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Public art, permanence and decay with Nigel Helyer

Public art, permanence and decay with Nigel Helyer

In this podcast, Nigel Helyer explains how public artworks are designed for specific lifespans, how media installations can be maintained as their technologies age, and why contracts are central to the long-term maintenance of art in public spaces.

Nigel Helyer is an internationally acclaimed Australian sculptor and sound artist who creates public artworks, sound sculptures and interactive media installations. His interdisciplinary practice connects art, science and technology through projects involving environmental research, acoustic mapping, biological systems and spatial sound.

In this conversation, Nigel draws on decades of public art practice to question the idea of permanence. He discusses Dual-Nature (Ebb and Flow), a large-scale sound sculpture installed at Woolloomooloo in Sydney in 1999. Positioned partly within the water, the work used mild steel forms designed to corrode over a calculated 25-year lifespan. He also reflects on other media artworks, including Wireless House and Silent Forest, to consider how changing technologies affect their maintenance and conservation.

Listen to this podcast to learn about:

  • Designing public artwork around an intended lifespan.
  • Using corrosion and material decay as planned elements.
  • Maintaining sound and interactive art as technology changes.
  • Preparing maintenance manuals and service arrangements.
  • Negotiating fees, production budgets and contractual risk.

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Chapters

  • (00:00:09) Rethinking permanence in public art

  • (00:02:46) A 100-year sculpture for the Seoul Olympics

  •  

    (00:03:00) Contracts and expected lifespans
  • (00:04:02) The history behind Dual-Nature (Ebb and Flow)
  • (00:06:00) Calculating corrosion and planned decay
  • (00:07:14) Maintaining an early solar audio artwork
  • (00:09:26) Documenting why the work should rust
  • (00:09:36) Moving from video towards spatial sound
  • (00:13:07) Temporary culture and public art
  • (00:14:18) Turning spaces into places
  • (00:15:24) Contested histories at Franklin Square
  • (00:17:56) Maintaining Wireless House
  • (00:21:36) Updating the technology in Silent Forest
  • (00:23:57) Public artworks that were lost or neglected
  • (00:27:41) Inherent vice in media art
  • (00:28:00) Advice for working in public spaces
  • (00:29:23) Contracts and financial risk
  • (00:30:17) Separating artist fees from production costs

 

About Nigel Helyer

Nigel Helyer is an internationally acclaimed sculptor and sound artist based in Australia, known for creating immersive sound sculptures, environmental public artworks and interactive media installations that connect art, science and technology.

Public art has been a significant part of Nigel’s practice for decades. He has created large-scale, site-responsive works for urban, architectural and environmental settings, often using sound to shape how audiences experience a place. His projects explore the practical and conceptual challenges of permanence, maintenance, material change and technological obsolescence.

Takeaways from this interview with Nigel Helyer

Planning for a lifespan

“The more one’s involved in public art, the less one believes in the notion of permanence but more of a kind of lifespan arrangement.”

Nigel questions the assumption that public art should remain unchanged indefinitely. Instead, he describes permanence as a negotiated lifespan shaped by contracts, materials, location, and available maintenance. Defining this period gives artists and commissioners a clearer basis for deciding how a work should be cared for, altered, or eventually removed.

Designing decay

“I sort of designed them to rust away slowly.”

Dual-Nature (Ebb and Flow) was installed partly within the water at Woolloomooloo and made from mild steel intended to corrode over time. Nigel calculated the material thickness so the work could change gradually across an expected 25-year lifespan. The corrosion was not a technical failure but part of the sculpture’s relationship with the harbour and the remains of maritime structures that once occupied the shoreline.

Documenting artistic intent

“Do not repair this work. It is supposed to do this. It’s supposed to rust.”

Nigel’s maintenance documentation made it clear that the visible corrosion was intentional. Without this instruction, future custodians might have interpreted the changing surface as damage and attempted to restore it. The example shows how maintenance manuals can communicate not only technical requirements, but also the artist’s conceptual decisions.

