Aldona Kmieć
i: @aldonakmiec
Aldona Kmieć (b. Poland) is a Polish-born Australian photographic artist based at Montsalvat. Working across photography, cyanotype, installation, and archival practices, her work explores themes of memory, migration, belonging, and human connection through both conceptual and documentary approaches.
Aldona completed an Advanced Diploma in Photography at London Metropolitan University in 2008 before establishing her artistic practice in Australia. Her work has been supported through grants, residencies, and mentorships including the City of Melbourne Arts Grant (2025).
Recent exhibitions include Hills Hoist (2025), Veil (2024), Neighbourhood Watch (2024), and Winterbloom (2021). Aldona has also undertaken documentary commissions for State Library Victoria and has been recognised in awards including the Omnia Art Prize, Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize, and Bowness Photography Prize.
The artist acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which she lives and works, and pays her respects to their Elders, past, present, and emerging.
As Morning Breaks
2025, ed 1/3, Archival pigment print from scanned Fujichrome Provia 120 film,
39.5 x 39.5 x 4 cm.
$650 unframed $800 framed
Chata
2015, printed in 2025 ,ed 1/3, Archival pigment print,
59.5 x 39.5 x 4 cm.
$750 unframed, $900 framed
My submission for Afterglow brings together two photographic works - As Morning Breaks (2025), and Chata (2015) - created on Fujichrome Provia 120 film and presented as framed archival pigment prints. Each image holds light as both subject and residue, where illumination is not only what reveals the scene but what continues to linger within it.
These works are drawn from personal and familial environments, where everyday moments are shaped by shifting natural light. In As Morning Breaks, light marks my arrival at my family farm in Poland in 2025, while in Kukurydza and Chata it settles into quieter states of observation from a distance. Across the three works, light operates less as spectacle and more as atmosphere,
These works are from my solo exhibition Hills Hoist series (2025) which talk about childhood, memory, and moving between regional East Gippsland in Australia and rural Poland. It reflects on how familiar environments become charged through distance and time, where ordinary objects hold meaning shaped by migration. The work traces both lived experience and remembered landscapes, where past and present overlap through photographic time.
In relation to Afterglow, these works consider how light lingers beyond visibility. It is not only what reveals the scene, but what continues to echo within it - the warmth of place, the distance between family across continents, and the absence. In this sense, the photographs become afterimages: traces of connection to my childhood landscapes, where what remains is not only what is seen, but what is felt after it has gone.