The Tank
Built 1942, converted 2022
At the very bottom of the new building a stair drops into darkness and you find yourself in a forest of concrete columns, more than a hundred of them, standing in rows under a low ceiling in a space the size of a football field. The walls still carry the stains of the fuel oil that filled the tank for decades, and the air is cool and smells faintly of the sea. Sounds echo. In the middle, or scattered among the columns, is whichever large installation the gallery has commissioned for the space.
The tank was built in 1942 as one of two underground reservoirs for the fuel oil of the Australian and allied navies during the Second World War, sitting beneath the Domain above the Garden Island dockyard. When SANAA planned the new building, the architects decided to leave the tank almost untouched rather than fill it or demolish it, cutting only a stair and a lift into it. Look at the columns close up: the marks of the wooden formwork are still visible, and the oil line runs around the walls at the height it once reached. The lighting is kept low so that the darkness is part of the experience.
The Tank opened with the building in December 2022 and has since hosted a sequence of single, large scale commissions by international and Australian artists, changing roughly once a year. It has quickly become the most talked about room in Sydney, an art space with the atmosphere of a cathedral crypt. Whatever is installed when you visit, take a few minutes simply to walk among the columns and listen; the building is the artwork here as much as anything placed inside it.
Did You Know? The oil tank held naval fuel during the Second World War and the tide line of the oil is still visible on its walls.
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