Moving from video to spatial sound

“The sound was architectural . It was spatial and immersive.”

Nigel observed that video often concentrated an audience’s attention on a screen. Sound behaved differently: it occupied the architecture, changed as people moved and allowed them to experience the work without facing a single focal point. This led him towards installations in which sculpture, sound and space operate together.

Maintaining early media artworks

Works such as Wireless House show how quickly the technical systems within public media art can become difficult to maintain. Batteries, playback devices and network equipment may fail or become unavailable long before the physical structure reaches the end of its life. Nigel’s experience demonstrates why artists need to consider access, replacement and technical support from the beginning of a project.

Conserving the experience

“It doesn’t make any difference to the sound.”

When Silent Forest was reinstalled, its obsolete playback and power systems were replaced with contemporary equipment. For Nigel, this did not compromise the artwork because its central sound and audience experience remained intact. Conservation therefore did not require preserving every original component, but understanding which parts of the work carried its meaning and behaviour.

Keeping the artist involved

“There’s a very good argument for contracting the artist or the artist and some other agents to maintain work.”

Artists often retain knowledge that cannot be fully captured in drawings, manuals, or equipment lists. Ongoing service agreements can allow them to advise on repairs, substitutions, and upgrades as technologies change. This can help institutions avoid decisions that keep a work operational while unintentionally changing its character.

Institutional responsibility

“If they’re not engaged and enthusiastic, then you’ve got no hope in hell, really.”

The survival of a public artwork depends on more than durable materials and reliable technology. Staff changes, reduced budgets, altered priorities and transfers of ownership can determine whether a work is maintained, relocated, or removed. Nigel stresses that long-term care requires committed people within the organisation who understand why the work matters.

Public art and changing places

Nigel also reflects on how public artworks are used to create identity and meaning within shared spaces. These commissions can contribute to a sense of place, but they can also be used to make a development appear culturally significant without addressing the histories or communities connected to the site. His comments highlight the need for public art to emerge from more than visual improvement or institutional branding.

Managing financial risk

“Of course, the artist is almost exclusively the only one at economic risk.”

Nigel describes the unequal financial structure of many public art commissions. Consultants, administrators, and contractors are generally paid salaries or protected through insurance, while artists may be expected to cover design, fabrication, transport, installation, and unexpected costs from a single commission amount. Combining production costs with the artist’s fee can leave the artist carrying losses that others involved in the project do not face.

Final advice

“Do the calculations, do the numbers.”

Nigel advises artists to examine the full production budget before accepting a public art commission. This includes materials, subcontractors, insurance, transport, installation, maintenance obligations, and possible technical upgrades. Separating the artist’s fee from production costs helps make the real value of the artist’s labour visible and reduces the risk that unforeseen expenses will consume their income.

Links from the podcast with Nigel Helyer

Edited transcripts in this interview with Nigel Helyer

Nigel Helyer: How wonderful to be back with you, Robin.

Robin Petterd: Cool. You've had decades of experience working with public artwork that lives with the weather outside, people, and public institutions. To you, what does the word permanent now mean?

Nigel Helyer: Well, I think that, the more one's involved in public art, the, less one believes in, the notion of permanence, but more of a kind of lifespan arrangement.

Robin Petterd: See, so it's sort of a thinking through that it won't be here in 100 years, so it's not like a bronze sculpture.

Nigel Helyer: Yeah. Well, to be honest, the only time I've been with the prospect of having to be there for 100 years is, I made a piece in 1988, a very big piece for the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, and I literally had to sign a document which guaranteed the work would last for 100 years. But it's always a contractual matter, public art, contracts always have, the minimum lifespan. it's normally about 20, 25 years in, in Australian ones at least. and, one has to make sure that the materials and the technologies and things like that involved got a reasonable chance of making the distance.

Robin Petterd: If you do a little bit of digging back through your, CV, Nigel, to figure out what was your first, public art piece and notice that particular piece. how is that actually shaping up.

