Mike Hewson: The Key's Under the Mat 2025

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Make yourself at home in an underground art park at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Australia's most dramatic exhibition space is completely transformed, as artist Mike Hewson brings his unique and boundary-testing brand of social sculpture to the Nelson Packer Tank.

Renowned for award-winning public projects that are at once artworks, play areas, and places to be, Hewson has reimagined the Tank as a combined park, playground, construction site, and commons - an anarchic and generous sculptural neighbourhood where visitors can meet, dwell, play, make, perform, explore and more.

In the art park, you'll find monkey bars, swings, a real sauna and steam room, along with a water zone to cool off. There are working barbeques too - bring your snags and barbequing equipment!

Free to all and made for all ages, this one-of-a-kind project was developed in the artist's dynamic Sydney workshop and constructed from thousands of salvaged objects and materials. Hewson's project is an experiment in participation, a spirited act of reclamation and regeneration, a radical rework of the legacies of modern sculpture, and a provocation about what a truly welcoming art museum might look like.

Entry is free.