How Craig Walsh uses projection to transform trees into temporary public monuments
In this interview, Craig Walsh explores the creative process behind Monuments. Monuments is a long-running outdoor projection project that uses projected portraits on trees to create temporary public monuments. The project began at Woodford Folk Festival in 1993, when Craig discovered how a projected portrait could align with the form of a tree and become a sculptural presence in public space.
Craig Walsh is an Australian artist known for pioneering approaches to projection, installation and site-responsive public art. Over more than 30 years, his work has animated trees, rivers, mountains, urban architecture and live event environments across Australia and internationally with projections.
In this conversation, Craig discusses how Monuments has evolved from early slide projections into a touring project shaped by each site and community. The structure of the work remains clear: projection, trees, night-time public space, portraiture and temporary monument. What changes is the community, the selected people, the site, and the local meaning attached to each portrait.
Listen to this podcast to learn about:
- Why community involvement is central to the current form of Monuments.
- How Craig thinks about projection as sculpture rather than screen-based video.
- Why subtle movement can be more powerful than direct interaction.
- What artists need to consider when making media art in public space.
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Chapters
- (00:00:00) Working outside the gallery
- (00:02:18) Projection as sculpture and installation
- (00:05:42) The origins of Monuments
- (00:15:18) Choosing who is represented in public space
- (00:19:10) Stillness, sound and subtle movement
- (00:20:31) Weather, trees and outdoor uncertainty
- (00:24:17) Projection, spectacle and light festivals
- (00:25:59) Touring Monuments and installation process
- (00:34:20) Trust, responsibility and representing people at scale
- (00:37:20) Advice for artists working with projection in public space
About Craig Walsh
Craig Walsh is an Australian artist known for pioneering approaches to projection, installation, and site-responsive public art. Over the last 30 years, his work has animated unconventional sites, including trees, rivers, mountains, urban architecture, and live event environments across Australia and internationally. His practice combines digital media, public space, and strong conceptual frameworks to create large-scale works that respond to the conditions and histories of each site. Craig has also developed major community-based projects, including Home Gwangju in South Korea, Traces — Blue in Setouchi, Japan, and FIVE with DADAA Inc. in Western Australia.
Takeaways from this interview with Craig Walsh
Monuments is a long-running outdoor projection project by Craig Walsh. It uses projected portraits on trees at night to create temporary public monuments. The structure of the work stays consistent: projection, trees, portraiture, and public space. What changes in each version are the community, the selected people, the site, and the local meaning attached to each portrait.
Projection, trees and public recognition
“The premise of the work is to look at people who contribute to a space outside of the usual conventions that are honoured.”
Craig describes Monuments as a project with a stable structure and a flexible social process. The work uses projected portraits on trees at night, but each version changes through local conversations about who should be represented. This makes the project more than a visual method. It becomes a way to question how public space recognises contribution, memory, and community.
Experimentation as a way to find the work
“The ideas that kept coming back to me were the ones that I stuck with.”
Craig’s process shows how media installation can grow through testing rather than planning everything in advance. The first tree projection came from moving a projector through a site and seeing what happened when an image met a real surface. That discovery became a project that has continued for decades.
Projection as sculpture
Craig talks about his work through sculpture and installation. The tree is not treated as a flat screen. Its form, bark, movement, foliage, and scale shape the portrait. Wind and seasonal change can add another layer of movement. This gives the work a physical presence that changes with the site.
Working with public sites
Craig’s practice shows that outdoor media art requires technical planning but also trust, patience, and judgment. The work depends on projectors, positioning, and post-production, but it also depends on conversations with communities, relationships with participants, and detailed decisions made on site.
Links from the podcast with Craig Walsh
Edited transcripts in this interview with Craig Walsh
Why Craig Walsh began making projection art in public space
Robin Petterd: What first drew you into wanting to work in public spaces rather than galleries?
Craig Walsh: It was an evolution really. I think, while I was, studying and doing my degree in fine art, um, was obviously working with sort of gallery spaces. But I think I just sort of found purpose in creating work as experience as opposed to objects or commodity. I felt like that was a fairly traditional pathway, you know, for making art and, an outcome for art. And I guess I was really influenced by specifically some of the New York artists like, Walter De Maria and Gordon Matta-Clark, and people like that who were really exploring, art as experience and, and specifically sort of manipulating the everyday in public space.