Nigel Helyer: Well, it's-- I check it out on, Google Earth a few, every now and then. It's still there, and I have been back a couple of times and had a look at it, and it's pretty immovable. I mean, it was designed in that way that there were no inherent faults in it, It doesn't move. it's made of granite and steel and, yeah, it's, sits heavily on the ground, so it's, pretty bomb-proof.

Designing public art for a planned lifespan

Robin Petterd: I'd like to just drop into another piece for a little while.  how do you describe Dual-Nature (Ebb and Flow)?

Nigel Helyer: Well, that was, installed in 2000. No, 1999. That's right. It was just before the Olympics, and I think it was part of Sydney Sculpture Walk, which was, a kind of rather rapid movement to show the world that we did have some kind of cultural items in the city. was first real serious sort of mass sculpture, you know, emplacement.

My site was Woolloomooloo in the Domain, actually, and facing across to the Navy Yards. And, I kicked off with a kind of historical survey, if you like. A kind of trying to find out a bit about the place. And, I liked that site because it was sort of, the natural history of the Domain on one side, and the kind of military industrial complex on the other side. And down at, the end of the bay was obviously Woolloomooloo, which was working class, fishermen, boat builders, Navy workers, things like that. So the side I was on, next to the Andrew (Boy) Charlton Pool, historically was lined with old, hulks, old wrecks. And a lot of them had been turned into bathing houses, for working class residents who didn't have bathrooms and things. So, the shoreline was actually of these old rotting hulks And I took that of cue to use some, the actual sculptures, the bit, the sculptural forms for large forms with a couple of kind of crane-like objects., they cued off marine microscopic or seed forms, they were built like they were ships' boilers, so heavy industrial. And, because of the hulk type of thing of decay and, things rusting along the shoreline historically, I sort of designed them to rust away slowly. their lifespan was actually exactly 25 years because we calculated that mild steel in that marine condition, sort of dissipates at about 0.3 of a millimeter a year, and we were using 10 mil plate. So max 30 years, but from an engineering perspective and public safety, things like that, probably, 25 years was about, the maximum life we could expect. And, it was, decommissioned, I think it was like last year, year before, at exactly 25 years. So the, the math was good.

Robin Petterd: As it was being decommissioned, was there anything that sort of you learned from that 25 years that meant, you would've done things differently?

Nigel Helyer: Actually, no. I think, the sculpture worked well in defining that site. I mean, it was an incredibly popular piece of work.  and it managed to function despite the conditions, so, very harsh. I mean, two of the pieces are actually in the water, and it was also probably Australia's first solar audio, artwork.

The two landward, objects had speakers in and a, very early system which could randomize file picking and playing. We had to modify the solar panels a little bit and put cages on them 'cause they became targets for local kids with throw-- throwing competitions. but otherwise it actually performed its function quite well.

It had one major refit about halfway through. as you, you know, the technology does wear out and we had started off with, heavily hardware hacked MP3 players 'cause there was nothing available on the market that could do that randomizing file selection and playing. we, we basically got into some MP3 players and rewired them and, the batteries of course collapsed after many cycles.

And, when we did replacement, a shortage of very large batteries because they've all been going to the military for the war in the Middle East. so that was interesting. but as I City Council is very good at maintaining their public artwork, so, and they're relatively easy to work with. But, yeah, as I say, I don't think I would have modified anything in a major way.

Robin Petterd: There was this like this really nice social media post you did about it, so it was being decommissioned as well, and - it literally as sort of bits of the panels of steel had rusted away. Your comment was, "This was just as I planned it. I knew, this was going to happen."

And I just really like that sense of it designed for decay and change as well as and was never going to be permanent. Like it wasn't gonna be 100 years, it was gonna be 25 years.

Nigel Helyer: Yeah. I mean, of course,.

Robin Petterd:

Nigel Helyer: of the, part of a sculpture commission is you always have to, produce a manual.

Robin Petterd: .

