Art as Playgrounds: Mike Hewson on Infrastructure, Risk & Responsibility

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A conversation with New Zealand artist Mike Hewson, recorded inside his monumental installation The Key's Under the Mat at the Art Gallery of New South Wales – a 2,500 square meter underground park complete with working sauna, laundromat, barbecues, DJ booth, recording studio and playground that's broken every visitor record the gallery has ever seen.

Mike's practice straddles the complex lines between art, infrastructure and public liability. He designs playgrounds that councils don't know how to regulate, builds permanent public sculptures that must survive Australian weather conditions and human interference and he takes on legal exposure that would terrify most artists, all while fighting the perception that making functional, interactive work is somehow "beneath" serious art.

Key insights from this episode:

• The Christchurch earthquake moment: barefoot in a broken city, wondering whether he should keep pursuing art

• Project backlash: dealing with public anger, going into debt on his first major commission and lessons learned

• Strategic pivot: setting a new precedent as an artist-engineer

• True scope of the AGNSW project and how he sourced materials for it

• Hard truth and advice: burnout is not a sustainable business model

Mike Hewson is a New Zealand artist based in Sydney. You can find out more about his work on his website https://mikehewson.co.nz/ and follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikehewson

See his work in person: