Feature story July/August 2024

Local media gathered in force at the Art Gallery of WA for the much anticipated launch of TIME • RONE by Melbourne artist Rone, aka Tyrone Wright. Last shown in an abandoned third floor of Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station from late 2022 to early 2023, the immersive installation exceeded all expectations with sold out tickets to more than 100,000 visitors. Similar crowds are expected in Perth over the next three months, with July already almost sold out. AGWA Director Colin Walker says its Rone’s only exhibition in 2024. “We know it will be an absolute hit – an unmissable experience of 2024 and the hot ticket for winter in Perth.” 

On show in the historic Centenary Galleries at AGWA, fully open for the first time in nearly 20 years, 12 rooms over two floors have been dedicated to the immersive, multi-sensory installation which breathes life into mid-century Australian history. The Centenary Galleries, built in 1905 as Perth’s Police Courts, and opened as part of AGWA’s centenary in 1995, are a perfect foil for Rone’s signature excavation of time, presenting intriguing fictional histories using found objects, evocative lighting and sound design.

Rone says he has been captivated by the Centenary Galleries for years. “As a building it is a perfect setting. It allows me to blur the lines between my artwork and the building so you can’t tell where the art stops and the building starts, and just to know there is a hidden space no one has seen for years is so exciting.”

Visitors can step back in time to a typing room, mail room, switchboard room, office and stunningly recreated library. The addition of dust and cobwebs creates a haunting atmosphere, as if the occupants had suddenly deserted their posts and the building was left untouched for decades. Rone says having tried different methods, he uses ash from fires to evoke a dusty, deserted environment. “You simply go around with a stick and a sieve,” he says. “To get it to stick is part of the trick and so you add in some water. When it dries out again it looks like dust.”

It is this meticulous attention to detail, along with a breathtaking collection of vintage items which attracts visitors of all ages. “I really love that people can bring their children, but also their grandparents and the intergenerational kind of conversation that it starts between these works,” says Rone. “It’s trying to tell an idea of a space kind of frozen in time, but having an emotion to the building where you can almost feel its presence as you walk in. And I want people to feel like they’re walking through a cinematic experience.”

The sheer volume of items in the installation, and their rarity, such as cardboard shoe boxes from the 1940s, old typewriters and a telephone switchboard room, tell the story of second-hand shop fanatics. In fact, to move all the installation objects from Melbourne to Perth took four 40 foot shipping containers. “We’re never not sourcing,” says Rone. “Whenever we drive past an op shop we pull in, or a garage sale – it’s quite tempting to keep buying more.”

Rone collaborates with stylist Carly Spooner, composer Nick Batterham, plus sound engineers, lighting designers, technicians and a build team. It’s a massive operation, with he says, 10,000 small creative solutions to be wrangled. “I never have anything set in stone,” he says. “You need to stay flexible because problems arise all the time and we just work our way around them.”

Born in Geelong, Rone moved to Melbourne in 2001, continuing to develop the street art he had started in his youth. His feminine images set him apart from other street artists, and by 2016 he began creating installations in long abandoned buildings on an increasingly ambitious scale. In 2016 he took over the soon-to-be-demolished, art nouveau-style Star Lyric Theatre building in Fitzroy for the project Empty, attracting 12,000 visitors over the ten day show. In 2017, Alpha was created inside the machine rooms of the old Alphington Paper Mills, also soon-to-be-demolished to make way for the new suburb of Yarra Bend. In 2018 he was invited to transform Dandenong Ranges derelict mansion, Burnham Beeches, into an immersive exhibit, Empire. Over six weeks in 2019, 25,000 people visited the show. In 2021, Geelong Gallery held the first significant and comprehensive survey of his works, with Rone also transforming a room in response to the architecture and history of the building, and the Gallery’s collection.

Breaking free from the confines of the traditional gallery model, Rone has explored a path less travelled, affording him the flexibility to explore new and decidedly different horizons. He has created murals and installations all over the world, and has works in collections such as the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Urban Nation Museum, Berlin and the Detroit Historical Museum Permanent Collection.

Minister for Culture and the Arts, David Templeman says there is a special room created by Rone just for Perth audiences. “It’s my favourite, but I’m not going to tell you too much about it. I want Perth audiences to come and see this exhibition. You will be blown away by it.” He says the exhibition is a specific focus by the Cook government to continue to ensure there is constant activity, particularly in Perth city, right through the year. “This is a world class exhibition, and I’m urging people to make sure you book tickets soon.”

TIME • RONE is a ticketed exhibition on show at the Art Gallery of WA until 2 February 2025.