So I think, when you look at these things retrospectively, there's always— You can define it very clearly, but there was obviously a lot of influences that led me to that. I mean, the other one was that I was, I did my degree in Brisbane, and there was a whole lot of us living in this abandoned sort of warehouses in, in Fortitude Valley before Fortitude Valley was even used.
And, um, there was a lot of vacant space. You know, we had a big vacant allotment next to us, so we started exploring earth arts and, you know, all those sort of projects. There was, you know, empty warehouses everywhere. And it wasn't just me, it was a bit of a zeitgeist that took place, you know, in the mid-'90s, in Brisbane because I think, I just think we had access to these sort of spaces and could think about making art in those sort of places.
Robin Petterd: So it was actually with an architect who said to me recently that, um, he sort of thinks of media in public spaces as being almost guerrilla-like, like not asking permission for something, being able to pop something up very quickly, uh, and take it down very quickly as well. Is that sort of the type of experimentation you were meaning with that?
Craig Walsh: Yeah. I was, willing to confront all the traditions of art really. the idea of duration of a work or having exhibitions and even having labels on works were all sort of denied. You know, we didn't worry about that sort of stuff.
None of those conventions. wanted to, um.. I guess, you know, in my mind it was really about transforming or updating what, art could be, you know? and, I think I found purpose in engaging with the public in those sort of spaces because it sort of bypassed a lot of the baggage that was associated with contemporary art. quite often it gave this opportunity that, the, audience had to think about what was going on, and they weren't led into a specific way of thinking because they'd sort of followed the, normal sort of context in which you experience art. So that became really attractive to me.
I think there's something about that engagement with audience that public space can provide. Now, of course, there's lots of traditional formats for producing work in public space as well, right? Which, you know, then again demand a, a very specific outcome with an audience.
I always thought my role as an artist was to question all that and, provide some new ways of seeing or experiencing the spaces that we live in
Robin Petterd: Yeah, and projection's an amazing way of being able to transform spaces in different ways as well.
Craig Walsh: Yeah. It's about the time as well, what you're doing and available and what you can access, and there's a whole range of sort of that have to align, you know, to, to have a successful art career. I studied new media and sculpture. They were the two, majors I had at, when I was doing a fine art degree. So.. And I was always probably most interested in sculpture, and, I would argue that all my works are very sculptural or sculptural in installation, uh, more than video art. so you know, it was an interesting time because we only really had access to slide projectors, 35 mil slide projectors.
New media was still going to taking photographs and having to develop your own photographs or, you know, slides. the, early experiments for me were sort of sculpting out of all sorts of objects and then using slide projections, you know, over those surfaces to sort of see what would took place.
And even painting, I was doing a lot of painting at the time, mark-making and then projecting, over those surfaces. When I think about that time, you know, you would see these installations in institutions with the click of the slide projectors going off, you know, with these projected images around the And, um, video projection was just a pretty new medium. think
Robin Petterd: Mm-hmm.
Craig Walsh: Used.. It sort of, you know, in really high-end commercial outlets it was being used, but it was a very expensive medium to try and interface with.- I had access to one through the, you know, small ones and, you know, I ended up, you know, as you do as an artist, you just find ways to explore these things, and I was keen to move from the still image to the moving image. And, um, yeah, so I think, I think timing is a really big thing because I think, quite simply my practice, I was trying to explore new forms of installation. And once I recognized what the medium of projection in a given space or three-dimensional space could do, that's what I saw as a potential for a new form, a new art form. And, um, it got really excited about that and that's why I pursued that for so long and still do. I still think it has this potential to installation and sculpture as a device, you know, just as a tool, but it does have this ability to, um.. And I, I make that reference to Walter De Maria, the, New York Earth Room is one of my favorite.
It was one, and still is one of my favorite artworks. The idea that an artist would fill a whole gallery with earth and dirt, um, just took away from this idea of object, the idea of commodity ownership. You know, there's a whole range of things, linking environment to the sterility of, an art space. So, you know, what I did was I said, Can I apply those same principles using video projection in spaces?" And that's when I started to, do things like fill, buildings virtually with water and things like that with So that's why I talk about timing.
I was fortunate that I had access to that technology and I really saw the potential, so I really had the motivation to keep going with it.
Robin Petterd: Hmm.
Craig Walsh: When I first started exploring, you couldn't hire, a projector to take outdoors. It was impossible.
