Four storeys underground, kids are swinging off monkey bars and digging in a sand pit.<\/p>\n
Sausages are sizzling on a council barbecue and palm trees hang overhead.<\/p>\n
This isn’t the local park but a former World War II oil tank deep underneath Sydney.<\/p>\n
It is like urban exploring, but for children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Tank at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. \/ How it looks today with Mike Hewson’s installation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oil tanks were constructed in Australia during WWII to protect fuel from aerial attacks.<\/p>\n
And because of that, engineer-turned-artist Mike Hewson says this installation is a bit dystopian.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes I’m in there, I’m just like, what have we done here?” Hewson tells 7.30.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mike Hewson’s installation in the Tank is called The Key’s Under the Mat. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
“It’s a little bit prepper. We’re in a bunker doing healthy things together.”<\/p>\n
Above the surface, Hewson’s public playgrounds are both loved and loathed.<\/p>\n
One site in central Wollongong, which features a palm tree tied to a streetlight, was set on fire and subject to a local council motion to have it removed. It remains, but public grumbling continues.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mike Hewson’s divisive installation in Wollongong. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Wollongong residents told the ABC “the palm tree sucks, it’s always sucked”, calling it “stupid” and “awful”.<\/p>\n
“It still gets plenty of heat from people,” Hewson says.<\/p>\n
“I put a target on myself doing these projects, but I don’t do it lightly.”<\/p>\n
For every questioning adult, however, there’s a kid in deep concentration jumping, climbing and carefully navigating Hewson’s creations.<\/p>\n
Risky playgrounds<\/p>\n
Mike Hewson’s playground in Southbank. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
In Melbourne’s Southbank, huge boulders sit on tiny domestic trolleys. It looks like it could roll away, but children are crawling all over it.<\/p>\n
“As a visitor you’re like, ‘Either the rocks are fake, or the trolleys are fake or something’s up,'” Hewson says.<\/p>\n
“At that point you’re really present and you’re like, ‘I’m going to figure this out.’ That’s a great thing to deliver, not just to kids but to adults.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
His St Peters playground. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
In Sydney his Leichhardt and St Peters playgrounds appear near collapse.<\/p>\n
Bucket stacks and ropes hold up a massive tree log and timber planks are casually placed between old brick fence lines.<\/p>\n
These projects have been labelled “risky playgrounds”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
His playground in Leichhardt. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
“There’s really nothing risky about them in that they’re compliant playgrounds. But I guess there is an aesthetic about them that seems slightly precarious,” Hewson says.<\/p>\n
“When a child is climbing up … [if] it looks like something unstable, you watch them, they’ll go up, they’ll give it a yank \u00a0\u2026 they’ll go a bit higher. They internally risk assess. They need to be allowed to do that.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mike Hewson installing his playground in the Tank. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Hewson grew up in regional New Zealand. He remembers spending endless hours clambering over rocks, crawling through creeks and climbing trees.<\/p>\n
“At school, we used to have this game where you competitively climb to the top of the tree and then see how fast you get down, which is like a controlled fall,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Allowing kids to explore in that way is really seen as a strong breach of duty of care.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mike Hewson as a child in New Zealand. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Hewson thinks that the real duty of care is letting kids train how to navigate dangerous-looking situations and that communities should have spaces that facilitate that form of play.<\/p>\n
“We test limits and that’s how we become adaptable in a resilient society as we continually grow as an adult. If you just stagnate, you decline,” he tells 7.30.<\/p>\n
Destruction leads to inspiration<\/p>\n
In 2011, Hewson was living in Christchurch when a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit.<\/p>\n
He witnessed the city’s famous cathedral come crashing down.<\/p>\n
In seconds, the centre of New Zealand’s second-biggest city was reduced to rubble.<\/p>\n
The view from Mike Hewson’s Christchurch studio before the quake. \/ And the cathedral collapsing afterwards.<\/p>\n
It changed how he thought about urban design.<\/p>\n
“This whole city fell down in front of my eyes,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Everything you knew to be certain and solid didn’t stand up and everything was rearranged, which leads you to believe that things aren’t necessarily as fixed as you think.<\/p>\n
“Laws aren’t as fixed, the physical environment isn’t as fixed \u2026 we can decide what we want that to be.”<\/p>\n
That horror has served as his inspiration.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A child playing on Mike Hewson’s Wollongong installation. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
He sees the irony of attempting to build something permanent after seeing a city fall to pieces.<\/p>\n
“I would like to think there’s a hopeful message where people go, this thing has been thrown together in a kind of over-the-weekend manner,” he says.<\/p>\n
“If it can fall apart, it can also be put back together.”Underground world<\/p>\n
Children play outside the sauna in the Tank. (ABC News: Richard Mockler)<\/p>\n
For his new project deep in the bowels of the Art Gallery of NSW, most of the materials have been sourced from Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree and second-hand suppliers.<\/p>\n
The installation goes beyond just a playground \u2014 he’s built a complete functioning park catering as much to adults as kids.<\/p>\n
It contains not just the aforementioned BBQ but a steam room that was once a milk vat.<\/p>\n
“We just cut a door, put some stained-glass portals through the holes that were already in the roof, put steam in, done,” Hewson says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Inspecting the steam room in the Tank. (ABC News: Richard Mockler)<\/p>\n
“I don’t think the gallery quite knew how enthusiastic sauna goers are.<\/p>\n
“I was like, ‘You’re going to get people coming into the gallery every single day of the show because there’s a place where they can warm their bodies, have a shower, get changed and leave.'”<\/p>\n
Before Hewson’s takeover, the gallery had strict rules for those visiting the Tank: no food and no liquids.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The exhibition being installed in the Tank. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Now, Hewson has installed plumbing and an exhaust fan for cooking fumes.<\/p>\n
But getting his creations underground was a huge undertaking as he squeezed it all past the 100-plus historic columns.<\/p>\n
“It is a space that’s governed by heritage restrictions so we couldn’t touch, we couldn’t alter, we couldn’t bump into any of those things,” Justin Paton, the gallery’s head curator of international art, told 7.30.<\/p>\n
“There were many moments as these big objects, like the milk vat steam room, were trundled into the building where it was real ship-in-the-bottle stuff.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The milk vat steam room is moved into place. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
“It seems like an insane proposition that none of us would want to embark on again. But we’ve done it and we should have done it,” Hewson says.<\/p>\n
While families are a key target, the polarising Hewson believes the gatekeepers of public spaces need to re-imagine what they can offer their own communities.<\/p>\n
“People are fearful that things won’t work and things sometimes don’t, but good evidence helps designers, builders, lawmakers and council workers deliver better things for the public,” he says.<\/p>\n
“I believe this project does that.”<\/p>\n
Watch 7.30<\/a>, Mondays to Thursdays 7:30pm on ABC iview<\/a> and ABC TV<\/p>\n Contact 7.30<\/p>\n