Cover image of the review
RONE, Typing Pool. Courtesy RONE.

TIME•RONE


4 Feb 2023
Flinders Street Station 28 Oct - 23 Apr 2023

Over the summer break many tenants of the Nicholas Building, mostly long-term studio artists, have been forced into the difficult decision to vacate, as the Swanston Street building is made more “marketable” for sale. Rents increase (it’s what they do). But this dramatic driving up of the cost of working space in the city’s best-known creative hub has already smashed the delicate conditions that have seen the nine-floor building flourish as a real community for a variety of artists, gallerists—most committed to showing non-commercial work—and small businesses over the previous decades. As if it wasn’t already clear: Melbourne, Australia, has entered its real-estate era. The reality is, of course, that it has been this way since 1835.

With this in the back of my mind, I get the official direction to enter Time “via door at 273 Flinders St, near Boost Juice,” and realise the instruction says far more about the experience of the exhibition by Rone than at first glance. What first struck me as odd, or slightly comical, as I arrived at the anonymous street-level entranceway now seems key for understanding the immersive installation in the centre of the CBD: it is the built environment as a fully integrated retail space. When I visit just before Christmas, I walk past hundreds of people of waiting in line to file past the Myer Windows. (We can do that later.)

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