Its 1953.

Rows of women rush to complete the seams on their final garments.

As thread spins rapidly around the cogs and the whirring of sewing machines echo through the room, chatter of prospective weekend activities disperse.

Its 16.57 on a Friday, and there is a shared determination amongst the workers to get the work done before five.

That’s it. Clock strikes. The work for the day is done, and with that the machines are hurriedly switched off, chairs pushed back, and a stream of excitable women flurry out the factory doors to get ready for tonight’s Ormand Hall dance.

The workers never returned on Monday.

Its 2023 and rows of sewing machines remain untouched, covered in a foam of dust and cobwebs, and garments are strewn across decayed tables that were never sat at again.

Walking through this eerie space, the sentiment of intrusion is overwhelming, but the innate curiosity of catching a glimpse of a world you had no place in, is too enchanting to ignore.

Internationally renowned artist Tyrone Wright, more commonly known as Rone, has captured this confliction of emotion effortlessly in his immersive, multisensory exhibition, Time, a truly riveting exhibition so successful that it sells out months in advance. 

Produced over three years, he and his team of 120 specialists transformed parts of Melbourne’s iconic Flinders Street Station into a mosaic of installations showcasing the city’s bustling post-war, industrial life.

The exhibition stretches along an old, dilapidated hallway and offers twelve rooms that visitors can weave in and out of; all offering a new, exciting experience that differs wildly from the room before it.

Each space varies in focus, showcasing a fictitious freeze frame of a different 1950s working industry to immerse oneself in.

Not only is this easy to follow, but it maintains the visitors attention and remains engaging and stimulating throughout. From a typing pool and a head office, to a pharmacy and an art class, Rone invites viewers to travel back in time, while observing the impermanence of beauty through his haunting female portraits.

Flinders Street Station is an iconic cultural landmark with a wealth of history that Rone intricately nods to with Time, providing hyperrealistic recreations of the station’s abandoned third-floor ballroom, library and classroom.

Thousands of objects are placed so meticulously that it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish what is imagined and what is reality.

This compelling disorientation is only emphasised by Rone’s dramatic use of music, audio and theatrical lighting to bring the spaces back to life. In fact, towards the end of the viewing, I couldn’t identify whether the sounds of trains traversing across the tracks were from the station outside or from what Rone had created.

The exhibition’s site-specificity appeals to both local and international visitors, as they get the chance to explore parts of an infamous building that they wouldn’t be allowed into otherwise, and peek at a slice of Melbourne history.

While all twelve installations vary, a repeated feature is the scaling oil paintings of Rone’s beautiful, youthful muse, Teresa Oman, returning the exhibition to the 21st century.

The juxtaposition provokes a battle for which time zone owns the focal point – is it the contemporary painting or is it the fiftie’s freeze frame? Which should the visitors’ eyes favour? What is the significance of these powerful portraits? Are they a reminder of the vitality and beauty these rooms once held? Or a reminder of the vitality and beauty that she will eventually lose because of life’s ephemeral nature?

Time’s lack of interpretive material encourages the viewer to answer these questions independently, with the themes and ideas behind the exhibit completely open to evaluation.

This has meant that even weeks after stepping out of Rone’s immersive bubble, there exists extensive discussions amongst visitors spanning generations and demographics on the exhibition’s triumph.

Rone’s enchanting exhibition successfully gives viewers the opportunity to traverse through a 1950s world while indulging in his elegant portraits, generating a movie-like experience that ensures vivid memorability, but not without the stark reminder that time waits for no one.

Through Time’s site-specificity, extreme level of detail and its ability to appeal to a variety of visitors, it is an exhibition like no other of his time, and has caused an impatient anticipation of what the artist will gift us with next.

Learn more about Rone and his exhibition Time through his website: https://rone.art/

Time will be running until 23rd April 2023.