A love letter to a lost era demonstrates that we cannot outrun time

Through an unmarked doorway and up past walls of peeling paint, under cracked ceilings within the heart of Flinders Street Station, lies an exhibition by the artist Rone.

Rooms full of sewing machines and typewriters, rooms that should be humming with activity, or the sound of tapping fingers flying across keyboards, instead lie covered in layers of dust. A cavernous library with shelves that reach to the ceiling, full of thick tomes no one will ever read, lies disused. The curtains are old and falling to pieces.

An installation from Rone’s Time exhibition at Flinders Street Station features outdated, long-disused technology such as these switchboards. Credit: Arsineh Houspian

This is Time, an exhibition described as a “nostalgic love letter to mid-century Melbourne and a tribute to one of the city’s great icons”. It captures the “minute details of a period of Melbourne’s history long lost to progress”.

In each room looms the face of Rone’s muse, Teresa Oman. The soft lines of her face inject a contrasting warmth and life into each place of decay.

The exhibition is haunting, wistful. It reminds us of the busyness of life and also the ultimate futility of so much of it. So many days filled with mundane but necessary tasks roll on down the decades. We cannot outrun time.

I had another reason to visit the third floor of Flinders Street Station. My godmother, Molly, used to speak warmly over the years that I knew her of dances held at the station’s ballroom.

Rows of sewing machines lie idle.Credit: Arsineh Houspian

Her face would light up as she spoke and even though she was then in her 70s, I saw her as a young woman again. I could scarcely imagine the train station, so practical in its daily function, housing something as whimsical as a ballroom and yet there I was, standing where Molly had once stood, so many decades ago.

Time is fleeting. Each day fills with important matters but also with meandering inconsequential concerns and menial duties that nonetheless demand their share of the day. How do we make our lives meaningful and capable of withstanding the cobwebs and grime of the passing years?

Those without faith might seek to avoid a senseless life by living mindfully, consciously. Those of faith might strive to live with an awareness of the world to come, seeking the light of Heaven, and in that light to see more clearly truth, goodness and authenticity.

Seeing the Rone installation portraying a time past and fallen into decay, may remind us to seek out the things that endure.