Artspace in Woolloomooloo has taken the Impact Award 2024 in Time Out Sydney’s inaugural Arts & Culture Awards.
The Impact Award has been established to recognise an organisation that has a positive impact on Sydney's arts and culture industry, whether that's through the support of artists, education, or innovative practices that make art and culture more accessible or sustainable.
In December 2023, this heritage-listed building re-opened (after being closed off for two years; followed by a stunning $19.2 million transformation) as a state-of-the-art facility. It's a gallery space – but there's a whole lot more going on there that warrants its status as the 2024 Impact Award winner.
The third floor is home to Artspace’s Artistic Residency Program, where each year they offer ten rent-free studios to support ten artists at all stages of their careers. One of the artists amongst the first residency cohort for this new era of Artspace is Julia Gutman, who became one of the youngest ever winners of the Archibald Prize in 2023 for her portrait of singer-songwriter Montaigne – and whose work then went on to be displayed on the Sydney Opera House sails for Vivid 2024 in May to June 2024.
Demonstrating that Artspace is dedicated to more than visual art, there’s also a new sound-proofed 250-square-metre multi-purpose space on the first floor for showcasing music, dance and performance.
Across the hall, you’ll discover a custom-built space for The Franco Belgiorno-Nettis Archive. “We've created, for the first time in 40 years, a fully accessible library of all our publishing – some iconic queer, culturally diverse and First Nations led publishing particularly – that has never been digitised or available to audiences after the time that it was published,” explained executive director Alexie Glass-Kantor. Throughout pandemic lockdowns, many Artspace staff were kept busy sorting and auditing four decades of documentation, some of which was being destroyed by rising damp.
And then there's a full solar farm on the roof that keeps the carbon footprint low.
The best part is, Artspace is supported with a “practically unprecedented” 35-year lease that was granted by the NSW Government through Create NSW, which guarantees the organisation a secure home base until at least 2058. “With a 35-year lease on the building, that means that we can plan for artists who haven't yet been born to live and work here at Artspace. The organisation is committed to funding and supporting 350 residencies for artists from emerging through to established,” said Glass-Kantor.