Sean Hogan
(b. 1972, Melbourne. Lives and works in Melbourne)

As a graphic designer and typographer by trade, Sean Hogan has a visual arts practice grounded in principles of creative design honed over a career spanning more than three decades. In his work, graphic patterns and algorithms are visualised through systems-based rules and formal aesthetics like geometry, colour and proportion, realised across the disciplines of painting, print and sculpture.

Commissioned for Melbourne Now, Hogan’s Volume 1, 2022, is a work inspired by the redacted content in the first chapter of the ‘Mueller report’, officially called the Report on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Released by the US Department of Justice in 2019, the report includes allegations of conspiracy and obstructions of justice by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Here, 204 pages of the report are reproduced at large scale to create a vast installation. The concealed text creates a monochrome wall graphic of shifting horizontal lines, showing the sheer magnitude of redacted material and how much information remains withheld from the public – a stark and overwhelming work that makes plain connections between politics, knowledge and power.

An accomplished designer of print media and books, Hogan has recently received awards from the Australian Book Design Awards (2021), Australian Graphic Design Association (2020, 2019), the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (2021, 2020) and the Australian Institute of Landscape Architecture (2014), and was selected to represent Australia at New York’s Typographics 2021 conference. Throughout his career, Hogan’s creative practice has run parallel to his commercial work, most recently exhibiting at Spring 1883 Art Fair (2021), Jacob Hoerner Galleries (2021) and LaTrobe Art Institute (2018). A selection of his work was published in Sean Hogan 30 Works: 2014–2020 produced by Shanghai’s Pocca Design in 2020. Hogan has been invited to give talks and lectures at festivals, galleries and universities across Australia. His international clients include Apple Music, The New York Times and Wired Magazine.