Art Gallery of NSW opens its $344 million Sydney Modern Project

December 3, 2022

Karen Sweaney

Arts / Culture / Education / Venues /

Today, the Art Gallery of NSW opened its highly anticipated $344 million Sydney Modern Project, described as Sydney’s "most significant cultural development" since the Opera House opened almost 50 years ago.

Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Tokyo-based firm SANAA, designed the centrepiece of AGNSW's Sydney Modern Project aiming to create a building that "breathes with the city, the park and the harbour."

The building nearly doubles the gallery's architectural footprint and exhibition space.

Connected to the 19th-century neoclassical building by a Welcome Plaza and series of landscaped gardens, the new gallery consists of a series of sprawling, airy, glass-fronted and interlocking pavilions and stepped terraces that are embedded into the land bridge and existing infrastructure of The Domain parklands.

The NSW Government has financed the bulk of the decade-long project contributing $244 million, with private donations covering the other $100 million. It is anticipated that the project will inject $1 billion into the local economy over the next 25 years, while providing Sydney with a destination to rival the world's major art museums and talk of an "architectural renaissance" and comparisons drawn to Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Inside, Sydney Modern Project consists of four levels containing a gallery showcasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art; a new 1,300 square-metre gallery space for major exhibitions; a gallery for 'new media' (including video and VR); dedicated learning and participation studios; and an impressive 2,200 metre² subterranean gallery that was once a World War II naval oil tank.

From a sustainability perspective the achievements are notable with this being the first public art museum in Australia to achieve a 6-star Green Star design rating.

The new building, which operates on 100% renewable energy, features solar panels, rainwater capture and harvesting capabilities, and more than 8,000 metre² of landscaped areas and green roof that have been planted with Australian natives.

Sydney Modern Project's opening program features the work of more than 900 Australian and international artists on display across the two-building AGNSW campus.

While commissions by international names like Yayoi Kusama and Lee Mingwei are among the star attractions, Australian Indigenous art takes centre stage at the new building's entrance - a place where gallery director Michael Brand hopes visitors begin their journey, both physical and artistic, through the complex.

Brand advised "It's very important in Australia, in Sydney, to have a place where school kids or international visitors can come and get a snapshot of how important Indigenous culture and Indigenous visual arts are for Australia.”

Brand described the new building as a "21st-century art museum" where the voices of artists are central and added "there are stories told in a multiplicity of voices from a multitude of places, but they're all told across Sydney", noting "our chief artistic possibility as a 21st-century Australian art museum derives from the coexistence here in Sydney and Australia of multiple cultural traditions: from those of our Indigenous Australians, which can be traced back 65,000 years, to those of a long series of subsequent arrivals over the past 250 years."

Conceding that the core and strength of the Art Gallery of NSW's collection "will always be what might be loosely termed 'Australian' art, we recognise that this term has become increasingly less useful in an ever-more fluid and easily connected world", Brand added "Australian artists have always mediated the flow of ideas and forms in both directions. And this is why we are redoubling our efforts to find points of commonality with the art and artists beyond our shores."

The gallery's Deputy Director and Director of Collections Maud Page, meanwhile said it was crucial that Indigenous works were placed throughout the gallery, not siloed in a specific room, explaining "our uniqueness here in Australia is being able to be guided by (Indigenous) knowledges.

"We've only just begun to understand what that might be. And that's why, throughout our two buildings, you'll find Indigenous art on every single floor, in conversation with all artists."

Along with the commissions of international artists Yayoi Kusuma and Lee Mingwei , the gallery has commissioned nine new, large, site-specific works: by Australian artists Karla Dickens, Simryn Gill, Lorraine Connelly-Northey and Jonathan Jones; New Zealanders Lisa Reihana, Francis Upritchard and Richard Lewer. All are on display except for Jones's work, bíal gwiyúŋo (the fire is not yet lighted), which will be completed in mid-2023.

The subterranean oil bunker that is now known as the Tank gallery will now hold the gallery's most ambitious work: a site-specific commission that will change every year. For the opening, AGNSW commissioned a new work by Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas, who has previously created works for the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and for the 2015 Istanbul Biennial, at Büyükada Island.

A core part of the Sydney Modern Project has been the symbolic relocation of AGNSW's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander space, its Yiribana Gallery, from lower level 3 in the old building to a much larger space at the entrance of the new one.

Artist and Girramay and Kuku Yalanji man Tony Albert is one of the gallery's artist trustees and spoke about the significance of the relocation and of the opportunity and responsibility to elevate and empower Indigenous knowledge as the gallery looks to the future:

"Art has the ability to heal and to transcend culture, age and language to educate and to challenge. With the opening of Sydney Modern this art museum has the opportunity to engage many more people than ever before.

“Our colonial history is complex; it cannot be extinguished. But if we cannot learn from our mistakes we are doomed to make them again in the future. We do not need to encourage alternative viewpoints, but implement and value Indigenous people, perspectives and knowledges. We do not need to tell the story of Indigenous people. We need to empower and open the front door to let Indigenous people tell their stories their ways.

“The relocation of the Yiribana gallery to the entrance of this new building along with major commissions by Indigenous artists Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Karla Dickens and Jonathan Jones makes a visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales a flagship opportunity for this engagement."

Art Gallery of New South Wales' new building opened today 3rd December.

Images: The vision and master plan for the SANAA-designed building was launched in March 2013 (top, credit: AGNSW/Iwan Baan), the Tank covers 2,200 metre² in floor space - pictured: Rojas's The End of Imagination (top, credit: AGNSW/Jörg Baumann) and installation view of the new Yiribana Gallery, showing Death zephyr (2017) by Yhonnie Scarce, suspended from the ceiling (below, credit: AGNSW/Zan Wimberley).

About the author

Karen Sweaney

Co-founder and Editor, Australasian Leisure Management

Artist, geoscientist and specialist writer on the leisure industry, Karen Sweaney is Editor and co-founder of Australasian Leisure Management.

Based in Sydney, Australia, her specific areas of interest include the arts, entertainment, the environment, fitness, tourism and wellness.

She has degrees in Fine Arts from the University of Sydney and Geological Oceanography from UNSW.

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