John Dahlsen on his most successful project
In terms of an individual project I would most likely look towards a larger one or ones. My favourite project in this regard is the ‘Absolut Dahlsen’ commission. I would have to rate this alongside the Guardian project as the two most favourite projects. There are a number of reasons why I come to this statement.
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Both of these projects were significant major public art pieces and both were very successful on all levels. There is never really 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 some 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 is very rare.
With the projects I’ve mentioned here it was also a case of love of the project being far superior for me the love of the money I was making from either of these two projects. 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 was about the money.
The Absolute commission was a really wonderful experience for length, mainly due to the team I was working with throughout the whole project. This included the executives from absolute who worked with me most surprisingly in a lateral manner. This really helped keep an exciting flavour from the beginning, all the way through to its completion. The advertising designer team Whybyn Lawrence were all fantastic which included Stuart Clark and his assistant Lara, who also came to Byron Bay to my studio on a number of occasions to see the development of the work and to give the input which was always welcome.
I had some real professionals lined up to help with this whole project. This began with my engineer at the beginning through to the fabrication companies which helped me put together the core sculpture upon which I attached the thousands of flip-flops or as we call them here in Australia ‘thongs’.
