We’re blown away by the scope, scale, and final effect of this art installation by Rone, built in the abandoned Burnham Beeches mansion in Melbourne.
Working for over a year with a team of interior designers, lighting designers, and others, Rone has created wall-size murals that cover twelve of the mansion’s rooms, with haunting and beautiful female faces, looking lost, hopeless, or forlorn.
Though each room looks thoroughly destroyed, abandoned, and overgrown, it’s been done with real care and purpose, down to the placement of the dead leaves, and the curated vintage furniture. Ambient sounds compliment the experience.
Indeed, the rooms have been curated to represent different seasons, from a warm autumn room strewn with brown leaves, to a relatively neat and tidy purple room, alive with the feeling of spring. Even more impressive, the artist worked with a special scent designer, bringing the experience alive through sense of smell as well.
Called Empire, the exhibit is extremely well orchestrated, and takes the entire art form up a notch, in terms of creativity, scale, and a sense of viewer engagement. Via MyModernMet:
“I want people to walk in and feel like they can explore the possibilities of what might or might not have happened here,” Rone explains. “I love exploring the concept of how—and why—something so magnificent can be left to decline into ruin. Empire is about offering audiences the chance to create their own story; to temporarily transport their minds to another place, another time. It’s not often that you can be so fully immersed in another era like this. It’s almost like we’ve discovered a forgotten time capsule and cracked it open for the world to see.”
