Perth’s historic Centenary Galleries at The Art Gallery of Western Australia include spaces that have been closed and left untouched for 20 years, but Australian multidisciplinary artist Rone recently gave them a new lease on life. He transformed 12 deserted rooms—including an old mail room and a disused news agency—with his large-scale murals featuring female faces. His immersive exhibition, titled TIME • RONE, invites viewers to rediscover these forgotten spaces from mid-century Australia.
he exhibition, which took three years to complete, has opened both floors of the Centenary Galleries to the public for the first time in two decades. Each room—with cracked paint and leftover furniture—is a time capsule, preserved exactly as it was before being abandoned. An old switchboard room retains its original equipment, cables, and chairs, while a sewing workroom still holds rows of sewing machines and pieces of fabric scattered across the tables. Rone commemorates the history of each space and the people who worked there with his ghostly portraits painted across walls, doors, cabinets, and bookcases.
The exhibition, which took three years to complete, has opened both floors of the building to the public for the first time in two decades
