Sydney Modern opens inside WWII oil depot

The Art Gallery of New South Wales has inaugurated Sydney Modern, a new contemporary art space built within a decommissioned WWII oil depot in Woolloomooloo. Designed by SANAA, the above-ground structure features glass walls and a steel roof, but the main attraction is the subterranean tank: a 2,200-square-meter former fuel storage facility constructed in the early 1940s to supply British warships at Garden Island. Abandoned after the war and rediscovered in 2014 in a state of disrepair—flooded, with concrete columns corroded by oil, salt, and minerals—the space underwent extensive restoration and opened on December 3, 2022. The tank has seven-meter-high ceilings supported by 125 columns spaced four meters apart. Times critic Jason Farago described it as combining "the imagination of a science fiction writer and the anxieties of an ecologist." Director Michael Brand envisions the project transforming the gallery into a museum campus with seamless connections between art, architecture, and landscape. For the inaugural exhibition, the tank hosts an immersive installation by Argentine-Peruvian artist Adrián Villar Rojas, part of his ongoing series The End of Imagination. Rojas reflects on how the COVID-19 pandemic has altered perceptions of time, language, and representation, while also questioning the museum's role in preservation and display.