A silver gelatin dry plate glass negative in landscape format.

Country Always

Caring for Country

A Corner of the Empire

The Garden Palace

Sepia photograph of the Technological Museum and a cow in the foreground

The Holding Pen

The Agricultural Hall

Sepia photograph of the Technological College and Museum in Broken Hill

Regional Networks

Across New South Wales

A Museum of Doing

Technological Museum

Colour photograph of red corrugated iron building from a high vantage point

Transforming the Tramsheds

Powerhouse Stage 1 and the Harwood Building

A Symbol in Time

Sydney Observatory

Powerhouse Museum, Stage 2 exterior from high angle, city skyline in background

Ongoing Transformations

Powerhouse Ultimo

Ceramic bowls displayed on brick plinth.
Blurred image from film with museum object number

Applied Arts and Sciences

Defining the terms in the 21st century

Powerhouse Renewal

Two people standing next to a cow in a field of cows.

Powerhouse Food: Producers

Across Western Sydney24 Aug 2024 — 25 Jul 2025

We Rise

Blak Powerhouse

A tall rocket with a long trail of burning fuel lifts off from a launchpad at Cape Canaveral.

Powerhouse-1 Mission Launch to the ISS

An initiative of the Powerhouse: Future Space program

Photofields

Across Sydney6—7 Dec
Shadows cast by the Powerhouse Parramatta exoskeleton on concrete

Exoskeleton

Powerhouse Parramatta

A woman stands on stage in front of a large audience. She has her left hand raised in the air and a microphone in her right hand. The audience are holding their phones up recording the woman.

Blak Powerhouse 2023

Powerhouse x We Are Warriors

Slider thumb2021
Ceramic bowls displayed on brick plinth.

Clay Dynasty

Tag iconExhibition
when
Ended 29 Jan 2023
where
Ultimo

11 October 2021 – 29 January 2023

Clay Dynasty celebrates studio ceramics in Australia as shaped by three generations of makers. The first major exhibition to chart the astonishing diversity of ceramic practice across Australia, it features more than 400 ceramic objects from the Powerhouse collection, including more than 80 new acquisitions by contemporary ceramicists.

Large Print Guide

View of Clay Dynasty showing detail view of Bust 39, 34, 60 and 28 from China, China series by Ah Xian.
Photos: Zan Wimberley

About

Clay Dynasty offered new perspectives by displaying ceramics of the crafts movement alongside postmodern and contemporary artworks. Distinctively Australian works complemented those inspired by other cultural traditions, and bold forms were contrasted with meditative objects and fine porcelain.

It brought together iconic and lesser-known works, including Margaret Dodd’s Blue Holden ceramic car, which feminised the macho FJ Holden of the 1970s, and Joan Ground’s ceramic postal parcel, which the artist addressed to a Melbourne gallery in 1973. Among works that had never been on public display before was the spectacular 70-piece collection of some of the earliest pottery created by Australian Indigenous makers in 1968–74 at Bagot Pottery in Darwin, Northern Territory.

Bringing together functional and expressive artistic traditions, Clay Dynasty reassessed the Australian experience, while highlighting the creative potential of clay at a time of a remarkable resurgence.

In conjunction with this major exhibition Powerhouse hosted a symposium and partnered with local ceramic studios to develop a range of exhibition–inspired masterclasses.

Clay Dynasty was designed in collaboration with Aileen Sage Architects and AX Interactive and supported by Brickworks.