RONE In Geelong

Ebony and I drove down to Geelong today for the final weekend of the RONE in Geelong exhibition at the Geelong Gallery. This is the first comprehensive showing of RONE's career, fittingly held in his hometown. The exhibition spans from his early stencil work to street art and major installations in abandoned spaces, which feature those haunting portraits of female faces. There are physical samples and photos of his works, along with a few short films showing the creation of different projects and installations.

 

RONE did a few installations within the gallery space itself, two of which were specifically for this exhibition and carried on from the work he did for Empire at Burnham Beeches. Ebony and I were amused to watch people walking around and through the two installations, closely inspecting the aged furniture instead of standing back to see and appreciate the full scale of the work.

The Green Room (Omega Project)

Without Darkness There Is No Light (Dark) (RONE In Geelong)

Without Darkness There Is No Light (Light) (RONE In Geelong)

RONE In Geelong runs until 16 May 2021

West Side Place Artcade

West Side Place is a new residential, retail and hotel high rise development being built on Spencer Street in the Melbourne CBD. While their retail arcade is currently vacant they have handed over the shops to a variety of contemporary Australian artists to do an "Artcade" of installations for the next six months. Ebony and I headed over there this afternoon to check out the space and see this public art gallery.

 

Artists that are featured include John Aslandis & Mayonaize, George Rose, Adnate, Rone, Meggs, and Reko Rennie. It is a kalidescope of colors with the murals and installations, but unfortunately you can't go inside the spaces to get a closer look. 

 

My favorite was by Rone as his piece was a nod to his Empire exhibition at Burnham Beeches. If you are around Southern Cross Train Station, go check out Artcade before the retail stores move in.

Rone- Empire

I was fortunate enough to spend my Easter afternoon in the Dandenong Ranges to check out the latest exhibition by Rone titled Empire. For this installation he and his collaborators spent a year transforming the deserted Art Deco mansion Burnham Beeches into an immersive multi-sensory experience across the ground floor and upper level rooms.

The rooms were themed around different seasons, with the dusty Art Deco furniture and dried plants making it feel like you were walking through a bygone era. Rone painted his trademark female portraits in each room, this time using actor Lily Sullivan as his muse. The whole exhibition was so inspiring as you wandered through and experienced the beautiful rooms. I hope that when the building is turned into a luxury hotel that it retains the majority of its Art Deco charm.

Here's the trailer for the exhibition:

RONE EMPIRE - 4K full edit from Common State on Vimeo.

Rone- Empty

Throughout Melbourne there are many historic old buildings that are being torn down by developers and replaced with new apartments. In his first solo show in two years, Melbourne street artist Rone utilised the inside of the soon to be demolished Star Lyric Theatre in Fitzroy to stage his latest exhibition Empty.

The show, which ran for 10 days and finished today, contained his works of female portraits done on paper and canvas, as well as photos of ones he had painted in abandoned buildings that few would have seen in person.

The highlight of the exhibition though was his large scale portrait painted on the back wall of the theater, which ended up incorporating some of an original mural from the 1920s that he uncovered while painting.

The exhibition also contained a short video about Rone and Empty, a virtual reality station, and a secret window where you could look through to see another large scale portrait in a dark room lit by fairy lights. It's always a privilege to get to see these works up close, and also to have Rone roaming around the exhibition and chatting with people this afternoon.

Expat Observations: Street Art

Melbourne is known globally for its street art and it is a huge tourist attraction for the city. All of those laneways around town are the perfect canvas for street artists, with Hosier Lane probably the best known spot (and one that is constantly evolving). There are some very talented artists here and these are some of my favorites.

Baby Guerrilla is best known for her large scale stencil paste-ups, which often have people floating in the air. Some of her more recent work can be found on buildings around the Victoria University Footscray Park campus.

Be Free is best known for her stencils of a little girl doing various things depending on the space that has been chosen. There is a lightness and sense of fun in her work that is very appealing to a wide audience.

Rone paints the most amazingly detailed portraits of women you will ever see. He also did the four Aussie muses for last year's Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition in Melbourne. His latest work is a mural at Etihad Stadium of two female AFL fans in the crowd cheering on their team.

Adnate is another artist who does very detailed portrait work, and is probably best known for his beautiful paintings of the faces of Indigenous children.

Jean Paul Gaultier and Saskwatch

Friday Nights at the NGV are back with the latest exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk.  It features more than 140 garments from throughout Gaultier's career spanning the 1970s to today, in addition to photographs, sketches, stage costumes for tours by artists such as Madonna and Kylie Minogue, and footage from runway shows.  Each of the seven rooms has a different theme, which helps to group certain fashion collections together as well as themes that have run throughout Gaultier's designs.  There are so many amazing pieces on display, and projecting models moving and speaking faces onto the mannequin's faces made it look like real people were standing there modelling the clothes.  One room was set up like a fashion show with mannequins moving on a motorised runway.  There were so many highlights throughout the exhibition, but here are some of my favorite things:

After catching Rone's exhibition earlier in the week it was great to see his portraits of four of Gaultier's Aussie muses (Cate Blanchett, Gemma Ward, Andreja Pejić, and Kylie Minogue) on the walls in different parts of the exhibition.

After finishing it was time to watch Saskwatch perform in the Great Hall.  The nine piece soul band started their hour long set with "Give Me A Reason."  They played a mix of new unreleased tracks as well as selections off their two albums, including "Two Hearts," "Call Your Name," "Left Me To Die," "Born To Break Your Heart"  and "Keep Me In Mind."  Lead singer Nkechi Anele's outfit seemed a bit inspired by Gaultier, and I liked that two of the band members were wearing San Francisco Giants caps (they must have picked them up while in SF during the World Series).  The band finished their set with "Hands," which had everyone dancing and clapping along.  Overall it was a really great evening and I love that the NGV pairs their exhibitions with local and international musical acts on these Friday Night sessions.

Rone- Lumen

Street artist Rone is doing his first Australian solo exhibition in two years at an abandoned and soon to be demolished office building at 109 Little Collins Street in Melbourne.  Titled Lumen, the exhibition contains eleven large scale portraits as well as a 12 metre high mural on the building's ventilation tower.  In addition, there is a series of film clips you can watch of Rone doing his street art at various places around the world.  The portraits both inside and outside the building are quite stunning to look at, and doing his work on buildings about to be demolished is nothing new as he also had a beautiful large scale portrait mural that was done for Rue & Co, which is now gone.  Lumen runs until Sunday, 9 November so get down there quick to check it out!