There's No one would hire a projector for you to take outdoors. That idea was to hire companies because, um, they were just used to show football games or, commercial advertising or whatever. so I used to have to lie, what I was using it for. You know, I'd say to.. And I did have a lot of shows at the IMA at that time, the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. but I used to have to say it was for that, and then I'd take it out with a generator, you know, out to the bush or something. So the only way you could do it. and align that with the time too in Brisbane where we had this space and we had a sort of collective of like-minded people, artists who were exploring these ideas of performance and installation and, I guess we're part of the postmodern sort of, um, generation of artists and, it was all those things that combined, but I do think that, um- I was very early in the experimentation of sort of the idea, of mapping. we never called it mapping. It was way before it was even titled. the way we did it was really basic and rudimentary. But,, this connection between the image and the spaces that they occupied was a primary thing that I'd been exploring since, 1991 in my studio as a student
How Monuments transforms projected portraits into temporary public sculpture
Robin Petterd: One of your ongoing series of works you've been working on for quite a while is, um, Monuments. what is that body of work?
Craig Walsh: Yeah, Once again, it's an evolving work because it's had many lives. and think its meaning or its content has changed, not so much the formal application, but how it's perceived or how it's defined has changed throughout its history. it started off with, uh, I sort of touched on it.
, I was in the studio and was— like, Richard Avedon black and white slides that I was projecting onto marks and so on I was making in the studio. And a group of artists were interested in working outside the gallery were invited up to the Woodford Folk Festival, um, in its first year in the new site at Woodford, and we spent about two weeks up there developing new works for the site.
They were really supportive of to do what we wanted to do really, um, off and on for two weeks. And, I took up these slide of these heads, these portraits, and, um, a slide projector and a generator, and I had an old ute at that time. And one night we just drove around the site, and, I sort of felt like I was going to make a sculptural element, to project onto. But we were driving around the site and I was with some fellow artists, and it just scanned across the tree. The portrait didn't really work in any space, but it just scanned across a tree that was exactly the same scale as the slide projection. And it instantly sort of popped as a three-dimensional object,, and that relationship between the form of the human head the form of a tree became really evident.
, and that was sort of the starting point for the whole project because,, conceptually I was trying to create this link between,, human, and nature and, that sort of connection. It was more a formal sort of just experimentation. But of course, what happens quite often in these sort of processes is that the meaning, is induced from, that activity of the experimentation.,, so it started off as the first ever presentation was 35 mil slide projections, um,, of or portraits that I manipulated to black and white, I gathered.
And didn't even shoot them. They were taken from other sources. We won't talk about what that was, you know, this early student days. and projected in about four sites around the Woodford Folk Festival. And the Woodford Folk Festival runs for seven nights. it's a big community festival, and I think everyone would know how big that's become now., And it was hugely successful, and it was so subtle. The, the beauty of it was how subtle it was because projector isn't very bright, right? And trees— and I wasn't using huge trees, but still, really did sneak up on people because you wouldn't see it, and then all of a sudden you just sort of capture it in the corner of your eye. from that point on, woodford were really supportive of that project, and they funded me to and supported me, in developing it. And over the years it went from that to full interactive projection where we had live actors who were in real time playing the part of the tree and could interact with the audience in real time. we've had multiples up there that communicate to each other, et cetera. So there's been all these variations of a theme, and I guess the work initially titled "Human Nnature" with a double N, and, um,, it was about exploring that, right?, I saw that as a really strong symbolism,, because the projected portrait was almost dominated by the tree.
So I was doing two things. One, it was making us look at trees, it was making us our relationship to them. and the third one, which was I was exploring in a lot of other works, this idea of art viewing the audience. You know, this idea that it's a reciprocal type of situation.
So, the trees become these sort of surveyors and so that's what I say over time, its meaning has changed because I remember when surveillance was this big issue. You know, when we started to see malls start gathering all these surveillance cameras. all this discussion around that work around, this idea of surveillance.
, That the art is actually watching us, you know, and how much is it documenting? And if you think about it, it sort of was a precursor to you know, pretty well, what goes on. and so at a certain stage I kept developing that work, and then there were just really site-specific works where I would explore, uh, stories around a space that hadn't been told through the, um, existing monuments in a public space or in a public square. And obviously using projection in those environments, the trees, the actual sculpture itself or, you know, any other elements that exist in the space became this really interesting way to extend on that narrative that's being presented to the public outside of what is being presented through the monument. And so I got really interested in that, and I did a whole lot of commissions based around that idea., I then started to think about, know,, the tree projection as an alternative to permanent public sculpture. I guess, my work in general was in conversation and in opposition to that idea for a long time. this idea of temporality and, what that can do and how you can sort of, go to,, in depth, and explore new elements to a space, through a temporary application. So I was, um, exploring that a lot anyway,, um, and then, I kept thinking about this idea of monuments, you know, and how this..
