The political statement in Steve Peterson's work is much more overt, while still addressing notions of territory. Peterson has taken a step beyond Will's appropriations of real-life objects, incorporating a live security guard and dog into his installation entitled "Turf". Reminiscent of Oppenheim's outdoor piece where a viewer had to find his/her way through a field of dogs tied to posts, the guard dog in "Turf" is also defending its territory.

The installation's backbone is a series of surveillance photographs of a man urinating behind a chain-link fence. A bold message "The Same Battle Over and Over Again", is proclaimed along their bottom edge. Everyone in the installation has borders to the territory they repetitiously mark and protect: the dog is bound by the length of its rope, the guard's domain ends with the installation walls, and the man in the photograph, cut off by the chain link fence, is the artist himself, symbolically protecting his territory as the maker of art the realm of creative genius. The irony of the piece is revealed in the valueless nature of the things being guarded. As a political gesture, it points to the abstract notion of borders and their manifestation as dotted lines on maps, having little or no relationship to the physical or social landscape the delineate.

There is pathos in the dog's futile gesture of attempting to act like an obstacle to the art which is neverthrless easily consumed by the viewer. As well, the issues of public and private are raised when the banal act of urination as a sign of ownership, is 'framed' and repeated across the extent of the installation, not unlike the ubiquitious media frame.

Peterson's use of the installation as a means of presentation is more engaging and experimential for an audience when compared to more traditional forms of expression. In this regard he shares an objective with a new generation of artists who wish to draw their viewers into greater involvement with the art. Consequently, audiences are being actively provoked and challenged to bring their own interpretations to the art. The works are not didactic statements of fact, but often intellectually and visually stimulating collections of images offering a multitude of outcomes and solutions.