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The NSW government will spend $81 million to turn the Cutaway at Barangaroo into a gallery and events hall for arts and music festivals, exhibitions, banquet dinners, and corporate events. The move confirms the government will not be reviving plans for the site to be a community-run dedicated Indigenous cultural centre.
The new facilities in the subterranean space, created from 22 hectares of reclaimed foreshore land, are expected to be operational in 2025. Minister for Lands and Property Steve Kamper said the “new and improved venue” would accommodate multiple spaces for events, exhibitions, festivals, and installations.
The revamped Cutaway will be opened in 2025.Credit: Infrastructure NSW
“The Cutaway offers a unique opportunity for a major cultural destination for Sydney due to its accessible location and large dynamic space to host cultural events, festivals and exhibitions,” he said.
“There is no other venue that looks like this anywhere in NSW.”
Construction is expected to start within months to enclose the void in the Cutaway’s enormous sandstone wall with a glass skylight, as well as its entrance at Nawi Cove, and revamp the internal spaces.
The cavernous concrete shell will be converted into an event hall with a community education space, a gallery, a commercial kitchen, a lobby, a cafe, and a bar, also built over three levels. But the decision dashes the hopes of some Indigenous leaders that Labor in government would revisit abandoned Coalition plans for a dedicated cultural centre known as Buruk at the Cutaway.
Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, part of an all-Indigenous taskforce that had worked to develop plans for the centre, has continued to press for the space, co-designed by the community and managed in equal partnership with the government. It was not, however, included on a formal consultative committee of Aboriginal stakeholders for the internal refurbishment.
Council chief executive Nathan Moran said the outcome was a “sad reflection” on government and amounted to the privatisation of a space originally set aside for exclusive community use.
Opened nine years ago, the Cutaway sits beneath a naturalistic reserve on Sydney’s foreshore and above a car park, close to the Barangaroo Metro Station opening later this year.