Nigel Helyer: That goes along with it. So, if people change in the, commissioning body or the council in this case, it can be handed on to the next, person who's running the gig. And so there was a kind of section there which says, "Do not repair this work. It is supposed to do this. It's supposed to rust. So, don't panic."

Using sound to create spatial and immersive art

Robin Petterd: From a sculptural background. What was the trigger to start to work with sound?

Nigel Helyer: Oh, okay. That came from. I can locate that quite precisely. sculpture honors at Liverpool in U- UK, and that was in the days where you could just basically do anything. so I used to make animations. I used to make time bombs, which I loved. to make bio gardens. I used to make, some electronics and some ceramics.

It was very, very open and free. had a couple of years out after that, and then I went to the Royal College of Art in London for a three-year research, MA. And? I started working with some video. in those days it was that horrible half-inch black tape, and the equipment was heavy.

So heavy you, you needed a mule to carry it. and very glitchy. and, started making these sort of wall sculptures with cages, with monitors and other things bolted in there. And, observing people watching them was interesting because I realized that people were so focused on that, they didn't actually look at anything else.

The rest of the sculpture, they just ignored it and looked at the glitchy screen. and I thought, "Oh, I don't like that." so I thought I'd start making it very difficult for people. I started making the screen smaller and smaller and. Which was very hard in those days because you, you kinda ended up buying cheap Russian mini TVs and tearing them to pieces. And still they wanted to look at the screen, and so I then I thought I'd obscure them with ground glass, sheets, and all that kind of stuff. And realized that people were simply just getting closer and closer trying to see what was going on, squinting. And then I realized that because I had also speakers with sound in there, that they were getting closer and they were being immersed in the audio. And I think at that point I kind of twigged that the video component was really a kind of analog for theater or cinema. It was a 2D, arch, single point of view type of arrangement. But the sound was architectural or architectonic. It was spatial and immersive. that was when the penny dropped and I thought, "Okay." I became completely video-phobic, stopped working with video, and only worked with sculpture and sound after that.

Robin Petterd: It's really fascinating for lots of, reasons. I'm not sure. I haven't finished any of the works yet, but I've been trying to get projections to go small, and, that's partly as a whole contrarian to the whole immersive experience, the whole sort of just looking at something that's tiny, which is totally in contrast, to a lot of media work at As you talked about sound as being an immersive it's quite a different sort of experience to that theatrical. It surrounds us when It changes as we move as well.

. Were you doing any sort of public work outside of that particular stage as well?

Nigel Helyer: No, kind of the culture in the UK is quite different. students never really showed their work outside, i remember we did do some sort of shows in Botolph's Wharf and things like that.

And, but normally, it wasn't really on the menu actually. You just studied and studied.

How public art turns spaces into places

Robin Petterd: Do you think we need a different language around these types of work in terms of things being temporary or things being permanent? To me, it just seems so much easier to focus in on that short-term rather than the long-term works.

Nigel Helyer: It's partly what we are - used to, what we expect in terms of culture. It's a kind of revolving doors isn't it? Ex-- I mean, museums tend to rotate shows and, the exhibitions are always relatively short.

so the blockbusters last longer because they wanna pack people through it. and so this revolving door thing a little bit like, the shortening attention span on, in social media that, we don't expect things to be around for that long, because we get bored and lose interest. -- I suppose the thing that counters that in public art is the kind of mixed motives that commissioners have for putting it there in the first place. a lot of public art, certainly in Australia, is to do with this, nervousness about what the difference between what a space is and a place is, you know? So public art is always pulled in to rescue, the situation where, someone's building a, I don't know, some, a shopping mall or, a, a new hospital or something like that, and they have to think of a way of making that a significant place rather than it's just a space with stuff in it, the gateway markers or the central focus or the way-finding things and sculptures and/or kind of other artwork as well are simply used as a tool, for that.

It's a utilitarian thing in many ways.

Robin Petterd: In that sort of mode of being a placemaker, what do you think's been the most successful place you've made?

