[This piece ran on the cover of the Sydney City Hub in June 2005]
After years of uncertainty, artist-run space and cultural landmark Space 3 is finally facing eviction. As gentrification spreads in ever-widening circles from the CBD, the rest of Sydney’s warehouse spaces seem destined to meet the same fate. Miriam Lyons asks if it’s time to stop progress.
One by one, warehouses that were once home to artists and musicians have been converted to the cult of polished floorboards & bubble-glass window fittings. But despite endless rent hikes, dodgy landlords, and the constant threat of eviction, a band of determined heretics keep fighting for the right to take up space.
The building on the corner of Cleveland and Regent Sts in Chippendale has been for sale ever since the founders of Space 3 moved in almost five years ago. So when the occupants found out that their lease had been terminated the news didn’t take them by surprise.
“Anyone who’s been involved with it for a long time thought it was bound to happen”, says Space 3 resident Shann Preece.
Since 2001 Space 3 has developed a reputation for hosting a genre-bending mix of emerging and established artists across every imaginable artform. Over the years the space has played host to everything from a Canadian neo-punk band to an installation project with 400 tree roots. It has inspired a cluster of satellite spaces which share a common philosophy - non-profit galleries that don’t charge artists to exhibit.
If the space shuts down, says co-founder Melletios Kyriakidis, the area “will miss that kind of central hub. A lot of artist-run spaces are in nooks and crannies, but this one sticks out - it’s a palace.” Unfortunately, the same high ceilings and central location that make the building an artist’s dream also make it very attractive to developers.
Filmmaker and artist Rebecca Conroy lives in a former wedding dress factory on Meagher St Chippendale, in a space called the ‘Wedding Circle’ that has played host to a gallery, a screening room, and half a dozen arts collectives.
Conroy waves her arm towards the imaginary walls that divide rented studios, collective spaces, and her own bedroom, and then tells me the news. The owners have put in a development application to turn the building into mixed-use residential apartments. She pulls out a coffee-stained blueprint and points: “This is our gallery – but they’ve turned that into a foyer.”
Chippendale still has some warehouse spaces left, but in areas like Surry Hills they’ve practically disappeared. Luke Dearnley, who runs the Sydney club-night, Frigid, talked about his short-lived experiment with warehouse living in Surry Hills. Known as ‘The Project Room’, Dearnley’s home on the corner of Campbell and Commonwealth St was so big the residents raised turtles in the foyer and constructed elaborate slot-car racetracks in the living room.
Dearnley says the unorthodox nature of the space was part of the attraction: “You’re not even allowed to stick posters on the walls in some houses.” At The Project Room, “if we wanted to put in a window we would just bash a hole in the wall and put in a window.”
“It was a very liberating place to live.”
Over a few years the whole building became a hub for creative cross-pollination. Other floors began to fill with artists, and visitors would stop by at each floor, sharing ideas and dropping in on project meetings on their way to the next level. House parties took on a life of their own: “if every artist on every floor invited everyone they knew, about 1500 people would turn up” says Dearnley.
Although they entered the realm of urban legend, The Project Room’s parties didn’t impress the landlord. With the Surry Hills police station just up the road, the parties drew attention to the fact that people were living in a building that wasn’t zoned for residential use.
“We weren’t technically allowed to live there” says Dearnley, but as with many warehouse spaces, the landlord had decided to turn a blind eye.
The illicit nature of their living arrangements left the residents without the rights of normal tenants. The building was grotty, cold and draughty. The 100-year old floorboards were disintegrating into splinters, and the gaps between the boards were full of pins from the old ragtrade days. Dearnley says he learned to walk without sliding his feet. In a space packed with expensive electronic equipment, the roof didn’t just leak, it leaked an oily black liquid that fell in a different place every time it rained.
But the residents didn’t complain. There was no rental board to complain to. After all, they could be kicked out at any time. “We were on tenterhooks the whole time we were living there” says Dearnley.
