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Art
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Weekly updates


If you’ve been anywhere near Collins St in Melbourne recently, you probably would have noticed Rone’s latest mural, a colossal depiction of his Jane Doe, L’Inconnue De La Rue, towering over the open air coffee shop below it.

Speculated to be the largest one-man mural in Australia, the already decaying face epitomises the artist’s style and passive message in an almost overwhelming way. The face is a signal of Rone’s return to Melbourne, its waxy features a wordless announcement of his renewed focus within the city.

For the first time in two years, the Geelong-born artist is opening an exhibition in Australia. Just as his latest work depicts the face of an unknown girl’s corpse dragged out of a French river, he is focusing now on the facade of another empty, dilapidating form; an office block slated for demolition on 109 Little Collins St.

Lumen is an exhibition that unravels Rone’s fascination with the divide between beauty and decay on a much wider, unformatted scale to what he’s used to. After career-igniting, organised exhibitions in London, New York and Hong Kong as well as a collaboration with Jean-Paul Gaultier, his return to grit in a singular, dark space at once evokes images of his older works with the agency of the much more illuminated high profile artist he has become.

“Lumen explores that pivotal moment in our lives when we realise that we need to believe in what we see [and know to be true] rather than what we’ve been told,” says Rone. “It’s that point in your life when it becomes time to think for yourself, formulate your own opinions and develop a sense of personal identity without consideration to the past or outside influences. That’s why I titled the show Lumen – thematically it’s a series of works about seeing or following the light.”

Lumen opens Friday October 24 at 6pm and will close on November 9 at Level 1, 109 Little Collins St.