In his most expansive project yet, internationally renowned artist Rone is set to take over one of Melbourne’s most iconic locations with Time: an epic new installation that will occupy Flinders Street Station’s hidden third floor and ballroom, bringing a lost era of Melbourne history back to life from Friday 28 October 2022.
Once a hive of activity post-war, housing sporting clubs, language classes, a rooftop running track and the fabled ballroom, the space has long been a white whale for the artist: impossible to get into and crumbling from years of neglect.
Time is a nostalgic love letter to mid-century Melbourne and a tribute to one of its great icons – capturing both the timeless character of the 112-year-old site, and the sentimental detail of a period of the city’s life-long lost to progress.
While Empire told the imagined stories of the wealthy upper class, Time shines a light on the working class – offering fictional histories that will transport audiences to post-WWII Melbourne through dressed installations of the artist’s making.
Visitors will explore 11 distinctly themed rooms filled with countless original and meticulously recreated period objects, evocative lighting and sound design, and the majestic character of the circa-1910 building.
Profoundly atmospheric, the project takes audiences on a journey to the typing pools, machine rooms and public libraries of mid-1900s Melbourne and back again, as Rone’s haunting signature female portraits hover serene and ghost-like above each scene.
Bringing Rone’s ethereal architectural interventions to one of Australia’s most recognisable landmarks, the project builds on an extensive body of work that follows the artist’s groundbreaking Burnham Beeches outing, Empire (2019), which saw the dramatic transformation of a faded Art Deco mansion in the Dandenong Ranges; and most recently, Rone in Geelong (2021), which offered a comprehensive survey of his work of the past two decades.
As the upper level and ballroom remain tightly under wraps, Rone and his team are now in their final weeks of preparation before Time unveils itself this October.
“Time is an open-ended narrative – there’s no right or wrong way to experience the space, just trails that I hope people will pick up. People make their own story, and every person will experience it differently,” says Rone.
“The work that has gone into Time is the culmination of 21 years of working as an artist in Melbourne. The Flinders Street ballroom has been my white whale. The work won’t last – it has been designed with a limited lifespan in mind – but I hope the stories will live on.”
The result is a multidimensional experience that sensitively responds to the building’s architecture while allowing the viewer to enter their own contemplation of time and its unbound possibilities.
Across each of the 11 dressed installations, an ethereal immersion unfolds, referencing a long-lost period of Melbourne’s past and inviting a meditation on the meaning of time, progress, and loss.
A monumental work of grandly ambitious scale inhabiting one of Australia’s greatest landmarks, this immersive, multisensory installation presents a once-in-a-lifetime experience that audiences will remember for time to come.
Over the past two decades, Melbourne-based artist Tyrone ‘Rone’ Wright has established an international reputation for his distinctive large-scale portraits and hauntingly atmospheric multimedia installations – which, since 2016, have pursued an increasingly ambitious scale.
Through his sensitive, detailed transformations of derelict and forgotten spaces, Rone invites audiences to engage in richly sensory experiences that present intriguing fictional histories and explore the divergent themes of beauty and decay, materiality and loss.
His ground-breaking projects Empire (2019), The Omega Project (2017), and Empty (2016) have drawn broad audiences and gained international media attention, cementing his role as a genre-pushing innovator.
Most recently, the site-specific Rone in Geelong (2021) installation saw the artist explore his signature style at Geelong Gallery in regional Victoria, developing a narrative that responded to the gallery’s collection and the architecture and history of the building.
The exhibition also presented the first significant survey of Rone’s career thus far, charting his early stencil works and street art alongside photographs documenting his major installations.
RONE: TIME opens from Friday 28 October 2022 to Sunday 29 January 2023 at Flinders Street Station (Level 3) – 273 Flinders Street, Melbourne. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit: www.rone.art for details.
Image: The Clockroom, 2022 (detail) – photographed by Rone