The Art Gallery of NSW exhibit that allows free washing

Mike Hewson: The Keys Under The Mat is the latest Tank exhibition at The Art Gallery of NSW.
The unique exhibition takes over the entire underground space, transforming it into an art park for all ages.
It’s free to enter, you can have a BBQ, and even a shower, wash your clothes and spend time in the sauna.

‘Mike Hewson’s Tank exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, The Keys Under The Mat is certainly unusual. His very first institutional exhibition takes over the entirety of The Nelson Packer Tank for a world-first.

The Keys Under The Mat is a ferociously inclusive, surreal art and sculptural park that has turned this brutal 2,200-square-metre into a beautiful scene where steampunk playground features dabble near colourful pop-up structures.

It’s completely free. Not only that, but you should ideally stop by a supermarket before you descend that gorgeous spiral staircase. Take some sausages and (non alcoholic) drinks along with you.

There’s a large steel road plate on one side of the space with hot plates for any subterranean BBQ’s. Nearby a collection of functioning washing machines stands with a bunch of colourful towels on top. Just in case you want a shower, or some time in the sauna, followed by some contemplative time in the steam room.

AGNSW milk vat — *An old milk vat from Victoria has been turned into a lavish steam room for the exhibition (photo: Chris Singh).*

The Keys Under The Mat looks like the kind of ingenious underground community that you’d see being built in a post-apocalyptic movie, and it’s the most interactive artwork I’ve seen since performance artist Marina Abramović came to town over a decade ago. It’s completely sustainable and up-cycled as well. For the five public BBQ grills, Mike, a former structural engineer, has made an exhaust system from a repurposed grain bin.

The sauna is the most interesting feature to me. Inside looks like a clean, modern Finnish sauna, while the exterior is a rusted structure of the type you’d expect to find in some kind of cartoonish junkyard.

When visitors are finished heating up, they can step outside and pull a cord so a bucket douses them with ice-cold water. Nearby, a disused steel milk vat from Victoria has been transformed into a sculptural steam room with a doorway, stained glass, travertine seating, and its own steam generator.

AGNSW washing machines — *This might be the first time in the world that you can do your laundry at an art gallery (photo: Chris Singh).*

I look around the park and see families watching on as kids take turns on the swings and drive around the floor in various toy cars. Some are climbing stairs to find hidden recording studios (installed so Mike can welcome artists in residence while the installation is in place), or umm’ing and aah’ing over the festival-like mini stage that has been set-up in the far corner with space for a DJ and free gigs.

“About 1,000 tonnes of material have put laid out in 8 weeks,” a clearly exhausted Newson tells me, after I ask him why he didn’t just include a pool as well. “We wanted some sort of pool but it all came down to the cost of a lifeguard.”

mike hewson spa — *Mike Hewson has created a sort of post-apocalyptic Finnish spa with an ice bucket out front (photo: Chris Singh).*

The most striking thing about Hewson’s art park is the number of water features there. There’s the aforementioned bucket that splashes down onto the floor, and beach-like showers in the far corner so visitors can duck in and out of the sauna and steam rooms. Having a pool would have made sense, especially since the entire floor has been raised to accommodate the splish-splash.

The flooring is an art piece in itself. The entire tank space has been built over with a new floor made from all sorts of materials, from timber and steel to concrete and brick. I’ve never seen such ambitious flooring created just for a temporary art exhibition. It provides fertile ground for Mike’s dynamic approach, which should see the exhibition constantly change form and shape over the next few months, as a function of what visitor’s want.

And I think most of those “wants” will come from the little ones who. As the Art Gallery’s director Maud Page points out, the kids in attendance are showing their parents all the gorgeously intimate details that Mike has hidden around the art park.

Ultimately, this is going to be their exhibition for the next few months, an alternative kind of family-friendly playground that arrives just in time for the spring and summer seasons.