Even the word itself is sort of an irony around what I'm doing and alternative. So I packaged it as that, and it sort of coincided with me getting an agent in the USA where it sort of all of a sudden had to be packaged to tour. And I thought I was really interested in that idea,, like the one thing about this work is it's a really— touring site-specific work.
This is how it functions now as the Monuments installation. And, what I do is I go into it.. Well,, I work with a specific, uh, host organization or,, commissioner, and we talk about,, who should be represented on the trees in a specific space. What is the concept for representation in these spaces? a really productive conversation. It requires the host not to just sit back and just commission an artwork, or, pay for an artwork. It actually has to get actively get involved, and start communicating with the community to say, "Well, who are the people that could be represented in these spaces?" I guess the premise of the work is to look at people who contribute to a space outside of the usual conventions that are honored. So, we know that — there's all sorts of people that make up a community, and, uh, there's many different people doing many different things that contribute to, um, the experiences we have, in our urban spaces and even,,, uh, in all spaces. So, that's a conversation. And then usually what happens then is there's a decision made around how they might make a selection.., that's ranged from actually doing it as a newspaper call, where the community actually nominate people based on that concept, to having committees who might be dealing with a very specific, um, subject.
But all that is sort of part of the development of the work. So - it's not me as an artist coming into these spaces I know nothing about and imposing my work on them. It's a clear collaboration with the host organization and the community to make decisions around who should be selected. Now,, those people selected, depending on the site, have really been diverse.
, Everything from,, uh, school teachers, and we even did a project in Brisbane once at the City Botanic Gardens where a gentleman who had been worked as a groundsman there since he left school and was about to retire. So we projected him up on this huge tree in the Botanical Gardens, was to honor his sort of contribution to making that space available to everyone.
So, um, I love the process., I think Monuments now is sort of, a synthesis of everything I've learnt from all the public works I've done and working with communities and even gallery and understanding how art functions. And, um- It's just a concept that's really strict and solid, but has this freedom for the community to have a massive contribution. sort of control the outcome to a degree too, which I think,, ultimately the work has always been providing multiple experiences. People just see it and, have an amazing experience just with, the physical interaction. But of course, there's always this context., We always provide details of the individual who's being projected, you know, the bio, and have that access so they can tell their story in other ways. of course,, they bring their families, their friends,, quite often these people are very, you know, modest people. so, it's an all-round really, um, tight project that I think has great legacy in a place. And,, when I think about what I was aiming for as successful public art when I was a young artist, I think this is a sort of synthesis, of everything that I was aiming for, because people react to the work almost exactly the same as they did in 1993 as today, and have that same experience.
But the concept and the context and probably the way that it's produced, the production levels are higher. we have brighter projectors. You know, there's all those things now that help it, but ultimately I still think it's just one of those sort of timeless works
Robin Petterd: . And didn't actually realize that it had been a thread in your work for so long, Craig. It was actually possibly that, yeah. And, it's interesting how it started with the tree. didn't actually even think about this when I approached you, but I'm actually working on a piece at the moment that's actually called Like a Tree.
Craig Walsh: Right. Okay.
Robin Petterd: Because it's my, um, beloved, um, movement stuff is— makes me feel like I'm a tree that constantly moves, is probably the point., Is my metaphor, for it as well. what it's— you sort of hinted it before 'cause it's why are people silent and still? - The people,, the images that are on the trees
Craig Walsh: You know,, as I said,, I've actually done it in a few different ways. We've actually had dialogue and we've had
Robin Petterd: Ah, okay.
Craig Walsh: Sound like,
Robin Petterd: Yep
Craig Walsh: , I'm just—, currently working on a new project, um, in Adelaide, and we worked with, uh, that's based around First Nation representation in the Adelaide Botanic Garden there. and there's a local art- young artist who's producing the audio track for that. So it's sort of more of, a soundtrack to go with the works. But ultimately,, I've gone to the point where it became almost Disney-like,, interactive and you could play with it, and I felt that it lost a lot of,, its magic and its strength by being too active., I guess we're coming back to this idea, my interest in sculpture, you know, and how, that can be engaging., I was really cautious of it just not entering this sort of narrative base,, script type, um,, performance which,, starts and finishes. You know, when you see the work there is movement, but it's very subtle and I find that subtle motion is probably more powerful than anything else you could do. And of course it means it's continuum... Is no narrative, there's no start and finish to the work. It's all, just there, and it feels like it's constant., It feels alive in the sense that it's constantly has this movement, but there is no story to tell as far as, you know, it's not telling the story.
