Hogarth (July)

William Hogarth’s crime journalist weeps tears of sardonic laughter that turn into florins, rolling into the newspaper magnate’s bottomless pocket. The Man himself stares away from the congested street scene – beggars and desperate mothers squat before ATMs, house sharks and foreign predators fight over bricks – toward his estate on the Mornington Peninsula. “July, start of the financial year …” reads a ribbon running from his mouth. A couple starve outside the Mock Baroque restaurant, its masonry already cracking in the climate-changed sun. A connoisseur snaps up copies of the ‘print within a print’ for his Armadale hallway and investment portfolio.