The Rone Time Exhibition spans eleven rooms of the long-abandoned third wing of the heritage-listed Flinders Street Station.

Internationally renowned Rone (real name Tyrone Wright) is a Melbourne-based Australian street artist known for his large-scale mural paintings. Rone has created works in cities worldwide, including Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, and New York, often featuring portraits of women. He is known for his ability to create a sense of emotion and movement in his pieces which have also been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide. Additionally, his work can be found on the streets in many major cities.

Flinders Street Station

Flinders Street Station sits on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It was the first steam rail station in Australia, and today, it still serves the entire metropolitan rail network. Opening in 1854, it is the oldest railway station in Australia, still in operation. It is also the busiest railway station in Australia’s second busiest city, with millions of passenger movements per year. Due to its age and architecture, Flinders St station is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register and, with its famous clocks, is considered a Melbourne cultural icon.

Previous Exhibitions

Rone has developed a stellar international reputation over the last twenty years. Previous installations such as Empire in 2019 (in the decaying Burnham Beeches mansion), The Omega Project in 2017 (A house about to be demolished) and Empty in 2016 (the Lyric theatre just before demolition), transformed abandoned and derelict spaces into hauntingly beautiful odes to the past. Time is no exception. It is Rone’s most ambitious project to date and the culmination of three years of work.

The Time exhibition by Rone celebrates Flinders Street Station’s grand scale, history and character, reimagining a period of Melbourne’s past long lost to progress. The immersive exhibition is inspired by an era when European migrants powered the city’s booming manufacturing industries, capturing the beauty in a forgotten, mid-century, working-class life.

The ballroom

The Flinders Street Station Ballroom is located on the third level of Flinders Street railway station. The ballroom was built in the 1920s as part of a redevelopment and was used as a venue for dances, balls, and other social events. However, the ballroom was closed to the public in the 1980s and has since fallen into disrepair. In recent years, efforts have been made to restore and reopen the ballroom, but apart from Patricia Piccini’s exhibition, A Miracle Constantly Repeated, it remained closed. Time, however, takes you through the ballroom plus ten additional closed-off rooms that have also been hidden away for half a century.

For years, I had heard all these stories about the mysterious ballroom above Flinders Street Station. I always wondered how much of it was truth and how much was urban myth. I was desperate to get in there,’

Rone

Rooms with History

Time is also a nostalgic love letter to Melbourne of the 1950s. Hence, each carefully curated room offers up a fictional history of the era. Large-scale portraits of model Teresa Oman, who has worked with Rone for over ten years, appear hauntingly on the walls. For Time, Rone put together a team of more than 120 professionals who worked for several months to complete Time’s delicate and intricate installation process. Because of the sheer scale of the exhibition, behind the scenes, the installation required scenic artists, lighting designers, heritage experts, riggers and many more.

Time Capsule

The exhibition is beautifully and authentically done. As you wander from room to room, becoming immersed in the installation, you forget it’s a fictional history. It’s not hard to imagine that if you rolled the clock back and stepped into postwar Melbourne of the 1950s, this is precisely what these hidden, upper floors were like. You begin to feel like you have just stepped into a time capsule with rooms frozen in time.

For instance, there are administration rooms with the typist pools of yesteryear, the lamps still burning, and a sewing room that is turning out uniforms with cobwebs undisturbed on the cotton reels. Classrooms for apprenticeships and mailrooms with massive canvas mail sacks and letters strewn on the floor. Coupled with haunting music and evocative lighting, the sets ooze history.

Further on, there are cardigans over the backs of chairs—a cup and saucer on bench. A switchboard with snaking cords connecting the outside world to the workers within, with one last incoming call blinking on the switchboard, never to be answered. A handbag hangs a coat hook, and a phone is left off the hook. Moreover, it brings to mind a disaster where everyone suddenly up and ran out, never to return. Chernobyl or On The Beach by Neville Shute, anyone?

In the background, music, by composer Nick Batterham plays, spilling from a gramophone in the ballroom – and from tiny speakers hidden inside answering machines and other objects. No part of the immersive experience is overlooked. For example, if you listen closely as you walk the corridors and rooms, you will actually hear a ghost train rumble through in the distance.

Behind the Scenes

While everything looks as old as the building – a lot of it was made for the exhibition. However, the pieces were designed and crafted to look old and authentic to the era. Numerous items were also sourced from Op shops, garage sales and gumtree. Twenty-four truckloads of props were delivered to Flinders Street, and everything needed to be brought up to the third floor. Specifically through narrow doors and up a tiny elevator or multiple flights of stairs. All the while life continued to hustle past on the busy street, coupled with an adjacent working train platform right on their doorstep.

The Newsagent

Just before the door that takes you to the Time exhibition is ‘the newsagent’. Here, an empty shopfront has been transformed. It’s now part retail, part exhibition and is free to visit.

Rone ~ Time Exhibition runs until April 23rd 2023. The exhibition is mainly sold out, with a few tickets remaining at rone.art for March and April.