Abandonment as an immersive art: "Time" by street art artist Rone

Australian street art artist Tyrone Wright, known in the art world under the pseudonym Rone, created the exhibition "Time" indoors at the railway station in Melbourne. Abandoned for many years, the spaces are now filled with female images and carefully laid out objects that create an exquisite atmosphere of decay and the transience of time.

On the third floor of one of Melbourne's train stations there are several abandoned rooms that have been offices, classrooms and even a ballroom for many years. The station building was built in 1910, and these premises were used until the mid-1980s.

The place has become something of a local legend; almost every Melbourne resident knows about the abandoned ballroom above the railway tracks on Flinders Street. Although the station is still in use, its upper level remained closed to the public until it was opened as an art venue in 2021.

The exhibition "Time" by the street art artist Rone passes through these halls connected by a long corridor. Each room is decorated according to a specific theme or concept. There is a room similar to a pharmacy, a sewing workshop, a whole multi-level library (!), etc.

All the rooms seem frozen in time, with a layer of dust and cobwebs covering objects, seemingly randomly scattered, but in fact carefully laid out. With the help of props, soundscapes and light, and even smells — Rone creates these extraordinary immersive spaces that make the viewer feel like he has gone on a journey through time.

The artist describes this exhibition as "a nostalgic love letter to Melbourne in the mid-20th century."

Just to repeat, what you see here is completely created by the artist — not only drawings on the walls, but also installations of junk, furniture and everyday objects that have been carefully selected.

Rone took an empty canvas of these abandoned rooms and complemented them, creating, in fact, an imaginary version of what you can find in an abandoned space.

Here you can see how one of the rooms looked (on the left, taken during another exhibition), compared to how it was transformed (on the right):

The search for a fine line between beauty and decline — this is how Rone's creative activity can be characterized. And it is this leitmotif that most of his works are imbued with. The feature of Rone is stylized female faces, which symbolize the transience of beauty