Nigel Helyer: Whoa. that's a good one.

Robin Petterd: Sorry.

Nigel Helyer: Well, I mean.

Robin Petterd: , it is a really good one.

Nigel Helyer: Yeah. I feel like that about the entire process, but I've never really thought that much about it myself. I probably would think the Two Islands in Franklin Square might be of the closest, in that engages with a con- a series of contested histories and contested cultures, in a way that made the commissioning body, the council, actually quite nervous.

So you could tell, something was going on there. But, I think that my critique of it is when you have a site which is, completely neutral, from a kind of, culture point of view, and there's some attempt to give some color and some texture to an otherwise completely bland, housing estate or shopping mall which has obliterated any previous history. Franklin Square is different because it is kind of soaked in histories, both settler culture and Indigenous. But, a lot of work which is being commissioned is simply a desperate attempt to make something look like it means something.

Robin Petterd: I mean, I was even thinking about like it was actually a place book for a development in Hobart where it was, it was branded. It was a graphic designer that had sort through the place book. and it was just trying to give something that's probably a fairly-- could be a fairly bland development a different type of language as well.

But it's also interesting in terms of it's not something that I've, ever heard happening in Australia. Last time I saw it was in the Netherlands where essentially buildings would be taken over by artists, sometimes as squats. Sometimes the developers actually, fostered it as well. So it then became an interesting space for people, and then after- it became a place, that was when they started to develop it as well.

Nigel Helyer: Yeah.

Robin Petterd: Yeah. So the g- real estate's different in Australia.

Nigel Helyer: Yes, well, there's a saying that artists go where real estate agents fear to tread.

Maintaining media art as technology changes

Robin Petterd: That's a, nice way of putting it. sort of missed when we're talking a little bit more about maintenance. I actually really like the idea of media work having to be maintained. so rather than the negative of having to replace batteries, there's actually something about an involvement between a piece and the artist long term where they have to look after it.

Has that ever been part of your radar and prac- practice?

Nigel Helyer: The work, Wireless House, which is in Foley Park on Glebe Point Road, that was, I mean, a fairly ambitious piece. when it started, it takes over, a little brick building. It looks almost like a toilet block, little square thing. But it was built-- in the 1930s. and in 1935, it opened to the public with a steam-powered radio, old-fashioned radio with a long line antenna, in the park. it was really put there to, during the Depression to, entertain unemployed working class people, of which the Glebe had a lot. About 100 people would sit round public radio and listen to it.

And, oh, it wasn't public radio, it was a public radio output, but, - there was no state radio in those days, it was commercial stations. So it'd been derelict for some time, and, I was given the task of it, that involved like a two-year process of storytelling, lots and lots of recordings, thousands of files.

Also two years work with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia for, Sound Archive, content. but also making a sculptural treatment of the building, reconstructing the interior with an original radio, the radio stand, and we also provided, Sydney's first free outdoor wireless hub, which was sponsored by an internet company, lasted about four years.

You know, kind of by that time everyone had got mobile phones and didn't need it. So the park filled up. Instead of junkies, it filled up with people with laptops sitting, sitting near it.  So in that contract, we, had nominated, a kind of service arrangement because we knew that things were gonna change, especially with the kind of internet technology. the system in the wireless house it was, had, PIR sensors, the outside. So as you approach the house day or night, it would recognize your approach and go into its files, pick up a file at random, and play it. some-- of things that could go wrong with a system like that and lots of things that could wear out. So, probably about three years ago I was asked if I would be the main contractor to do a complete, refurbishing of it, both the physical, the stainless steel of screen things which surround the building. we took those off and polished them and coated them, refurbished the interior, and then completely changed the technology in there because it's again, a relatively harsh environment, dust and dirt, cockroaches, all kinds of things. yeah, I think you're right. I think there's a very good, argument for contracting the artist or the artist and the-- some other agents to maintain work because they're the ones who know how to do it best.