Everything else,, there's too much, there's so much going on you don't need to tell the story, through the portrait
Robin Petterd: Part of what you're talking about is like the unpredictability of being outside and weather. This is actually part of where this particular series came from because I had a couple of conversations with people, where essentially the working outside was really new to them, and they talked about the whole, "Actually, we realized we couldn't control everything," and then at that point things became really interesting.
Working with weather, trees and unpredictable outdoor environments
Robin Petterd: How do you work with that sort of predictability and the unpredictability as well?
Craig Walsh: Oh, look,,, it's really challenging., unless— I wasn't so committed and understand what the outcomes can be by working in environments, I wouldn't do it because — it can be really difficult. But I think,, the tree projection project is probably more durable than most., it sort of can live in very various forms as more abstract or more clarity depending on tree and foliage. But of course, things happen when the wind blows, you know, the whole image has got another layer of movement. I've done a project in the States, in Virginia, where we started with the tree full, and by the end of the project, all the leaves are gone, from green to red to disappearing, you know.
So for those in that space over that month,, they saw, this change and you can't make that in a sculpture, right? Like, that's just impossible to make. So you have these elements and I guess,, in a really pure sense,, it's basically putting a spotlight on the tree and watching what happens over through the change of seasons.
, it's drawing attention to that. much the sort of found object sort of concept, as I made mention of earlier,, it does that still. But, um, probably the project that was the most stressful is the projects I've done on rivers and waterways, where, um.. Sometimes, we create mythological creatures based on stories that exist around that waterway or fisherman's stories or whatever,, and develop these three-dimensional models of those creatures and project them back in the river.
And,, we've really worked really hard on developing that. uh,, it's existed as a permanent work, and a lot of temporal works. but you know,, that, is a magic work, I think, in the sense that I think it does transform people into a different time and a different space by what they're experiencing.
And we've designed is very illusionistic. But, you know, there's some places I've turned up where, for whatever reason, the water is completely clear and there's no sediment and — there's, nothing to hold the image at all, right? and it just ends up on the bottom of, the waterway. that's.. And you know, I've had some really big commissions where tested and everything's worked perfectly and you've turned up with,, half a million dollars worth of equipment, to make this happen, and then, there's nothing there. that's stressful. I mean,, that changed and it worked most of the time, but, you know,
I mean, with that work, I really like that work as a sort of environmental work, and, we developed a lot of strains of that work so that, um- It could actually respond. The organism could grow and change based on environmental conditions and the environmental conditions of the river. and I like that idea. I mean, people believe,, there's all sorts of new myths were developed based on that work around a river. There's stories that will exist around, the Bremer River in Ipswich about these mythological creatures that used to exist. It got wiped out., They rebuilt it, like, three times 'cause it kept getting flooded.
But, um, stories exist now in that place, and the same in Surfers Paradise we did it. I've done it in Tokyo. I've done it in,, the Thames in London. You know, the people who saw that,, it adds to this sort of mythology of a river,, and I really like that idea as a public work to be able to do that. Um,
Robin Petterd: Mm-hmm.
Craig Walsh: Is stressful because it really is.. You know, there's been times where we're trying to work out, well, how do we stir the bottom of the river so we get more sediment? So, you know,, it's been stressful. And I guess the sort of work I do is complicated and, you know, we do a lot of work, to, get the outcomes at, a really sophisticated level. of course, we use sophisticated equipment as well, so generally there's a lot of money involved, um, which, you know, adds to the pressure of m-making this work, you know?
Robin Petterd: Yeah. And then,, like there's this moment where, especially now at the light festivals in Australia, there's a group of people like yourself, so there's some artists, and then, there's another cohort of people who I think of as more as, um, designers. Which sometimes seems to help have the budgets for things as well,, because those other people,, it's a day job for them rather, than a passion with the cost of things.
I don't want to completely cut that out, by the way, Craig. Um,
Craig Walsh: You know, I
Robin Petterd: Yeah
Craig Walsh: I've seen how that's changed. I've seen the commercialization of the medium. and, um,, I guess I could have been part of that, but, I chose not to be. I didn't wanna be a part of that. I could see the future., You can blast technology on a building and everyone's gonna go, "Ooh," like they do with fireworks.
