Street Artist Tyrone Wright AKA Rone poses for a portrait at his studio, in Melbourne, Monday, June 23, 2025. [Photo Credit: AAP Image/Diego Fedele]

Street artist Rone’s multi-storey murals of female faces can be seen in dozens of cities worldwide but they have their beginnings in a nondescript inner-city studio.

From the outside it looks like another residential property development hidden down a one way street in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood.

But step inside and Rone, aka Tyrone Wright, is busy scaling up his next mural project, tracing a section of the design that’s been projected onto the studio wall before going over his lines again using a high voltage perforating machine.

“It’s dangerous, you do get electrocuted every now and then,” he says.

“I had to import one from the US.”

Rone shares this studio with fellow artist Callum Preston, who is best known for his elaborate nostalgia-driven installations such as a replica video store from the 1980s that’s currently on show at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum.

The studio will be open to the public for the first time in July for Open House Melbourne weekend, as part of a program of almost 200 open buildings and events.

Overall more than 65,000 people are expected to participate in the program and fans of the city’s renowned street art scene can also visit The Blender Studios in West Melbourne and Everfresh Studio, also in Collingwood.

In Preston’s section of the studio there’s a globe, a megaphone, a skull, and several old telephones – parts of an installation built for rock band The Living End to launch their recent single at nearby music venue The Tote.

The artist hopes to re-assemble at least some of the scene from The Tote for Open House, while his illustrations for other bands such as Parkway Drive, Violent Soho and Something for Kate will also be on display, as well as an elaborate mobile set-up for making two-minute noodles at COVID lockdown picnics.

Both artists have worked in various studios in and around Collingwood for the past 20 years.

There was the original Everfresh Studio, which flooded several times, and a studio near the Abbotsford Convent where artworks had to be protected from pigeons due to the missing windows.

“Each building we eventually get kicked out of, whether it’s getting developed or whatever other reason,” said Rone.

They may have cracked the code though, buying a commercially zoned space in a relatively new building.

It could have been another cafe but in this part of Melbourne, coffee is an oversupplied market.

The studio doesn’t leak and there’s no landlord to evict them.

While many artists can work at home in spaces such as garages, inner-city studios are increasingly rare, especially for groups of artists such as Everfresh, Preston says.

It’s not just gentrification but people generally getting smarter about how to use marginal buildings.

“The spaces that weren’t useful to people became artist spots but now everything’s useful because the way people shop and live is different,” he said.

Other attractions at Open House include first time access to the West Gate Tunnel Veloway, backstage tours of Melbourne theatres and admission to player areas at the Western Bulldogs Football Club and Melbourne Vixens.

The Melbourne edition is part of Open House Worldwide, a network spanning 60 cities on five continents and reaching more than 750,000 people annually.

Melburnians are encouraged to plan early as some attractions are expected to book out.

Open House runs on Saturday July 26 and Sunday July 27.

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