It all came to an end when a designer furniture business offered to rent the warehouse at three times the price. Over three years the property market had changed, and Dearnley thinks that spaces like The Project Room might have contributed to that change: “Because of people like us living in these places, it suddenly became cool.” Retailers were willing to pay the price to have some of that image rub off on their sales.
Just as cheap rent drew creative types to Chippendale when Surry Hills became too expensive, the same space-addicts have begun to hear the call of suburbs further south. Marrickville is starting to take off, Alexandria is filling up, and even inconspicuous Turella is on the map.
Tom McLaughlin was involved in remaking an old icecream factory in Turella into a home for art collectives and community groups. McLaughlin says that setting up the massive 1000 square-meter space in 2001 was a very risky move: “No-one knew where it was…it was the first time anyone had gone that far out.”
“We would have been bankrupted if it didn’t work. It was bloody scary. I put everything I had into the bond, and it worked.”
In fact, it worked so well that some of the Icecream factory’s stakeholder groups are now looking at the possibility of taking over the whole city block. Frank Cope from anarchist art-collective Mekanarky says “people are realising that if we want to keep art moving on we have to consolidate – no one person can do it alone these days.”
While Turella may be affordable now, what McLaughlin calls ‘Meriton-isation’ has already begun. In the last 12 months medium-rise apartment buildings have sprouted up like mushrooms, and a glossy main road has appeared in the midst of flagging factories and streets filled with burnt-out cars.
Rebecca Conroy is worried that all the knowledge gained from running warehouse spaces isn’t channelled into anything long term.
“The buildings are going, and the ones we occupy are short term because they’re always scheduled for demolition.” The result, says Conroy, is “transitory, slapdash artist spaces that are managed badly and are just experiments. It means that everyone’s reinventing the wheel.”
A spokesman for the City of Sydney is sympathetic, recognising that it’s hard for cultural and artistic groups to compete in the rental market with offices, shops and units. But he says “it is basically impossible for planning controls to mandate the retention of uses in particular spaces”. Instead, says the spokesman, the council has grants programmes and other initiatives to assist cultural activities in the City.
Conroy says that unless they want to move every ten years, its time for artists to stand up and be counted – in dollars if necessary: “Councils are starting to see the value in keeping arts workers in the area – it’s a trade, and if they don’t support it it’s not going to grow.”
“I don’t necessarily like being validated by how much my trade is worth economically – I’m opposed to that – but that is one language that council understands.”
Trevor Brown, a musician who has just moved into a space next to the Wedding Circle, has another idea – he wants to get Chippendale officially recognised as an arts precinct. He’s planning a survey to find out how many people are visiting the area for artistic purposes. Between the many galleries, dance studios, music studios, theatres, and live music venues in the area, Brown estimates that arts and culture brings over 10,000 people to Chippendale every week.
In the long term, making a place for artists in the inner city will take much more than winning over council – it will take genuine community support.
Mell Kyriakidis from Space 3 says that this may be quite a challenge: “The way that this stuff can stop is through the public, that’s where it should start, but how do you get the public involved when artists just want to make artwork?”
Rebecca Conroy says it’s important for artists to recognise that they exist in a privileged enclave: “We don’t go to Bunning’s Warehouse on the weekend, we don’t have our brick veneer homes, we don’t have to worry about funding for public education for our kids because less than one tenth of us have kids.”
“I think that’s a responsibility as well, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly – I think that this community should see that they have the tools to make change in the world. I wish artists would stop saying ‘I just want to make art’. You can’t critique the world and then stand by and not do anything about it.”
“If the owner of this building turned into a philanthropist overnight and gave it to us we’d turn half this space into a veggie co-op, we’d take a serious interest in the community infrastructure. We’d invite the neighbours over for cups of tea – we wouldn’t just be here to show off.”
In the absence of her landlord turning into a patron of the arts, Conroy suggests that “the next stage is to think seriously about buying a building.” With the home of Space 3 up for auction next month, maybe it’s time to declare at least one warehouse ‘unconvertible’.