And I mean, pretty well the base that is being used now for most of these festivals. And I'd agree. I think, um, you know, you've got, whole projects that are being commissioned by festivals, major festivals, that are run by people like Sony, who just bring in a whole lot of new tech and lighting into a park, calling themselves artists and charging people to go to these things.
And, um,, I think artists are being squeezed out completely. I think artists are too difficult to work with because we aim for such developed work and conceptually strong work that it's just a bit more difficult. It's easier to get lighting designers that work in that industry to just make things colorful and move., I think we're in a real age of spectacle and, um, what concerns me more is just there is no response from the audience. I feel like, um, it's become a standard. They've sort of been educated to accept that as an experience. and that all links into the age of Instagram, et cetera.
You know, get the photo and, all those things. But, um, you know,, if history serves us, then there should be a response to that soon, and I'm sort of waiting for that
How a touring projection installation is planned and produced
Robin Petterd: Typical installation, um, setup process for you actually looks like?
Craig Walsh: , it really depends on the project. 'Cause, what I did as a young artist,, I sort of developed all these different strains of different types of projects for different types of spaces. So they sort of developed, at different speeds depending on accessibility.
Some of them were really complex that we needed, like, six months to make, you know, creating models and filming models and really complicated things. like, as I said, Monuments has end up being the most durable project, and much of that is because, you know, it is reasonably simple in its installation.
, as I said, it's conceptually strong, but the actual application and the setup is not that complicated at all, and we're not doing anything special as far as mapping or any of those things. It's the image, and the object, and that's the way it's always been, and you don't mess with something that's working, right?
We've experimented with a lot but, I come back to this because, this is what works and I've seen, thousands and thousands of people respond to it as well as the person just wander through the park, late at night and not know it's there.
So I know how it So currently when I tour Monuments- uh, generally I have about three commissions in the States, and I might have a couple in Australia in a and it's a seven-day process. So what I do is I have a series of meetings with the host organization, which then leads to maybe community organizations this whole concept of who's going to be represented in these public spaces. a whole lot of Facebook, uh, FaceTime sort of tours of the site, uh, Google Map images of the site so I can see trees and, give me an idea especially for the States, I can't do a site visit. Quite often in Australia a site visit 'cause that does fast-track a lot of, the production requirements. and once that's sorted, I arrive in the States and I've got seven days. um, I film the subjects on the first or second day that I arrive. I then, uh, Dropbox those, that video back to my, uh, post-production people here in Australia. They do the post-production while I'm testing trees and making sure we got the right projectors and work— Quite often I do artist talks and, you know, maybe t- work with some students, et cetera. And then, once we get the content back, install, the opening night, and then I move on to the next one. It's like a machine. It's like a tour. It's a touring. It's interesting because I never that way. It wasn't until I got an agent in America who said, "Look, you gotta have this.." We had to create the document exactly what we All costs, everything had to be worked out so when they're presenting the project to potential clients, they know exactly what they're getting and how it works. So it was a good process 'cause it really streamlined, um, how we can make the work and, also I guess it's sort of practical because I'm the only one touring really with it, you know?
I can sort of utilize technology to, have my team still in Australia or, you know, work with one person specifically, and he's— does all my animation and editing and, and also, uh, programming. And so I can just Dropbox to them, uh, to him and, and from there, you know, the process is pretty, pretty straightforward.
I've already got test, imagery that I can do all my testing with, so I pretty well know how it's gonna work, and then I get the final content loaded and do those final adjustments 'cause a lot of it's in the, in the detail with that work about its scale and positioning, et cetera. Um- And then us- depending on the host, sometimes it runs for like a month, sometimes it runs for two weeks.
It depends, you know. Sometimes they change them, you know, sometimes we do portraits and then over different weeks they'll, they'll change the portraits. we have multiple portraits on one tree, you know, where we have three or four that change over time. it's, it's got, it's got a l- reasonable amount of flexibility depending on the, on the space. but I don't, you know, I've, I've, I've well and truly moved past the idea of having projectors and having the equipment myself, you know. So even in Australia or any- anywhere I work really, it's, it's— I don't, I don't, I don't supply the equipment. I consult, sure we've got what we need, um, but that's all, that's all separate to what I do.
