Victor Waclawik has drilled water wells in the Guatemalan jungle, released weather balloons in Antarctica, and mapped the geology of Lake Eyre. He is also an artist — and the two are inseparable.
Working across immersive projection, kinetic sculpture, and large-scale installation, his practice is rooted in landscape, geomorphology, and the raw forces that shape our planet. In 2024, his kinetic work Whispers of the Deep was awarded the SALA Inspiring SA Science in Art Award — a recognition that sits at the heart of how he works: art as a form of scientific inquiry.
In 2002, Victor co-founded Plato's Cave — a three-person shadow puppet theatre collective that performed around Adelaide and projected guerrilla-style onto CBD buildings under the Adelaide City Council's Surface Tension program. It was an early and formative encounter with projection as public intervention, and with the idea that light and image could transform a building, a street, an audience.
The recipient of a Helpmann Academy travelling scholarship, Victor travelled to San Francisco to work with the Flaming Lotus Girls — a volunteer-based collective renowned for monumental fire installations at Burning Man. As a member of the collective, he worked on Xylophage (2013) before returning to South Australia to create Fire Lillies for the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
His work has appeared at Sculpture By the Sea Bondi, the SA Museum's Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, Victoria Square, the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, and Mungo National Park.