Video

Craig Walsh’s Monuments (Promo)

2023/2024 Tour Dates


June 23 – July 28, 2024
Art Park
Monuments
New York, NY

Please check back soon for newly announced tour dates!

Photo Gallery

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Press

The digital works continue to animate landscapes and public spaces around the globe, and they’ve evolved in breadth and scope

Grace Ebert, Colossal
full article (PDF)

Walsh positions the luminescent faces in the fraught, timely debate over whom we should honor in public space – and how.

Kelsey Ables, Washington Post
full article (PDF)

[Craig Walsh’s] eerie and inspiring projections of human faces on trees are already an Internet sensation.

Susan Froyd, Westword
full article (PDF)

More press

For the past eight years, the Australian artist has created a series of exhibits called Monuments that play with the idea of who we commemorate, and how.

Elizabeth Segran, Fast Company
full article (PDF)

Walsh challenges the concepts and expectations of history and public monuments in civic spaces.

Andrea Simpson, ArtsHub
full article

Repertory

Built for the great outdoors, Craig Walsh’s MONUMENTS celebrates selected individuals through large-scale, nighttime projected portraits onto live trees in public spaces for stunning effect. MONUMENTS challenges traditional expectations of public monuments and the selective history represented in our public spaces. The installations present a haunting synergy between the human form, nature, and the act of viewing. Enormous night-time projections transform trees into sculptural monuments. Host sites select subjects to celebrate and honor through their stunning portraitures. Installations typically include 3 portraits installed for 4 weeks of nighttime viewing. Recent MONUMENTS include installations for: Arizona Arts Live, Tucson; Without Walls Festival, in San Diego; and Moss Arts Center in Blacksburg, VA.

ENCOUNTERS is a site-specific, large-scale, video installation which projects a family of 3D animated (prehistoric) plesiosaurs into existing waterways and public sites. The installation has two components: a large-scale projection directly onto the water surface and a large surveillance monitor positioned in a public site near the water projection. The creatures are visible after dark, as they swim, dive and surface along a large body of water. During the day as well as night, the plesiosaurs can be viewed through the surveillance monitors which appear to be providing live footage of the organisms underwater.

The animations are convincing illusions as the plesiosaurs appear to exist below the surface and randomly emerge and submerge in a looping sequence (designed to loop seamlessly for 20 minutes, without any start or finish). The sighting by the audience is very much like other interactions humans might have with water species (such as seeing whales or dolphins in a river or from a boat).

ENCOUNTERS formed out of an artistic collaboration between Walsh and the expert scientists, chief curators, and senior palaeontologists at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia. ENCOUNTERS enables this extinct species to convincingly reappear in a place they haven’t been seen since the Triassic Period and into the late Cretaceous Period (215 million to 66 million years ago).

For a complete description: Encounters Marketing Nov 2022

ENCOUNTERS information doc

“For the past eight years, the Australian artist has created a series of exhibits called Monuments that play with the idea of who we commemorate, and how.”

Elizabeth Segran, Fast Company full article (PDF)

“Walsh challenges the concepts and expectations of history and public monuments in civic spaces.”

Andrea Simpson, ArtsHub full article

Bios

Craig Walsh is a visual artist based in Brisbane, AUS. Over the last 30 years, Walsh has become widely known for his pioneering works – including innovative approaches to projection mapping in unconventional sites. His site-responsive works have animated natural environments and features such as trees, rivers and mountains, as well as public art projects in urban and architectural space. He is also renowned for his site interventions at live events, including iconic works at music festivals across Australia and internationally.

Walsh’s work remains distinctive for its conceptual underpinnings and deftly woven narrative. Over recent years he has extended his digital arts expertise into work with diverse communities, enabling large-scale participation as collaborators in contemporary art projects such as Home Gwangju (South Korea, 2012), Traces — Blue (Setouchi, Japan, 2013), and FIVE (DADAA Inc., Western Australia, 2013 -14).

Downloads & Links

Artist’s website
Monuments website
Craig Walsh on Facebook
ENCOUNTERS information doc
Podcast episode: “Monuments in the Forest”
Reimagining Monuments: A Conversation Among Artists (starts at 15:29)
Viral Social Media posts from Sept, 2020 Charlotte, NC Monuments on Instagram & Twitter

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