I, I'm a content creator, so, um, I, I'm just not interested in that. Well, I know all about it because I've had to learn all about it, and it's important to, to get what you need. but that's supplied by sup- you know, AV suppliers
Robin Petterd: Yeah. My follow-up question for that was actually going to be about whether or not you get other people to do the install work. But what's fascinating with what you just said is that the devil's in the detail. That's what you do. What you don't need to do is the video editing, but that's actually the bit that's more straightforward.
And it's a really nice way of, way of, way of— So you're still thinking about what's important for, from the creative point of, point of view by being in the site, tweaking it, making sure everything happens. But you've got that, that other per- you've got your video person supporting, supporting you so it's a bit more scalable, so you don't have to deal with the video as well as the special things in that seven days.
Craig Walsh: Yeah, I think I, you know, I think that also comes from a practice that sort of exploded, you know, in the 2000s where I was doing so many projects that I need— you know, I quite often had three or four people working with me in the studio, so the directing role had to be the position. And so, um, you know, going— like all artists, when you go from making everything yourself, as you get busier and the, and the work develops and you can afford to, to develop the work, then that, that's what happened with my practice as well.
So that wa— but definitely, I mean, there's a great example. I started touring, uh, monuments in the US just before COVID hit, and, um, we had one year of tour.. I think we had one year of touring there, and then that hit. And what happened was, um, a lot of big institutions were really interested, you know, as a, as an external project to their, their performance spaces, et cetera. And it ended up being a project that could be presented during the COVID time, right? and I couldn't be there, so we had to create, once again, do a whole lot of detail in a document and, um, I had to find a proxy. And it— so we did about three or four installations in the US during COVID, and I was working with what we— well, what they call a proxy, which is someone who's like an extension of me, who I share all my information with, all my intellectual property with. make sure they sign the documentation that they can't share that. and they were invo- they were, they took on that responsibility. And I know one of them was hugely successful, and I think, you know, partially it was because people could actually go out into a big park, and they had everyone separated, and they had to, you know, they had to walk through in single file, and they couldn't be in proximity of each other.
But the fact that they could go out and experience this work, um, in a time where you couldn't really do anything, hugely successful. But I didn't, I do know a couple of them that even though my proxy was across it, they just didn't have, they just didn't have what w- what's required to make it work to the level that it will work.
You know, it'll, it'll always work, right? But it's a, it's a matter of the art— for me, it's about how you can make sure that you're getting the maximum effect and, and the ultimate outcome. And, um, so that was, yeah, that was another example of why. And al- also, you know, I think, I think it'd be too, I think it'd be too distant, you know, it'd become something very commercial if I was just sending it, you know, around the world and not, not appearing and not do- not being involved with that conversation, you know, and the artist talks and the conversations. And also, you gotta think about the subjects in the work, you know, and how you communicate and, and talk to them about what this means to be this, to be in this artwork and those sort of conversations. So there's a lot that goes on that's- adds to its success because an artist is involved, you know? And I think if, if I'm removed, then it just becomes, you know, I think it'd become pretty flat
Robin Petterd: Especially that bit, that whole interaction with the people who the, the, that become part of, that are the monuments as well. That's not, it, it w- it's not, not an, not something you can sort of hand over to someone else very quickly.
Craig Walsh: Yeah, I think maybe there's some trust that I'm an artist too in that's, in that process. I guess 'cause the history of my work too. I will, I always start out with showing a few projects that I've done outside of Monuments and, show some Monuments projects. So there's this sort of trust, I guess, you know, in, in the way that..
And I think you, you require a lot of trust, you know. If you're representing someone at that scale in public space where thou- you know, quite often thousands of people are seeing it, you know. I've done it at things like Splendour in the Grass where there's 50,000 people are gonna view it. So, you know, there is a great responsibility, but there's also a level of trust that you have to sort of develop with, the community and the subjects that are involved with that project.
And I think, I just don't think that would be possible. And I know because the work has been copied many times, you know, around the world, and I know the outcomes. I can look at the outcomes and just know that this is just a real lack of understanding of the d- the detail in the project, you know, as to why, it's.. Even, I can even see it in, in a formal sense, you know. The idea that, just project a face on a tree, right? Like you know, that's— there's a lot more to make it work. There's a lot more to it than that
Robin Petterd: You hinted a couple of times about this, and I still probably want to, uh, as we sort of move into the wrap-up, try to sort of consolidate it a little bit. Over your career, what have you learned about just like the gap that happens between an idea and what can then actually be realized in a space?