Robin Petterd: Yeah, and it's Getting back to that, permanency and impermanency thing as well, being able to go back to something and change it just allows a different level of creative and practical, positives. That polishing, process you just talked about, is that sort of like sort of physical refresh, but it sounds like there was a bit of conceptual refresh as well?

Nigel Helyer: Not in terms of the actual content in the audio, but certainly in the way it was delivered or making sure that it was delivered properly, I think. Another example of that would be, years ago-- I made a work years ago, 1996, called Silent Forest, that was shown first in America, and that's been shown a few times in Australia. It was shown at the National Gallery of Victoria, and they purchased it, and literally it comes apart into about 1,500 pieces, and it has 30. I think it's 32 or was it 52 speaker, outlets. And in those days it was all lead-acid batteries recharging audio systems and it was a bit of a hassle, to install, I can tell you. and at certain points it was, the National Gallery of Victoria lent it to someone for, a big exhibition, sent a team of, gallery install people with it, but they'd lost the manual. And they wrote to me and said, "We can't find the manual that you gave us, and, do you still have it?" And I thought, "I couldn't find it either, but I do have giant boxes of drawing books." And so I had to search through all of those, and I found about three drawing books which had details of it completely contradictory wiring diagrams. And so we go to the site, and of course, they wouldn't let me touch it. I had to wear cotton gloves and everything. But this is a joke, cause I was throwing it around in the studio. and I just said to them, "Look, the original was using lead-acid batteries, amplifiers that I'd hand-built, CD players." And I said, "Why don't we just, modernize it for this exhibition? It doesn't make any difference to the sound, and it's gonna make your life a whole lot easier if we use, we'll just wire it to a, computer server and do it that way." And -- In the end they went, "Okay. Sounds like a lot less hassle." So we actually rebuilt it for the exhibition.

Robin Petterd: There was, partly a actually act of conservation, but sitting there going, "Well, the core is the experience. It doesn't really make that much difference about what, how that's actually done. what's been collected and preserved is the experience, not the technology."

Nigel Helyer: Right.

Robin Petterd: Y-yeah. Yep, yep. Have you ever not had those types of opportunities, Nigel?

In terms of being able to-- Like things, how do I put it? Not been cared for, not looked after.

Nigel Helyer: Oh, yes. Several times. particularly, I mean, I'd had whole swathes of things of which have come towards the end of their life, in a bunch. one piece that won the National Sculpture Award back in 2003, I think it might have been, something like that, was resited out of a lake, and into a forest setting and, had lots of branches fall on it.

It was very fragile. the reason why it was in a lake. And that was basically wiped out. and more recently, I had a big floating audio sculpture. It was a 30, 30, speaker audio sculpture floating in a lake in, Edith Cowan University. And they sold the, entire campus and the lake that the work was sited in was gonna be filled in and turned into a car park.

So that one disappeared. And another one in Western Australia in Geraldton, which was a nine-meter high, -- kind of interactive wind sculpture, with these kind of, singing pipes inside it., in the windiest city in Australia right out on a harbor mole. like very harsh environment and, they simply didn't look after it and, the support column began to rust.

We had a bit of a ding-dong about that because, they sent me photographs showing all this rust and I said, "Well, is it rusted? Why have you let it rust?" And they said, "Well, we look after it." And I said, "Well, okay, if you look after it, why is it rusty?" And, they just said, "We look after it."

And, I asked them for their,  log for maintenance, and they.

Steadfastly refused to let me see that for-- several requests. And in the end, I just said, "You have to take it down because I'm not prepared to have a work which is in bad condition. I'm certainly not prepared for this thing top of someone.",

Robin Petterd: Yeah.

Nigel Helyer: But, they were just obstinate, and I think they just wanted to get rid of it, so they just, let it go. But that happens.

Robin Petterd: Yeah., It's probably just really hard to know at the beginning how that might pan out, with organizations across a longer period of time as well.

