Rone's artistic story of beauty, decay and impermanence before 'Time' runs out

"The idea of something being fragile, I think, makes it feel more important because you know it's only gonna be there for a certain amount of time. It becomes something we need to look after and cherish, and therefore it becomes more beautiful and important," shares Rone, defining both the work and the impermanence of objects. Seeing Rone’s paintings for the first time is a painful reminder of this nagging question of the permanence of his works—they sit amid the decayed walls of abandoned buildings, exceptant of their eventual wearing or demolition. While the canvas itself etches an overwhelming introduction to his creations, you encounter the face of his muse, looking at you with different expressions in different rooms and settings. His strokes against the chipped walls of an abandoned space can elicit a sense of familiarity, but the muse remains unrecognisable.

The internationally renowned artist, based in Melbourne, Australia, Tyrone 'Rone' Wright started his career as a street artist, exploring the process of creating art on the streets, on canvas and the latest, on walls of abandoned buildings. In his most expansive project, yet, he takes over one of Melbourne’s most iconic locations with Time, a new installation of immersive spaces and art that is occupying Flinders Street station's hidden third floor and ballroom. The show aims to bring a lost era of Melbourne's history back to life.

"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 lifelong loss to progress. While Empire (2019) 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," narrates the official release. As the immersive experience unveils lesser-known parts of Flinders Street station, we reached out to Rone, hoping to traverse through his lesser-known artistic mind.

As a child, Rone was interested in skateboarding, and slowly absorbed into the world of paintings and street art. Talking to STIR, Rone shares, “I just hung out with other people who were interested in painting and it was never a career choice. It was more of a social activity, what I did for fun.” But soon the social activity turned into his calling—from decorating skateboards and skate parks to putting paste-ups and stencils on walls around Melbourne, Rone was indulging in the different perspectives of art. However, he gained popularity for his works that are engulfed in abandoned buildings—creating art on the walls of abandoned decaying buildings, Rone created a new language of art that lies between the streets and galleries. His shows Empire (2019), The Omega Project (2017), Empty (2016) and Time (2022) have all been artistic storytelling of beauty, friction and decay—one where the art is placed in recreated rooms of buildings, designed and curated to appear as the backdrop for the story.

"Even when I was working as a street artist, galleries and other collectors would hire me to paint on canvases which I always felt difficult to translate and work with. As a street artist, when you work with canvas, there is no full environment and context, which led me to create immersive spaces of art. So now, what I am doing is actually creating the whole environment as part of the art. There's a real connection between what I am doing now and what I was doing 10-15 years ago as a street artist,” says Rone.

Just knowing that it's everything that's around the painting that actually makes it interesting, not just the painting itself.

He adds, "The set is the art, I see no difference between the set and the artwork. Everything is part of it. The concept of whatever we are building is based on the space that it's going into. You can't tell where the art stops and the building starts and I really like to blur those lines. If someone can't tell that we have actually created something or that it feels like it's always been there, I feel like we are doing a good job. It is nice to hear that people don't recognise that something has been created from scratch for the work. Therefore, more people learn about my work and realise that every single thing that's been placed within the space has been created with intention, which makes people want to go back and look at it.”

For Time, Rone used photo references from across decades and envisioned a conceptual narrative for each room of the Flinders Street station. Each room acts as a nod to the building’s actual history as well as to Melbourne’s downtown industry of the mid-1900s. The series of rooms that appear in the show are a typing pool, a library, an art room, and a classroom, among others, where each room references the hardships of the working class along with the left-behind tools and machinery of a forgotten era.

In the Work Room, vintage Consew and Brother brand industrial sewing machines and benches appear alongside a custom-built cutting table. Down the hall in the Typing Pool, 14 matching mid-century typewriters appear on metal tables alongside weathered chairs that lead into the main office room. Time features collaborative works by sound composer Nick Batterham, set builder director Callum Preston, set decorator Carly Spooner as well as the team of more than 120 Victorian creatives and professionals who are helping realise every element of the exhibition’s vision and create a set design that supports the art.

Talking about the exhibition, Rone said, "There is so much detail in each room you could never see it all in one visit. The aim is for audiences to be unsure where the artwork ends and where the original building starts. I like the idea that someone could walk in here and think, 'He’s just done a painting on a wall,' and that everything else they see is a legitimate, original part of the building. And perhaps they’ll think it’s kind of disrespectful that I have done that, that I have disturbed this space. For me, that’s the ultimate end goal–it means it has worked.”

Further, elaborating on the emotions and thoughts behind creating art that is temporary and might disappear in time, Rone shares, "Coming from a street art graffiti background, everything I have done has been destroyed. So it's not new for me to lose my artwork. It's almost expected. But to have it shared with so many people now is like the loss is shared. I want people to see this tension point of 'Oh, it's not gonna last forever.' So I like to exaggerate that and people probably don't always consider that with straight-out graffiti art. I like to make things feel more important because of the fragileness and the temporary nature of it.”

"There's no particular story, and it's not a literal character portrait of Teresa Oman. She's more there in an emotional sense that draws stories out of people. I have created a total work of fiction. But there are all these triggering points, whether it's furniture or other objects within the space, or even the music and the lighting. When people establish this emotional connection with the muse, what happens is, they start to tell their own stories. So this work of fiction becomes reality when people kind of start to project their own stories onto it. I really love hearing that come back to me and the way that people have connected with the space and what it means to them,” concludes Rone.

At Time, you may find an old train toy fallen under the table, don’t pick it up.
If you look closely inside the dust-covered bags, you may find a lost pearl earring.
If you read through the names in the mailbox, you might or might not find a familiar one.
If you follow the sound you may end up near the intercom.
The clocks would have stopped at 01:50, and time stands still.
Just when you are overwhelmed by memories—from a 'time' you can’t recall—don’t doubt the matrix, it hasn’t glitched. You aren’t in the part of the universe where time stands still, you are just inside Rone’s world of beauty and decay.

'Time' by Rone is on display at Flinders Street Station, Melbourne, till April 23, 2023.