$20 million Sydney art campus will ‘breathe fire’

The art school has long occupied a rambling historic site at Rozelle, in the grounds of the old Callan Park Mental Hospital, but has moved back into newly refurbished multimillion-dollar digs at the Camperdown main campus.

Art schools “breathe air” into the cultural life of big cities, the boss of Sydney University’s newly revamped $20 million art college says.

The art school has long occupied a rambling historic site at Rozelle, in the grounds of the old Callan Park Mental Hospital, but has moved back into newly refurbished multimillion-dollar digs at the Camperdown main campus.

“Art schools in a city feed the cultural life into cities, they breath air into it,” Sydney College of the Arts director Andrew Lavery said.

“That’s becoming increasingly important, particularly as we move away from a manufacturing base into a more service-based economy.

“We produce these cultural practitioners or contemporary artists and they go out and work in society and make society a more liveable place.

“They also question the norms of society and make us reflect on it in a different way and give us different perspectives on the way we live our lives.”

When the SCA doors open to new art students in early 2020, they will not only have access to the latest digital technology but also get to try out a mind-boggling array of studio equipment including 20 glass making and ceramic kilns, pottery wheels,photography darkrooms and metal workshops.

Mr Lavery says the set up is unique among the elite Go8 universities. The $20 million refurbishment of the old Teachers College included widening the doors to allow for large-scale artworks and a huge scissor-lift to bring materials up and down from level one.

“We’ve invested enormous amounts of money in keeping both the traditional equipment and students really value that equipment — they like to work with the old processes,” he said.

“But they also value the new so technology we have made huge investments in the computer labs digital technologies such as VR and digital editing and sound labs and so on.”