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

Black and white photograph of man walking through eucalyptus plantation

Expanding Stories

Evolution of the Castle Hill site from botanical research station to Museum Discovery Centre

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

A large wall covered in a variety of brightly coloured band posters. A woman dressed in black is looking at the wall.
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 thumb2022
A large wall covered in a variety of brightly coloured band posters. A woman dressed in black is looking at the wall.
Program

Unpopular

Tag iconExhibition
when
Ended 3 Jun 2023
where
Ultimo
‘Having worked around small clubs and the local music scene long enough to know I didn’t have a musical bone in my body but I could sure as shit organise things, I began to dream. As far as I knew the music business had no rules except the ones you made up and I was about to make up a whole lot of them.’
Stephen ‘Pav’ Pavlovic

Gallery

Framed photograph of a white cat on a wall in an exhibition
A wide corridor plastered in bright colours and music posters.
Two people watch large screens of music concerts.
An acoustic guitar against a black background.
A large wall covered in a variety of brightly coloured band posters. A woman dressed in black is looking at the wall.
A room with red carpet and a red curtain wall with a screen hanging on it.
A brightly coloured wall of orange, blue and yellow. There is a mounted canvas on in it with a red background and paintings of five nonhuman characters.
An old phone hangs on a wall
A white wall with two framed pictures on it.
A room with red carpet and a red curtain wall with a screen hanging on it.
A wall covered in band posters including Offspring, Lemonheads and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
A wall of brightly coloured band posters. In the front are two Sonic Youth posters.
Three large screens in a dark room.
A wall of brightly coloured band posters. The poster in the middle is blue and has the band name ‘Mudhoney’ on it.
A room with red carpet and a red curtain wall with a screen hanging on it.

Unpopular drew on the never-before-seen archive of music promoter, record company founder, and entrepreneur Stephen 'Pav' Pavlovic to take audiences behind the scenes of the alternative music scene in the 1990s.

Unpopular stemmed from the idea that the scene began as a movement that deliberately avoided the mainstream and anything popular. Ironically, it became a dominant cultural movement of the 1990s as artists who helped define the genre rose in fame, including Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Bikini Kill, Fugazi, Pavement, The Lemonheads and more.

Visitors saw more than 200 objects from Pav's extensive collection, including footage of live performances, previously-unheard music demos and live recordings, photographs, original graphic art, posters, and fanzines.

The exhibition also featured Kurt Cobain's Martin guitar plus new commissions by artist Lillian O'Neil and artist/filmmaker Julian Klincewicz.

Powerhouse presented a series of programs alongside the exhibition including a music photography masterclass with Sophie Howarth, analogue art workshops led by designers Ben Brown and Paul Curtis, and a music documentary film program.

Trailer for Unpopular with footage from Summersalt Festival 1999

Project Team

Major Partner