Empire Rone Exhibition at Burnham Beeches: 6 March – 22 April 2019
The iconic Burnham Beeches art deco mansion was designed and built for Alfred Nicholas, co-founder of the Aspro empire. It was completed in 1933 however has been vacant for the past 25 years click to view my webpage for a history of the mansion. For a period of just over six weeks, Burnham Beeches Mansion was transposed into the magical Empire by Rone.
Rone (Tyrone Wright), known for his large scale portraits, think silo art trail click to visit their webpage and his exceptional team spent 12 months transforming this dilapidated building into his imagined vision of its life in days gone by. A glimpse of the life of an imagined family and what they left behind.
From the moment you enter Empire, you are transported into a world of wonder and decay. The interior styling by Carly Spooner features fixtures, furniture & decorative pieces, all sourced within Victoria, including 64 metres of hardback encyclopedias that feature in ‘The Study’. The autumn leaves strewn around the rooms were all gathered from the surrounding property twelve months ago.
The portraits featured in each room are of actor Lily Sullivan, who played Miranda in the 2018 series Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The wallpaper has been custom-designed and printed, the ceilings have been transformed with a patina that looks like black mould, and even the “dust” (which is actually ashes from the Piggery Café on the property) has been artfully arranged.
In the hallway, branches have been intertwined overhead to create a dark, atmospheric tunnel.
The most elaborate of the rooms is ‘The Library’ that has been flooded in a difficult operation that had to be done twice — because it leaked the first time.
It’s emotional, haunting with music by Nick Batterham and scent by Kat Snowden.
The event sold out very quickly with more than 26,000 tickets sold.
Burnham Beeches will be totally stripped of Empire after a total of only six weeks. When the exhibition is over, Wright hopes the work will live on (the entire installation has been scanned in 3D) after plans to transform the building into a hotel 6-star luxury hotel by current owners, Shannon Bennett, and Adam Garrison.
See below for The Pack Down
After one year in the making and only 7 weeks open to the public the Empire exhibition was removed from Burnham Beeches to restore it back to the state in which it was before the project began as was the agreement with Heritage Victoria.
Thank you to the 26,000 people who visited the exhibition.
Directed by Rone
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