Visitors to the new Powerhouse Parramatta take off their shoes and step into the powerhouse parramatta water installation. Within a few paces, the gallery floor stops being a floor. It becomes a shallow tidal plain, and the stone underfoot begins to show the shape of the land beneath the city.
Editor’s note: this article is part of designboom’s POSTHUMAN UTOPIAS chapter, which is presented in partnership with INDX|GLOBAL, a global cultural platform focused on Indian architecture, design and creative intelligence.
A tidal landscape indoors
Overflow is a large-scale powerhouse parramatta water installation by Tyrrell Studio, set in a naturally lit gallery at Powerhouse Parramatta in Sydney. It is the museum’s First Nations-led exhibition, grounded in the living principles of Water Country. Project credits list the location as Powerhouse Parramatta, @powerhousemuseum.
The gallery measures roughly 60 by 40 metres. Water flows across an abstracted sandstone rock shelf. The stone refers to the geology under Parramatta, where the river has shaped the land for tens of thousands of years.
Other artists have also cut into landscapes to reveal what lies beneath, as in 50-Meter Red Incision Transforms Corfu’s Coastline for a striking outdoor counterpart.
Water rises and recedes across the stone. As it does, different sections of the sculpted surface appear and disappear. A reflective sheet of water stretches across the room when the level is high. When it drops, the sandstone outcrops return.
Daylight and reflections of the building’s steel structure and the sky move across the water. Visitors standing in the room see the architecture above them mirrored at their feet.
Reading the river before the city
The team at Tyrrell Studio built the work around a longer view of the Parramatta River. Before European settlement, the river was a changing system. Tides, sediment and the meeting of fresh and salt water shaped it. Its banks were part of a wider network that ran through sand, stone, groundwater and floodplains. They were not the hard edges that modern infrastructure implies.
Settlement changed that relationship. Weirs, reinforced banks and concrete channels were built to control the flow. A river that once shifted with the seasons became a managed waterway.
The powerhouse parramatta water installation asks visitors to notice what that control hides. Water gathers, spreads and drains away across the stone. The light and reflections add an element of unpredictability that no engineered channel can fully manage. The work points to the forces still shaping the ground under the city.
Seven organisations, one medium
Wiradjuri woman Emily McDaniel developed the concept, placing Aboriginal cultural practice at the centre of the experience. Seven organisations contribute knowledge and stories tied to Water Country across New South Wales. They are Baramadagal Community, Gamay Rangers, The Goondee Aboriginal Keeping Place and Museum, Jagun Alliance, Joonga Land and Water Aboriginal Corporation, Moogahlin Performing Arts and Naru Aboriginal Corporation.
Their work covers species care, fishing, water monitoring, flood mitigation, language and cultural water rights. Kamilaroi filmmaker Ivan Sen’s films carry much of that material into the gallery. The films are projected onto the water and reflected across the stone. Ripples break up the images before they settle again on the rock and on visitors’ bodies.
Sen’s films bring different waterways and communities into conversation with the physical environment of the powerhouse parramatta water installation.
From the riverfront into the museum
Overflow extends a project Tyrrell Studio completed outside the museum. Ngurra Budyari Ngalawagulang is a permanent riverfront landscape of about 3,000 square metres. It was developed with Baramadagal elders and Dharug community representatives. The design uses sandstone paths, vegetation and rain gardens. Water collects in shallow hollows, plants push through the paving, and the stone weathers over time.
Colonial legacy and built form meet again in Studio Saar’s Bamboo Pavilion and Colonial Legacy, a bamboo pavilion worth reading alongside this riverfront project.
Inside the powerhouse parramatta water installation
Inside, the same ideas carry into the gallery. The studio describes its practice as landscape architecture, urbanism, architecture and sculpture, grounded in ecology, geology and hydrology. Overflow, as a water installation, shows that range in one room. The work is designed to be felt through bare feet as much as seen.
Powerhouse Parramatta opened on Saturday 7 November. Its $915 million price tag drew public scrutiny before the doors opened. Overflow asks visitors to slow down and listen to the place they stand on.
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Frequently asked questions
Who designed the Overflow water installation at Powerhouse Parramatta?
Overflow was designed by Tyrrell Studio, and it is a large-scale water installation set in a naturally lit gallery at Powerhouse Parramatta in Sydney. It is the museum’s First Nations-led exhibition, grounded in the living principles of Water Country.
How large is the gallery that houses Overflow?
The gallery housing Overflow measures roughly 60 by 40 metres. Water flows across an abstracted sandstone rock shelf inside it.
Who developed the concept for the Overflow installation?
Wiradjuri woman Emily McDaniel developed the concept for Overflow, placing Aboriginal cultural practice at the centre of the experience. Seven organisations contribute knowledge and stories tied to Water Country across New South Wales.
What happens to the water and stone during Overflow?
Water rises and recedes across the sculpted sandstone, so different sections of the surface appear and disappear. When the water level is high, a reflective sheet stretches across the room, and when it drops, the sandstone outcrops return.
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