Powerhouse Parramatta to open with five exhibitions – the first an epic space adventure

• Powerhouse Parramatta will be the largest cultural development in Sydney since the Sydney Opera House.
• The $1.4 billion development will open in late 2026 with ‘Task Eternal’ as its first major exhibition.
• The exhibition will be focused on space exploration with more than 600 objects and installations from artists like James Turrell.

Task Eternal will be the ambitious opening exhibition of Powerhouse Parramatta when the landmark $1.4 billion development is realised in late 2026.

Oddly enough, it’s an aerospace exhibition—apparently one of the most ambitious in history, curated in an attempt to place Western Sydney at the forefront of “global cultural and scientific dialogue.”

And I must say, a space exhibition was the last thing anyone would have expected to open one of the most anticipated new museums in the world. Yet it makes sense considering the NSW Government’s hefty investment in science, culture and innovation.

The space exhibition will be one of five exhibitions at the Parramatta site when it opens in late 2026. 

“We don’t have a date as yet, but it’ll be in that very end of next year,” Ms Havilah said.

CEO Ms Liz Havilah told 702 ABC Radio Sydney that all the exhibitions at Powerhouse Parramatta will be temporary. 

“Some will go for a year, some will go for two years, but there’ll always be new exhibitions and new stories,” Ms Havilah said.

“We’ll open with five major exhibitions and so we’re just announcing the first one today, which is really exciting, and so over the next year we’ll share the other projects and exhibitions that are coming up.”

More than 600 objects, including those on loan from the British Museum, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and various space agencies and start-ups, will be spread across 2,200 square metres of exhibition space in the museum’s largest area, the 18-metre-high PS1.

Task Eternal, which was developed over four years, is pitched as an “expansive and immersive” exhibition that tracks one of the most ambitious endeavours in history. It will use various cutting-edge technologies and large-scale works to trace humanity’s persistence in defying gravity, taking flight, and exploring the vastness that exists far beyond our planet.

Powerhouse Parramatta is taking a broad scope with this one, too, and even localising it with a distinctly Australian take. Not only have curators worked with iconic institutions like the British Museum and the Smithsonian, but also with the local Indigenous community to include “First Nations sky knowledges.” This is alongside perspectives of early aviation and aerospace innovation, ethics and speculative futures.

It’s a multi-cultural effort. These objects have been garnered from 12 countries, including the USA, UK, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Korea, and India. And alongside them, a total of 16 major new artist commissions from both local and international artists, dotted across four “acts”: Skyward, Power, Off-Earth and The Return.

What will I see at ‘Task Eternal’?

Some of the objects you can expect to see at the Task Eternal exhibition, when it officially opens Powerhouse Parramatta are:

• Australian astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg’s spacesuit (on public display for the very first time)
• A prototype of Roo-ver
• The Kosmosuit, a next-gen smart spacesuit developed by an Australian start-up
• Australia’s Gilmour Space sub-orbital ‘One Vision’ rocket
• F1 Rocket engine
• Skylark Rocket launched from Woomera
• 1914 Bleriot XI monoplane (one of the world’s earliest aircraft)

And in terms of commissioned works, expect them to be large, immersive (and yes, infinitely Instagrammable). These are the ones we know of so far:

• Shangri La (Over the Hump) by James Turrell: a major part of Task Eternal, with Turrell bringing viewers into shifting fields of light and colour to distort depth perception. This has been described as “flying through dense fog” to connect audiences to Turrell’s background as a pilot.
• Vehasayan by Torlap Larpjaroensook: a large kinetic sculpture inspired by Voyager 1 and the Thai greeting that was sent on its Golden Record to space in 1977.
• A major installation by Yolŋu artist Naminapu Maymuru-White, presenting 10 Larrakitj (memorial poles) that were recently acquired for the Powerhouse Collection.

“Powerhouse Parramatta is the largest investment into cultural infrastructure since the Sydney Opera House over 50 years ago,” reiterated John Graham, NSW Minister for the Arts.

“Task Eternal is more than an exhibition. It’s a symbol of the placement of Western Sydney at the forefront of Australia’s cultural, scientific and technological future.”

Task Eternal will open along with Powerhouse Parramatta in late 2026.