Craig Walsh: I think the idea is always the most exciting part of the project. I mean, the, the, there's, there's the unexpected outcomes, right? From presenting a work. but there's a whole lot of work that goes into just taking it from the idea to the, to the level of presentation. And I'm not talking about the creative side, we're talking about finding the money, finding the host, finding, you know, all those details that are really mundane and boring, with art bureaucrats, you know, all the stuff you have to do. So you gotta have a— You gotta really like the idea, right? Like if you don't, if you don't really like the idea, you're not gonna make that effort. And I, I, I've always found that I— I've often found that, know, why do I keep doing— why, why do I keep taking this on? You know, it's just that my ideas kept growing, and every project I did would develop a new, you know, from that a new idea would grow and it became a, a sort of beast in itself that I couldn't really control because I'd just sort of present this new idea and somebody'd go, "Yeah, that's great.
Let's go. Let's do it." And then you'd end up, you know, here we go again. so I think, uh, I think for artists, you know, f- that's what artists do, right? That's what we do. I think everyone, I think everyone has ideas. I think about executing them and having the confidence to put yourself out there on the line and back your ideas as a manifestation into something that people are experiencing is, um, is ultimately what an artist is. so I don't.. Yeah, I think that that's the same for all artists
Robin Petterd: Hmm. It's that sort of like, like I've slowly started to get better at not starting as many things, is probably the best way to put it. So lots of ideas come and, and sometimes I've, I've actually learnt to sit there and go, "Actually, if one in 10 happen, that's fantastic. That's n- that's nine things that don't fail."
Um,
Craig Walsh: I think I th—
Robin Petterd: Yeah
Craig Walsh: Me personally, and I don't, I don't know how, you know, ev- every artist is different, right? The way they make work, how much work they produce, everyone is different. But, um, the ideas that kept coming back to me were the ones that I stuck with. You know,
Robin Petterd: Yeah
Craig Walsh: It's always the excitement of an idea, but if it doesn't come back to me regularly, I'm probably thinking it's probably not something that's really dug in.
And,
Robin Petterd: Yep
Craig Walsh: Yeah, that, that's, that's always been a guide for me
Advice for artists creating projection work in public space
Robin Petterd: Yeah. My wrap-up question, what advice would you give to an artist who's doing their first p- projection piece in a public space?
Craig Walsh: Oh, look, I, I, I think, um, I just— experimentation, I, I, you know, I just found for me personally, the, the journey, the growth an artist, my concepts and everything just developed out of the experimentation, just getting out there and doing it. I remember I was lucky enough to have, uh, a couple of the Australia Council studios, and I had one in Tokyo very early on, and I had a, um, s- once again, a slide projector.
I'd been documenting, uh, homeless structures all underneath the subways in Tokyo. And I just had a little trolley with a slide projector and a little generator. was work— you know, I just became friends with, you know, local artists there, and they, they set me up. And I remember projecting these, um, structures at the base of those high-rises in Shinjuku and those big commercial buildings, getting pushed on, you know, by security, et cetera.
But just wheeling this thing around. wasn't just about the visual outcomes, it was just about how people responded to it. And, um, you know, that's just one small example of just a commitment to experimentation, I think. You know? that's very content driven, you know, the, the idea of architecture and structure and, and its function, et cetera, you know, composited on each other was, um, was, uh, really apparent, you know, the differences.
But, you know, I hadn't really— you know, I was just doing things. I was just photographing all these, all these structures and then, you know, I got this projector and then that was a surface to project on, and then that surface happened to be a 80-story high-rise, you know, a commercial building, and then what does that mean?
Because now that's two t- two forms of architecture that exist in one space. So, you know, my, my advice would be to experiment. I think especially now because everything's so easy to make. You know, I think, you know, we've got all this mapping software and there's this, you know, the, the formal, the formal discoveries that we went through, um, through our experimentation in establishing a lot of these processes, um, has already happened. You know, I don't think that's, you know.. It was a big part of what we did and, and what I did, and I, I really liked, you know, the formal, the formal investigation was as important as the conceptual for me. I think that's probably with projection, it's more difficult now, so I think you've gotta get back to content.
And I think developing your content in, especially if working with projection in public space, um, will come from just looking at what certain images do in certain spaces, you know? And then that, that leads to, that leads to the development of, um, new content and developing your ideas.
Robin Petterd: Lovely way to wrap up. Take a projector out with a battery or generator
Craig Walsh: There.
Robin Petterd: And do it.
Craig Walsh: Just, just do lots of, just make lots of work. I mean, I made a lot of work, so you just.. And not all of it's good, but you just gotta make it