Another TIME, another PLACE
In 2001 I moved to Marrickville in Sydney's Inner West. It was cheap, close to the city, well served by public transport and had some excellent Vietnamese restaurants. In 2001 that was about all it had to offer. Fast forward to 2024 and TimeOut voted it the "10th Coolest Neighbourhood in the World". The World! That's quite a transformation. There are still streets off Victoria Rd that are less than inviting at first glance, but often as not that street is home to a micro-brewery, an amazing bakery, or an art gallery hosting the launch of a new line of Hendrick's gin AND an exhibition of work by installation wunderkind - RONE. (And so it happened that last week I found myself entering a fantasy world populated with black clad 'beautiful people', delicious cocktails, and subtly subversive art installations.
A Schooner of Art
We all know that art and alcohol go together like fish & chips, waiters & bowties, gin and vermouth, but in my experience it is rare that the alcohol takes centre stage and the art is an after-thought. But this is Sydney, specifically the Inner-West - home to 17 breweries, 10 in Marrickville alone - more than any other suburb in Australia. Combining alcohol and art is the new benchmark for what's 'trending'. It's not referred to as art-isanal for nothing. On this occasion we were gathered together to celebrate the launch of Hendrick's new gin release - Hendrick's infused with orange blossom & cacao, and a very pleasant drop it is indeed. Oh, and there was also an art exhibition to view.
From Marrickvile to Marrichvilla
"What's Marrickville's gentrification got to do with Art?", you may ask. Well, everything really; aesthetics underpin gentrification. More to the point, it's about changing attitudes and perception, it's about reinvention, the sort that transforms the familiar and renders it new, or at least reframes the context so we are obliged to look at it - the object, the cocktail, the suburb, with fresh eyes. Considered in this way, Rone's art installations are not only ideally suited to this particular framing - an ex-warehouse in an ugly industrial zone of Sydney, but are simpatico with the context, are in fact a commentary on the context - the suburb.
Love Letters
Australian artist RONE has painted all over the world - from New York to Christchurch, Berlin to Geelong. Along the way he has assembled a team of assistant artists who work to realise his vision. Rone sees himself as more akin to a production designer for a film than a conventional installation artist. Since 2016 he's been creating immersive art installations in abandoned buildings all around Victoria. In 2023 he unveiled his most ambitious project to date - TIME, a 12 room immersive installation in the abandoned 3rd floor of the Flinders St Station. It was a love letter to 1950's Melbourne and the city's iconic building.
"TIME ... his trick is you and me, boy"
TIME was grand in scale but intimate in detail. "Another TIME" at the COMA Gallery in industrial Marrickville lacks the grandeur of the earlier work, but shares the same aesthetic DNA. The same intimacy of detail is evident, and the same preoccupation with the faded yet enduring beauty of forgotten places and the human stories and secrets they harbour. In "Another TIME, Rone reimagines a mid-century nightclub/cabaret scene from the perspective of the performer - one in which the audience have suddenly departed, leaving personal possessions & items of clothing behind. The moment has been preserved, frozen in time, for a later generation to view and wonder at. He challenges us to look again at the old, neglected, broken and discarded objects that serve as signifiers to a life and a culture that has all but slipped away.
Another TIME was presented at the COMA Gallery , 37 Chapel St, Marrickville.
Reviewed By: Nick Bennett