Aldona Kmieć’s ‘Unicorns Are Real’ featured on Channel Nine’s The Block

One of my photographic works, Unicorns Are Real, has found its way onto this season of Channel Nine’s The Block.

The large-scale artwork was selected by contestants Jesse and Mel for their renovation of the historic Oslo Hotel in St Kilda and will appear in their Master Bedroom reveal.

Created in 2015 as part of my photographic series Dreamscapes, Unicorns Are Real features an artist Kirsty Hawkes, photographed near Warrnambool.

The series grew from my long-standing interest in imagination, memory and the way we create our own inner worlds.

Kirsty has always had this wonderfully free and imaginative energy that I was drawn to, and the photograph became less about creating a portrait of a person and more about capturing that feeling – the part of us that still wants to believe something extraordinary might exist just outside the frame.

It is slightly surreal to see an artwork that began as a personal photograph now appearing in a very different setting on national television.

I’ve exhibited my work across Australia and the UK, but seeing one of my photographs become part of someone’s home on The Block is a lovely reminder that photographs can have lives far beyond the moment in which they were made.

I hope viewers who notice the work might also become curious about photography as something more than decoration – as a way of telling stories, remembering people and imagining other possibilities.

Unicorns Are Real is available as a limited-edition photographic print directly through my artist studio and website. Series: Dreamscapes

Watch Jesse and Mel’s Master Bedroom reveal featuring Unicorns Are Real on Channel Nine’s The Block this weekend 25 Aug 2019.