Powerhouse today announced Unpopular, a major exhibition featuring the never-before-seen archive of music entrepreneur Stephen ‘Pav’ Pavlovic. The exhibition explores the global rise of the alternative music scene that included cornerstone bands such as Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Fugazi and Bikini Kill.

Opening to the public on Thursday 27 October, Unpopular features more than 200 objects from Pavlovic’s extensive archive, alongside stories and oral histories from the community of artists he worked with, bringing visitors backstage and behind the scenes of this era of live music.

The University of Melbourne’s Ian Potter Museum of Art has announced Collective Unease; a bold new exhibition examining the legacies of colonisation and imperialism in the University of Melbourne’s collections, running 27 September – 9 December 2022 and then 14 February – 2 June 2023.

Co-curated by Samantha Comte, Senior Curator and Jacqueline Doughty, Head Curator, Art Museums, the exhibition forms part of the Ian Potter Museum of Art’s artistic program, inviting three contemporary artists to respond to and reframe objects from the University collection. Collective Unease is presented inside the Old Quad at the centre of the University’s Parkville campus, with the works in part inspired by the Oxbridge-style architecture of this historic building.

Through these newly-commissioned works, artists Andy Butler, Lisa Hilli and James Nguyen move beyond colonial narratives to a complex, multi-voiced understanding of Australia inflected by experiences of migration and diaspora.  In the face of difficult histories and an uncertain future, these works emphasise themes of self-representation, empowerment and optimism.

Image: Andy Butler, The Agony and the Ecstasy, 2022, video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, today announced the launch of the First Nations Program, signalling an ambitious sea change for the organisation. Under the leadership of the first Director of First Nations Programs, Jacob Boehme (Narangga/Kaurna), Carriageworks is undergoing a renewal that is embedding First Nations governance and cultural perspectives at the heart of the organisation.

In 2022, Carriageworks presents PARTY | PROTEST | REMEMBER, a dynamic, new multi-arts program that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Black Theatre. In 1972 a group of dedicated Aboriginal activists came together on the streets of Redfern to create change. They created Redfern’s first self-determined Aboriginal theatre company alongside the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, will present Awakening Shadow, a new work by resident company Sydney Chamber Opera. In a first Australian staging, Benjamin Britten’s five Canticles are entwined with a new work by leading Australian composer Luke Styles, performed by a quartet of singers and four musicians in front of a monolithic altar-like screen. The work channels Britten’s crisis of faith through the singing body and will be presented from 30 September – 7 October 2022.

The annual DESIGN Canberra Festival has announced highlights for its ninth edition, unveiling an expansive program featuring more than 200 events that will be presented across the nation’s capital celebrating it as a global city of design, spanning two weeks from 2 until 20 November 2022. Presented by Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre, DESIGN Canberra 2022 explores the theme of Transformation, inviting audiences to speculate on how we might transform our city, our community and our world through design and creative practice.

With a program comprising talks, tours, exhibitions, public art installations, workshops and symposiums, DESIGN Canberra highlights in 2022 include keynote speeches by authors Elizabeth Farrelly and Tony Fry, as well as by artists Blanche Tilden and Tom Moore; an exhibition celebrating contemporary Italian design; open studio access to more than 77 Canberra-based artists and designers; public art installations; architecture talks and tours; hands-on ‘nurture’ making workshops; and a Bauhaus influenced exhibition of light works.

Canberra sculptor Lucy Irvine – whose work transforms the traditional craft practice of weaving into sculptural installations – has been named the 2022 designer-in-residence for DESIGN Canberra 2022, creating a signature work, ‘The Stills’ for the Festival, responding to the theme of Transformation.

Image: Lucy Irvine, The Stills, DESIGN Canberra 2022 signature artwork. Photo Lean Timms.

Fred Williams: The London Drawings is the first exhibition dedicated to Williams’s London period (1952–56). The exhibition explores the range and power of William’s drawings from this formative period through some 160 drawings of extraordinary calligraphic energy. These include superb series of works that Williams made in London’s music halls, at the zoo, on the city streets, and in formal life drawing classes.

Presenting a surprising counterpoint to the artist’s celebrated, abstracted landscape paintings, these drawings reveal Williams’s early aspirations to be a figure painter. This early commitment to drawing and painting the human figure is less well known to the public and reveals Williams’s extraordinary observational skills and ability to capture the world around him.

An evocative reimagining of The Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang’s Temple of Boom is the NGV Architecture Commission for 2022, an annual series that invites Australian architects to create a work of site-specific, ephemeral architecture for the NGV Garden.

A global architectural icon, The Parthenon, an Ancient Greek temple, is an apex symbol of Western civilisation, democracy and perfection. The likeness of The Parthenon will be painted with overlapping large-scale artworks by Melbourne-based artists, imbuing the ancient monument with further layers of meaning and drawing inspiration from the vibrant colours and artistic embellishments that defined the original building over two-thousand years ago.

Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang invite audiences to reflect on the conversations that are enabled when this ancient building is viewed in new and surprising contexts. In particular, the projects ask us to consider the effect of time on all architecture. Temple of Boom reflects the slow yet unstoppable processes of change that transform all cultural, geological and ecological systems. The geological forces that shape the world, layers that accumulate as cities grow over generations, the rise and fall of monuments set against a backdrop of social, political and cultural change.

Using performance, video, sound, installation and collage, Angelica Mesiti provides new vantage points from which to consider a familiar element. Avoiding depictions that are strictly representational, Future Perfect Continuous is an invitation to meditate, to listen closely, and to consider the greater meaning of small gestures. In this exhibition, running from 30 July – 8 October 2022, Mesiti creates a crease in time and in memory, while offering an anchor to a transcendent idea of community.

The Rigg Design Prize 2022 highlights the creativity underpinning the work of eight leading Australian-based agencies. The first major exhibition of advertising and communication design in the NGV’s history will see each agency will develop a suite of campaign assets to celebrate how creativity can shape who we are and the world we live in. The finalists invited by the NGV to compete for the $30,000 Prize are: Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, DDB Group Melbourne, Frost* collective, Gilimbaa, Leo Burnett Australia, TBWA\Melbourne, The Royals and Thinkerbell.

Now in its ninth edition, the triennial Prize is Australia’s highest national accolade for contemporary design bestowed by an Australian public gallery and seeks to profile a different field of design practice every three years. In 2022, the Prize exhibition showcases the capacity of advertising and communication design to influence how we consume, act and behave as a society, while drawing attention to the creative minds behind the campaigns working across graphic design, typography, digital media, film, psychology and creative writing.