The "rebirth" of an iconic Melbourne building - The past in the present and the memories that "come alive" (video)

For more than three years, Rone worked with 120 site specialists to restore Melbourne’s derelict Flinders Street Station to its industrial past. In the ‘Time’ exhibition, the renowned Australian artist drew on photographs to create the 11 themed rooms which are located in a section of the 1910 station. Once I discovered how important these rooms were in the past, I knew I wanted to share this,” she said.

Each room was designed as a reference to a particular job, to tools and machinery used by working class people at the time, who passed through the station to go to work in factories, offices and shops. Rone filled the rooms with authentic and meticulously recreated period objects while large-scale portraits of model Teresa Oman, Rone’s longtime collaborator who has appeared in many of his murals, appear on walls throughout the rooms. “The goal is to make the public uncertain where the artwork ends and the building itself begins,” he emphasized.

“The station is such an important symbol of Australia and yet the wonderful stories of its heyday are largely unknown to the world today. I hope this project will motivate people to imagine a new future for these spaces,” he emphasized.