Inside the Collection

Arts

Discovering the Five Hundred Arhats of Changnyeongsa Temple

December 8, 2021

Min-Jung Kim
Kim Byeongho — a farmer and his wife — used to be frequent visitors to a hillside in Yeongwol, Gangwon-do province, Republic of Korea that had long been known to locals as the Mudeomchi (Hill of Graves) temple site.
Exhibition view showing the Soviet era Cosmos‑782 Bion satellite in the foreground with selection of models from casts of horse jaws made, in the background is a detail of the Porkhani video by Javad Azimi and Hamid Hosseini. The walls in the space are painted a fluoro, hi-vis yellow and have led strip lighting.

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian: I Prefer Talking to Doctors About Something Else

April 9, 2020

Katie Dyer
Dubai-based artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian work collectively to create expansive installations composed of artworks and artefacts. Taking the form of visual poetry by incorporating and disorganising objects from the Powerhouse Museum collection, this project, includes artefacts such as Skylab space debris, a donkey’s hoof, anatomical models, ceramics, and textiles.
The guitar is a slab-board electric guitar, with a bolt-on neck. The headstock and neck is maple, and the fret-board is rosewood. The Fender decal is original 'spaghetti' style. It is a 22 fret neck with original clay dot inlays. The tremolo is synchronised and the machine heads are nickel Kluson. Three single-coil pickups with a three-way switch, two tone and one volume control. The pick-guard is triple layered mint. The colour of the body is Dakota Red. It has severe road-wear.

A Bombora Boon: The Powerhouse Museum Acquires The Atlantics’ Guitar and Drum

August 29, 2019

Damian McDonald
Imagine being a working-class kid from Sydney’s suburbs, and the second car you ever bought was a Ferrari. But instead of being a rev-head, you were an aspiring rock muso. And the Ferrari was not a precision made, top-of-the-line spots car, but a Fender Stratocaster, with exactly the same specs as Formula One musos were using.
Writing set in red metal with black detail, comprising a blotter, pen tray and circular inkstand with a black-ball handle on the cover.

100 years of the Bauhaus

August 1, 2019

Eva Czernis-Ryl
The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences has just opened a display with striking objects, photographs and archival material from its extensive decorative art and design collections, to celebrate the centenary of the Bauhaus, the most influential 20th century school of design.

Student Fashion 2019

June 19, 2019

Kristina Stankovski
Held annually at the Powerhouse Museum since 1993, the Student Fashion display showcases the work of Sydney’s top local fashion design graduates, providing insight into the skills and potential of the next generation of Australian designers.
A pair of coloured glass forms standing upright against a black background. The form on the left is slightly larger and is decorated with vertical bands of in green, blue and yellow. The smaller piece ion the right shows bands in dusty pink, grey and green hues.

The Barry Willoughby Bequest: two new acquisitions

June 12, 2019

Eva Czernis-Ryl
Last year, we introduced to our readers the first glass and ceramic objects acquired for the MAAS collection with funds from the remarkably generous Barry Willoughby Bequest. We are delighted to share the news about two more recent acquisitions enabled by Willoughby’s passion for Australian studio glass and ceramics as expressed in his will.
Photograph of a man standing holding a large poster. The poster depicts the portiat of a man wearing a red turban with a moustache and the word aussie appears in large text across the bottom

Peter Drew: artist and activist

May 9, 2019

Anni Turnbull
"Public space is a great equaliser, and an ancient forum." The placing of posters in public spaces is artist Peter Drew’s way of drawing attention to Australia’s immigration issues and a direct response to the Australian government’s ‘Stop the Boats’ campaign.
An image of a red papercut. 'Golden Coin, Good Fortune and Longevity' (jīn qián fú shòu).

Happy Lunar New Year, The Year of the Pig

February 5, 2019

Vanessa Thorne
The Lunar New Year is the most significant annual celebration for Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese cultures. Today (5 February 2019) marks the beginning of the Year of the Golden Pig. If you were born in 1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2007 or 2019 then it is your year!

The Ideal Home Exhibition: Australian experiences of home across the past 100 years

January 29, 2019

Nina Earl
Home should be a place of security, intimacy, love and family, a haven from the world. It is where we can express ourselves through the location, architecture, furnishings and decoration. But 'home' is also a site of financial burden, fracture, loss and danger - and increasingly for some, a home is simply unattainable.
There are five rings that can be worn singularly or stacked together. They are displayed stacked together. Each ring has a different shape, one has a projected triangular form, another is made up of two different sized circles, a projecting crescent, another is a two fingered ring with a sunrise shape above and another is a single ring with one rod soldered horizontal.

Vale Wendy Ramshaw

December 18, 2018

Anni Turnbull
Wendy Ramshaw (1939 - 2018) was a leading contemporary British studio jeweller renowned for her innovative approach to jewellery design and production. Ramshaw emerged on the international jewellery scene in the 1970s, exerting a significant influence through inspiring exhibitions, workshops and artist residencies in countries such as the USA and Australia (1978).

Food Work Sex Belief: How Art and Science Meet

November 28, 2018

Katie Dyer
From popular culture to mainstream media to discourse on the post-, trans- and non- human, the human impact of current technological change is palpable. The exhibition Human non Human responds to this sense of anxiousness and exhilaration.