[8][9] Varga's photographs were included in Flatlands: Photography and Everyday Space, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2012–13), with her first international exhibition being in held in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2013.
[23] In that same year, she completed a major commission for Duo Central Park, Sydney, a building designed by Foster + Partners in London.
It was the first time a contemporary Australian photograph was on the front page of one of the major print newspapers since an exhibition of Bill Henson’s work was shut down by police in 2008.
[34] In response to the outcry, the award's judge, Shaune Lakin, Senior Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia said, "In spite of the fact photographic history is lined with examples of nonrepresentational portraits and self-portraits, there remains an expectation that photography’s primary function is to witness the world and that a photographic portrait should show what its subject looked like."
And, "To argue that photography requires a camera is to assert a very partial or selective view of the medium’s history of the photograph..."[3] He described the experience of standing in front of Maternal Line, "It was a moving, melancholic experience: to witness a moment of significant emotional and cultural exchange between two women at such different points in their lives; to be left with a strong feeling for the subject’s personality and – to quote Olive Cotton’s daughter Sally McInerney – her soul...