Media Release
POWERHOUSE PARRAMATTA INAUGURAL EXHIBITION: TASK ETERNAL
Powerhouse has today announced Task Eternal as the landmark opening exhibition for the highly anticipated opening of Powerhouse Parramatta in late 2026. It will be one of the most ambitious aerospace exhibitions ever staged in the world.
The announcement was made at the Sydney launch of the International Astronautical Congress 2025, confirming that the exhibition will launch the new museum with a bold curatorial and architectural vision that places Western Sydney at the forefront of global cultural and scientific dialogue.
The exhibition reflects the scale and ambition of Powerhouse Parramatta and the NSW Government’s investment in science, culture and innovation. Developed with international and local collaborators, including the Australian Space Agency and other international agencies such as the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum alongside artists, researchers, First Nations communities, and industry leaders, Task Eternal is a significant international exhibition and major statement of cultural, scientific and creative collaboration.
Developed over four years, Task Eternal is an expansive and immersive exhibition tracing humanity’s enduring quest to defy gravity, take flight and journey into space – from First Nations sky knowledges and early aviation to cutting-edge aerospace innovation, ethics and speculative futures. The exhibition will be presented in the museum’s largest exhibition space, PS1, with an 18-metre height and more than 2,200 square metres of exhibition space.
Task Eternal brings together over 600 objects, including items from the Powerhouse Collection and loans from leading local and international science and cultural institutions including the British Museum, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, space agencies and start-ups across 12 countries — including the USA, UK, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Korea and India — alongside 16 major new artist commissions by Australian and international artists.
The exhibition’s design has been developed in partnership with acclaimed Beijing-based OPEN Architecture, led by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing. Drawing inspiration from Ted Chiang’s science fiction short story The Tower of Babylon, the exhibition invites visitors on an ascending journey through four acts — Skyward, Power, Off-Earth and The Return — before returning them to Earth. A newly commissioned essay by Chiang will be featured throughout the exhibition.
As a museum of applied arts and sciences, Powerhouse has long stood at the intersection of technology, creativity and community. Task Eternal amplifies this legacy by rejecting a single authoritative narrative and platforming a plurality of voices — from astronauts, artists and engineers to Elders, scientists and speculative writers. It reflects the institution’s ongoing commitment to collaboration, innovation and access, and its belief that museums must work in the service of community and industry as repositories of knowledge and as active sites of cultural exchange and critique.
Task Eternal Exhibition Highlights
Industry loans and collaborations:
Task Eternal showcases groundbreaking Australian industry collaborations and technological achievements including:
- Australian astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg’s spacesuit, on public display for the first time.
- A prototype of Roo-ver, the rover being developed by ELO2 for a mission to the Moon with the Australian Space Agency around the end of this decade.
- The Kosmosuit, a next generation ‘smart’ spacesuit developed by Australian start-up Metakosmos and designed to monitor astronaut movement and wellbeing in real time and built with sustainable, high-performance materials.
- Australia’s Gilmour Space's sub-orbital 'One Vision' rocket. The development of this rocket demonstrated their determination and safe engine technology and paved the way to their larger Eris rocket.
Creative commissions and acquisitions:
Creative commissions and collection acquisitions form a core element of Task Eternal, inviting artists and creatives to respond to the technological and emotional dimensions of space.
- Renowned American artist James Turrell’s immersive work Shangri La (Over the Hump), will be a centrepiece of Task Eternal. Part of Turrell’s celebrated Ganzfeld series, the installation immerses viewers in shifting fields of light and colour, disrupting depth perception and creating a powerful sensory experience—similar to flying through dense fog, connecting audiences to Turrell’s background as a pilot.
- Torlap Larpjaroensook’s large-scale kinetic sculpture Vehasayan: A Virtual Vessel Transcending Time into the Astral Space of Memories, inspired by Voyager 1 and the Thai greeting sent on its Golden Record to space in 1977.
First Nations collaborations:
Working with First Nations Elders and knowledge holders, Task Eternal foregrounds Aboriginal sky stories and knowledge systems that have guided navigation, timekeeping and culture for tens of thousands of years. A boomerang — one of the world’s earliest returning flight technologies — anchors the exhibition’s curatorial framework. Senior Yolŋu artist Naminapu Maymuru-White will present a major installation featuring 10 Larrakitj recently acquired into the Powerhouse Collection. Her work draws on the Yolŋu cosmology of Milŋiyawuy, a celestial river of stars that binds Earth and sky. Maymuru-White is a part of a generation of artists working out of Yirrkala in Australia’s Northern Territory, preserving Yolŋu knowledges and cultures for future generations.
Powerhouse Collection:
Task Eternal will feature some of the museum’s most significant aeronautical and space-related artefacts from the Powerhouse Collection. These include items from pioneering Australian inventor Lawrence Hargrave; an F1 Rocket engine, the most powerful ever built at the time; a Skylark Rocket launched from Woomera and a 1914 Bleriot XI monoplane, one of the world’s earliest aircraft, owned by Robert Graham Carey, grandfather of Australian author Peter Carey.
Task Eternal will be accompanied by an extensive suite of public and learning programs presented through the Powerhouse Lang Walker Family Academy, including immersive STEM residencies for high school students, artists, scientists and cultural leaders.
NSW Minister for the Arts John Graham said, ‘Powerhouse Parramatta is the largest investment into cultural infrastructure since the Sydney Opera House over 50 years ago. 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, a place of innovation and diversity.’
Powerhouse Trust President David Borger said, ‘The opening of Powerhouse Parramatta will mark a bold new chapter in our nation’s cultural and scientific story and is a transformative moment for Western Sydney. We are proud to launch with a landmark exhibition that celebrates human ingenuity, ambition and our enduring fascination with flight.’
Powerhouse Chief Executive Lisa Havilah said, ‘From the vantage point of the southern hemisphere, Task Eternal uses the motif of flight to investigate the technological, political, cultural and environmental motivations – and impacts – of leaving the ground, connecting it with individual personal stories of connecting with the sky across countries and generations.’
PRESS INFORMATION
Image: James Turrell, 1991 Perfectly Clear, Ganzfeld. Courtesy the artist and MASSMoca
View Task Eternal webpage.
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About Powerhouse
Powerhouse sits at the intersection of arts, design, science and technology and plays a critical role in engaging communities with contemporary ideas and issues. We are undertaking a landmark $1.2 billion infrastructure renewal program, spearheaded by the creation of the new museum, Powerhouse Parramatta; expanded research and public facilities at Powerhouse Castle Hill; the renewal of the iconic Powerhouse Ultimo; and the ongoing operation of Sydney Observatory. The museum is custodian to over half a million objects of national and international significance and is considered one of the finest and most diverse collections in Australia. We are also undertaking an expansive digitisation project that will provide new levels of access to the Powerhouse Collection.