Nigel Helyer: Yeah, and also, people in councils, they change their jobs so fast as well, and, you might get commissioned by someone who's incredibly sympathetic and enthusiastic, and the next bunch who go, we don't like art much. We just like street furniture,"? And, that's it.

If they're not engaged and enthusiastic, then you've, got no hope in hell, really.

Robin Petterd: I'm playing a conversation that I had with someone years ago. and I'm not quite sure if it was across multiple days while I was doing the setup or whether it was the same conversation. Essentially, she complained in one moment about having to maintain the tiles on some seats, and the fact the artist was basically getting ongoing work from them every year.

And then she sort of said to me, "I mean, Robin, there's been a little sort of media work done in the public art stuff in Tasmania. Have you thought about doing that?" And it was this contradictory moment where it was like she was talking about, the effort for maintaining, but then sort of encouraging me to do something that was actually, going to need to be maintained.

Yeah, it was a really interesting moment.

Nigel Helyer: It's called inherent vice, right? that's what, an art conservator would call it, and they would say, "That has inherent vice.", Basically you're gonna always have trouble with this part of it or that part of it. So, if a commissioner is, block.

Managing contracts and financial risk in public art

Robin Petterd: Well, bit of a wrap-up question, - Nigel,. What's the greatest piece of advice you'd give to someone media in public spaces?

Nigel Helyer: Well, I think the first piece of advice for it is, do the calculations, do the numbers because a lot of people won't go anywhere near public art because they lose money., or - they could have made more money flipping burgers at McDonald's, you know. but for media, I think they really wanna look at, the showing or display conditions. and then they really wanna look at, the issue we've been talking about maintenance, upgrades, who's gonna do it. And also the, potential to the content if there was an opportunity to do that, to add files, modify files. because I think that's always an option. As things change, they may wanna change the content. And really try to negotiate, a good contract, because, a lot of public art contracts are just modified either from something that NAVA puts out or they are basically architectural contracts. I mean, I've had a contract which is like five centimeters thick and talked about bulldozers you know, things like that.

So, the other aspect of the whole public art thing, which I think has got a lot better, over the years, but, it's the contracts are often not that friendly to the artist. of course, the artist is almost exclusively the only one at economic risk. Everyone else has got a salary, everyone else is insured, got work cover.

The doesn't, and they pay for everything out of the commission. So, that's a very, very tricky thing for someone new to the game to figure out.

Robin Petterd: With Big, large paving design project, basically. The artist got a CDC of a couple of thousand dollars, and the pavers, the people who made the pavers, people who installed it, were all on wages and salaries. And so it was that moment of, like, the actual project budget was nowhere near the same as, what the artist actually got from that as well.

Nigel Helyer: One solution to that is, which happens sometimes, is that the artist's fee is quarantined from the production budget. And so for instance, I mentioned that, project I did in Korea all those years ago, in 1988. I was guaranteed a certain number of benefits, which included a fee, round-the-world air trips, accommodation for like three and a half months, a daily stipend, and we never discussed value of the commission in terms of production. told later that it was something like one and a half million US dollars, that wasn't my concern. They paid for that. And the fee I got was really modest. It wasn't that much. But it was, you know, fame and fortune package. You know, like, "You've been to the Olympics, great." But, -- I found that very much easier, situation to work in because I knew that, I was being covered in terms of remuneration, although it was modest. and that, you know, if something went wrong and we needed 10 cranes for a day, I didn't have to pay for that because, that's what really gets people in the end, in big commissions, is they often take much longer than you think they will. And usually not because of your process, but because, the city wants you to change. As in Hobart, change the site three times, which costs you lots of money when you have to redraw and redraw and redraw, change the foundations, get the archeologists in for a week, you know, all these things. and you look at that thinking, am I gonna make any money at all on this?" You know, "Am I gonna go bankrupt?" you quite easily could., and like I said before, that's one of the reasons that people steer clear of it because they know they can get burned very quickly.

Robin Petterd: Thank you. That's a really nice set of advice, Nigel. Thank you for a great conversation today.

Posted 08-08-2026