What's on August 16

Lost gardens of Sydney

Category: Exhibitions

Sydney’s vast sea of roofs belies its rich legacy of gardens and gardening. In every direction from the city, large estates and gardens have been subdivided and lost to our ever-increasing need for real estate. Lost gardens explores Sydney’s rich and diverse gardening heritage. more


Rockabilly: living the 50s

Category: Exhibitions

Photographer Steven Siewert has spent years documenting Sydney’s rockabillies, a vibrant subculture who live and breathe an era that predates their earliest birthdays. The boys dress for cool with stovepipe jeans and slick quiffs, while the women wear dazzling cocktail frocks by night and colourful vintage dresses by day. more


Sphere’s of Light

Category: Events, Exhibitions

A multi-media work for architectural light, music and multi-channel sound by Mary-Anne Kyriakou, recipient of Peggy Glanville Hicks Composer Fellowship 2008-2009. more


Points in time: a student typographic project

Category: Exhibitions

Inspired by modernist typography, second year graphic design students at Hornsby College of TAFE have created designs for various media including posters, book covers and animation and collaged the work into an iMovie, multimedia environment. more


Australian International Design Awards

Category: Exhibitions

The most outstanding examples of the latest Australian design and innovation from the 2008 Australian International Design Awards are now on display. The Powerhouse Museum’s annual selection from the finalists include a personal tracking device for skiers and snowboarders, a communications device for firefighters, an electronic earplug for communication in loud environments, and a selection of models from the Australian Design Awards – Dyson Student Awards. more


Design markets: Young Blood and designboom mart

Category: Events

Buy directly from the cream of national and international design talent, over four days at the Powerhouse Museum. more


Modern times: the untold story of modernism in Australia

Category: Exhibitions, Featured

Discover how modernism transformed life in Australia across five tumultuous decades from 1917 to 1967. Modern times looks to the city and its skyscrapers, cafes and swimming pools, where modernist ideals of functionalism, internationalism and the healthy body profoundly reshaped Australian culture. more


There’s a hole in my bucket

Category: Exhibitions

There’s a hole in my bucket invites 20 local designers and 80 members of the public to put their bucket where their mouth is and photograph a part of Sydney, or a part of their everyday lives, that they consider to be badly designed; and every image must contain the ubiquitous yellow bucket. more


Outside the square, inside the box

Category: Exhibitions

Curated monthly by A&E Metal Merchants, this showcase in the Powerhouse Museum shop brings to light recent work by contemporary jewellers. For Sydney Design 08, A&E has handed the reigns to jewellery students at Sydney College of the Arts. more


Utility: u-beaut

Category: Exhibitions

An annual exhibition of work by Sydney College of the Arts, Object Art & Design students, from undergraduate to postgraduate research candidates. This year’s theme goes local, asking participants to respond to the term ‘u-beaut’ and the idea of an Australian vernacular. more


The 2008 Sydney teapot show

Category: Exhibitions

Ceramic artists from Australia and New Zealand are invited to participate in this annual exhibition, competition and homage to a universally-loved vessel. Rarely will you see so many interpretations of a single, utilitarian object. more


Architectural excellence in Bangladesh

Category: Exhibitions

Presented by the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) and Bangladeshi Architects in Australia (BAA), this exhibition showcases architectural projects completed in Bangladesh by prominent local architects, international luminaries including Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolf, Constantinos A. Doxiadis and Stanley Tigerman, as well as selected works by architects and students of Bangladeshi origin living in Australia. more


EyeSaw

Category: Exhibitions

In 2006 Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA) members proved they don’t always take themselves too seriously by staging an intervention in Omnibus Lane – en route to the Powerhouse Museum – that treated passers-by to a particular graphic design sense of humour – speech bubbles with graphic design gags like ‘Lose dot gain. Ask me how’ and ‘Only designers bleed’ more


How you make it

Category: Exhibitions

This exhibition explores the work of eight contemporary fashion designers, who not only create new garment forms and new ways of wearing clothes, they also develop entirely new design systems. Featuring work by Simon Cooper, Paula Dunlop, Ess. Laboratory (Hoshika Oshimi and Tatsuyoshi Kawabata), FORMALLYKNOWNAS (Toby Whittington), Anthea van Kopplen, MATERIALBYPRODUCT (Susan Dimasi and Chantal McDonald), Project (Kara Baker and Shelley Lasica) and S!X (Denise Sprynskij and Peter Boyd). more


Refashioning the fashion

Category: Exhibitions

An exhibition featuring seven contemporary jewellers whose work is at times experimental, confrontational and non-functional. Alice Lang, Tiffany Parbs, Julia de Ville, Leah Heiss, Chelsea Gough, Gabby O’Conner and Melinda Young rebuild, recreate, restore, renovate, remake, reassemble, refashion and re-enact to create works that transcend convention and the body, and take the notion of jewellery to a new level of understanding. more


Workshopped 08, co-presented by the Powerhouse Museum

Category: Exhibitions, Featured

Workshopped 08 explores the theme ‘Design matters’ by asking participants to consider the questions: ‘What is important about your design? What does it set out to achieve? Where will it find a home? And why does it matter? more


Totalled

Category: Exhibitions

Graphic designer Paul McNeil has over 20 years experience on the Sydney scene, designing for film and for companies such as Mambo and Mooks. In this exhibition of sculptures and two-dimensional works, using his trademark palette of red, black and white, McNeil explores the graphic visual language of gangs. more


Time capsule

Category: Exhibitions

A group of local designers were invited to create new work for this in-store exhibition at Beautiful on the inside in response to the brief: design an object for a time capsule; a piece representative of design today or simply worthy of being immortalised. The designers are Henry Wilson, Matthew Conway, Arthur Koutoulas, Babak Aryaei, Keith Melbourne, Christopher Earl Milbourne, and Lana Alsamir-Diamond. more


AAA walks

Category: Walks

Take a tour of some of Sydney’s most important architectural developments with the Australian Architecture Association (AAA). more


Sydney skyscrapers

Category: Walks

Take a close look at Sydney’s modern skyscrapers. This walk reveals the architect of Sydney’s tallest skyscraper, what a curtain wall building is, why Australia Square is round, when fire regulations changed to allow buildings higher than 13 storeys and where the highest garden in Sydney is located. more


Walk through time

Category: Walks

Starting in Australia’s oldest public precinct at Hyde Park Barracks, this tour delivers a 200-year journey through time in a two-hour walk. Meet Sydney’s first architect; hear about his passage to Australia in chains and his skills in designing finely detailed brick buildings. Learn about the difference between Beaux Artes and Art Deco, why Martin Place was closed to cars, when communications determined the location of most bank buildings and how ideas for modern architecture were developed. more


Make your portfolio stand out from the crowd: questions, answers and insights

Category: Events, Talks

Spend an afternoon with industry professionals from industrial, graphic, interior, multimedia and textile design and take the fear and question marks out of creating your own unique portfolio. View a range of professional portfolios and presentation styles, ask questions, receive feedback and focus on what you would like your work to say about you. Meet and connect with design professionals by booking in for a 15 minute session to discuss your own portfolio. more