Photography, Victorian College of the Arts
By Ella Peck
Lily Hogan, North, 2024, C-type print on dibond, and Untitled (Echo), 2024, ply, acrylic, and stainless steel. Photo: Ella Peck
I regularly pause in my path while observing the work of the photography graduate cohort—work that is abundantly united by (paradoxically) fragmentation. The works by Lily Hogan, Sean Monaghan and Tess Rogers demand the viewer’s active engagement, fluctuating with every step you take around them.
On the first floor, the panels of a semi-transparent acrylic and ply star humour the LED lighting in VCA’s roof. The translucent light shining through the acrylic shifts and fluctuates as you turn around in circles to gaze up at the panels. I had been traversing VCA’s gloriously saturated campus for hours before I stumbled upon Lily Hogan’s North (2024) and Untitled (Echo) (2024). North comprises five sections that create an image of Hogan’s mother as a child in 1978.
Melancholy settles over me as I gaze up at Untitled (Echo), the ply and acrylic star structure appearing patient and protective as it considers the secondary star below. This is because North and Untitled (Echo) allude to a connection between motherhood and unavoidable destiny. The reflection on Hogan’s mother’s childhood— connected with the broader cosmos—conveys a bittersweet questioning of her mother’s fate.
Sean Monaghan, Not Sleeping, Running, 2024, Series of 3 inkjet prints, Ashwood. Photo: Ella Peck
At the end of the room, the viewer encounters Sean Monaghan’s Not Sleeping, Running (2024). The triptych of inkjet prints on Ashwood panels resembles the motion of a revolving door, albeit with no clear path or direction. Identical photographs of a running figure emerge as I circle Monaghan’s sculptures. I feel the relationship between the viewer and the figure grows more distant, as the subject continuously runs.
The dark walnut of the stained wood catches the afternoon sun streaming into the first-floor windows. The warmth of the wood brings a familiarity, as if these pieces could be traced back to the furniture found within a long-established home.
Tess Rogers, Echoes of Hope in the Memories of our Linen Closet, 2024, chromogenic prints, archival inject prints, pine. Photo: Ella Peck
As I struggle to find the rest of the photography department—it is, I learn, located in another building across the courtyard—I cannot help but think Hogan’s and Monaghan’s works embrace the chaotic and unique nature of wayfinding. A similar framework underscores Tess Rogers’s Echoes of Hope in the Memories of our Linen Closet.
Rogers’s work is a photographic series of domestic fabrics that spans an entire section of the corridor. I attempt to capture a view of all of the work, but struggle as I’m interrupted by passersby and an intruding pipe that runs down the wall.
The work comes alive as you forget about the big picture and accept Rogers’s invitation to look closer. Rogers specifically frames and installs each photograph to embrace its unique quirk. Most of her photos are cropped to examine close-ups of the folds, light, and texture.
The fragmentation in this year’s photography cohort invites viewers to actively confront the work in order to piece the sections together—both visually and conceptually. Hogan, Monaghan, and Rogers all experiment with sculptural and photographic techniques that breadcrumb layers of storytelling. The three artists embody notions of time in their works, connecting their present moment to the histories that have come before them.
Ella Peck is an emerging artist, curator and writer based in Naarm/Melbourne.