested money into the Indigenous organisations featured in the films to fund local environmental and community proposals, such as marine life tagging and rubbish clearance.

Why it matters

The opening of the new cultural institution brings a major arts infrastructure project to western Sydney, accompanied by five new exhibitions and a substantial opening festival. While the project carries a significant price tag and a controversial history involving governance investigations and leadership changes, it aims to draw visitors from across Australia to explore its extensive collections and community-focused commissions.