The best way of describing the process involved in public art commissions is to lead by example. This will explain what is required and how to best achieve success. Of my public art projects, in terms of their financial and critical success, a few of my larger ones were standouts. In this regard the Absolut commission alongside the Guardian and the Commonwealth Bank commissions are favorite projects. All of these projects were significant major public art pieces and both were successful on all levels. There’s rarely much of a buffer when it comes to financial rewards when you make public art. This is a simple fact about that type of work.Once in awhile you hear of certain artists being commissioned to do large public art pieces and walking away with large amounts of money in their bank for reasonably small amounts of work being undertaken, but that’s rare.
Withthe majority of my public art projects ithas been a case of love of the project being far superior for me the love of the money I was making from either of them. I did okay, as you would expect to with projects like these that take up ultimately six months or so of your time, however neither of those projects were predominantly about the money.