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