Public Art Installation

Prawn Run

Prawn Run began with a childhood memory.

During the early months of 2020, as live-event work collapsed around the world, I was invited to consider a public art opportunity. At first, I resisted the idea. I did not think of myself as a public artist.

Then a story arrived.

My partner, Laura, remembered being taken prawning as a child: wading through the shallows at night with a gas lantern, watching prawns mistake the light for the full moon and leap towards it.

That image became the heart of the work.

I designed Prawn Run as five prawns in fanciful flight chasing a dark moon, held above the landscape as though a local memory had become visible again.

The work was site-specific, drawing from Lake Illawarra, its shoreline, the generational tradition of prawning the lake and the millennia of Indigenous fishing in those waters.

Lake Illawarra has long been an important food source. The artwork honoured the local traditions surrounding the lake while acknowledging the much older Indigenous relationship with fishing and food gathering in the area.

It was not an abstract object placed on a site.

It was a local story returned to the public realm.

Technically, the project became an exercise in sheet-metal logic. I translated the prawns into laser-cut aluminium components, resolving their curved bodies, heads, legs and details through developable surfaces, flat patterns and fabricated assemblies.

The process asked for a different kind of scale.

Instead of cranes, barges and festival deadlines, Prawn Run required patience, craft, neighbourhood logistics, public-space durability and sensitivity to how people would meet and play around the work.

One of the most important moments happened on site.

The project manager told me about a landscape gardener who positioned trees by rolling potatoes across the ground and planting where they landed.

So we did the same thing.

We rolled potatoes across the site to discover playful starting positions for the prawns, then surveyed those marks back into CAD and verified the composition through previsualisations overlaid onto site photography.

I tested the work from multiple viewpoints, checking how the prawns, moon, poles, lake and surrounding landscape would read as people approached from different directions.

Chance offered the first gesture.

Technical design confirmed the composition.

That became the spirit of the whole project: technically resolved, yet still alive to place, play and humour.

Prawn Run was installed as a public artwork in 2020. For several years, families gathered beneath the moon, children played around the prawns, and a local childhood memory became part of the landscape once again.

Experience Breakdown

• Created a site-specific public artwork inspired by local prawning memories and Lake Illawarra.
• Translated a childhood story of lanterns, moonlight and jumping prawns into five prawns in fanciful flight chasing a dark moon.
• Honoured the generational tradition of prawning the lake while acknowledging the millennia of Indigenous fishing in those waters.
• Designed the prawns and moon as a playful public gathering point beside the water.
• Developed laser-cut aluminium components through sheet-metal logic, developable surfaces, flat patterns and fabricated assemblies.
• Resolved the curved prawn bodies, heads, legs and details through technical design and hands-on fabrication.
• Used potato rolling to discover playful starting positions across the site.
• Surveyed the positions back into CAD and verified the composition through previsualisations overlaid onto site photography.
• Tested the artwork from multiple viewpoints to understand its relationship with the lake, landscape and public approaches.
• Completed the entire fabrication of the artwork myself—from laser-cut aluminium components through forming, assembly and finishing—during the early COVID period as live-event work collapsed.
• Built new workshop infrastructure and adapted production logistics around limited resources.
• Installed the work as a public artwork in 2020.
• Created a piece that became part of local memory, family gathering and public play.

Why Prawn Run Matters

Prawn Run matters because it was the project where I allowed myself to become a public artist.

It began with uncertainty, a modest commission and a local story. It became a public artwork about memory, place and the strange magic of ordinary Australian childhoods.

The work transformed prawning, moonlight and family memory into a sculptural scene that people could gather beneath and play around.

It proved that my practice did not belong only to festivals, film sets or giant temporary worlds.

It could also belong to community, landscape and public memory.

Prawn Run turned a childhood story into a place people could gather.