Stephanie G. Mathis The works were part of the patchwork assemblages of stickers, tags, and stencils that formed Melbourne’s street art scene. It is now synonymous with Melbourne’s inner city cultural identity, but this was before Banksy rose to prominence. Municipal authorities did not distinguish between unauthorized graffiti and vandalism.
In 2006, the majority of these early works were erased to beautify Melbourne in preparation for the Commonwealth Games.
Rone’s career path followed the cultural arc that led to Banksy. Street art went from counterculture origins to the mainstream. Since then, he has painted Melbourne’s art trams as well as Murals of Kylie Minogue & Cate Blanchett in the NGV’s Jean Paul Gautier Exhibition. Rone has himself advertised clothing at Uniqlo.
Artist Rone prepares the Geelong Installation. Photographer: Tony Mott (c) Rone
To underscore this shift from a subculture into peak mainstream, Rone received a RISE Arts grant of $ 1.86 million from the Federal Government last month. It was with surprise. Gifts of this size are usually given to theatre companies and production houses rather than individuals (although Rone plans to employ other practitioners).
Rone’s latest exhibition in Geelong Gallery, his hometown, is a comprehensive overview of his work for the past two decades. It traces his Jane Doe motif to states of greater realism and technical proficiency, as well as larger-scale murals.
The style is decaying vintage opulence. It’s like an ethereal, ethereal moment. The gallery walls are covered with murals, but the majority of this exhibition is studio work on various surfaces under framed glass. These include stencils, portraits, and posters advertising that have been aged and worn to give the impression of being old.
Rone’s Geelong installation in 2021. (c) Rone. Photographer: Tony Mott/Geelong Gallery
The work is staged and framed in a way that Rone emphasizes the transience of street art. The contrast between the smooth porcelain skins of Rone’s muse and flaking, crumbling wall textures is striking. Carly Spooner has styled the rooms to combine decadence and disintegration.
The exhibition is accompanied by a musical score by composer Nick Batterham. The classical arrangement is highly evocative and enhances the haunting mood. It was written originally in response to the 2019-20 Black Summer Bushfires.
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Empty show
Banksy made it easier for street artists than ever before to exhibit their work in established galleries. The “Empty Show,”” a new exhibition concept, was born. Street artists would place their work in abandoned spaces and hold an unauthorized opening.
Rone previously exhibited at non-traditional locations: the derelict Lyric Theatre, Fitzroy for Empty Project, and Burnham Beeches in a decaying Art Deco mansion. The art invites people to explore spaces that would otherwise only be accessible to trespassers.
The spaces invite speculation and an imagined past of the buildings. Rone also used the holes to fit his apparent intention of using environmental decay as a resource for his work.
White cube galleries are designed to hide everything from view and only show the artwork. The climate is controlled to protect the paintings.
In Rone’s newest exhibition, themes such as moribundity, transience, and imagined historical echos are awkwardly positioned in a traditional gallery. Broken bricks, detritus, and plaster crumbled into a temporary artifice, a wall, were all carefully placed to mimic an abandoned structure. The authenticity and charm of his previous exhibitions have been lost when he translated it into an art gallery.
Pretty girls
The accompanying exhibit literature describes the intended reading: “beauty & decay”. This prompts an immediate counter-reading. What is presented as “beautiful?” What assumptions are encoded in the visual representations?
The paintings often conflate beauty and specific characteristics: youth, Caucasian appearance, female, full-lipped or big-eyed, for example. There are a few exceptions to the very narrow and particular type of woman that is displayed: the pretty girl motif via the male gaze. This motif is found in all areas of popular culture, including advertising, fashion, cosmetics, social networking, pornography, and the celebrity industry.
These works do not try to reinvent beauty; they reproduce the conventional definitions of beauty according to a formula.
The images are derivative of the mainstream motif, but that doesn’t necessarily make them “bad.””
