The statue, in Fletcher Park in Newcastle in NSW's Hunter region, is "made of marble and pure white", University of Newcastle Associate Professor Nancy Cushing said.

"It's a beautiful statue. He's standing there in a frock coat, looking very dignified," said A/Prof Cushing, a historian who is leading the project.

"I'm not trying to make a villain out of James Fletcher, but he presents a good statue for us to work with.

"With any historical figure, you'll find something you don't necessarily agree with now."

She said Fletcher was "a man of the late 1800s".

He owned the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate from 1876 to 1889.

"He was a highly regarded newspaper proprietor," A/Prof Cushing said.

"He started as a coal miner in Scotland. He became a coal mine owner and went on to be a politician. He had a very successful career."

Fletcher was "very much pro-coal mining industry".

While coal boosted the economy, it also left Newcastle with "a legacy of air pollution up until the mid-20th century".

"And coal has contributed to climate change."

Fletcher, she said, was "very much a man of his time, opposing Chinese immigration to Australia".

"That was the norm at the time. They were putting in place what led to the white Australia policy after federation," she said.

He was also known for bringing capital and labour together.

When coal miners and coal-mine owners were in dispute, with long-term strikes occurring, Fletcher was someone who could "negotiate between those two different positions".

The research project will enable the various sides of people represented in monuments, like Fletcher, to be explored and reimagined using digital art in partnership with The Lock-Up art space.

As part of the project, a drone was used to take a series of photographs from different angles to "make a virtual replica of the statue".

Digital tools will enable artists to change the shape and colour of the statue and critique it.

"We see this as a pilot project," A/Prof Cushing said.

"We'd love to make a democratic tool available for free online, so anyone could get their copy of the statue or other statues in the future and make their own modifications to it."

Nikolas Orr, who is working on the project as a co-investigator, said "this project is moving radicalism to the digital space".

"So you're not painting directly on the monument, you're painting on a three-dimensional digital replica of the monument," said Mr Orr, who is researching vandalism and destruction of colonial monuments.

Mr Orr is recruiting three artists for the project.

"The artists are tasked with modifying the statue in some symbolic way to tell an alternative story, or a story about Fletcher that is not immediately apparent with the existing statue," he said.

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He said it was stimulating and challenging working with artists.

"Generally speaking, they're very critical thinkers and they can pull your project apart."

One of the artists had raised concerns that the project could channel rebellion to suit institutions that don't want statues and monuments vandalised.

The artist was concerned that the project could act as "a safety valve", pushing radical energy online and preventing "real change".

Mr Orr said the artist was "very insightful and I share those concerns".

"With this project, we're collaborating with government and institutions, so there's only so much you can do while you're working in that space."

Nevertheless, he doesn't believe the project will act as a safety valve.

"I'm researching that now, seeing what the political scientists and social psychologists say about that."

He said the project could draw attention to important issues.

"It could be a first step towards more meaningful change."

The Lock-Up artistic director Courtney Novak said "we're linking the research to practicing artists".

"We're very familiar with contemporary artists who have worked with monuments and that retelling of historical narratives," Ms Novak said.

The Lock-Up recommended artists who would "work really well on the project and have a lot to say about this really interesting area".

"Artists are always wanting to tell a story. The Lock-Up itself is a space that promotes storytelling and challenging societal norms."

Ms Novak said the Lock-Up aimed to promote art that makes people "come and see an exhibition here and then walk away with a different perspective", having thought about the issues on display in "a more intense way".

"Because of that reason it works well for us to work on this project with Nicholas and Nancy."

The Lock-Up will also host a symposium for the project later in the year, after the artists are selected.

"We've linked them to a lot of Indigenous artists that we're familiar with, so we can have that First Nations narrative examined in the project."

As a historian, A/Prof Cushing watched with interest as statues around the world were contested during Black Lives Matter protests last year.

"Some of them were graffitied, some had bits knocked off, some were completely knocked over or torn down," she said.

She supported such moves, as the statues represented "values from the past that are no longer current in contemporary society".

"Then I started talking to my historian colleagues and they were much more circumspect than I was.

"Historians are all about evidence. By destroying statues, we lose that record of past attitudes and the way they were expressed.

"It's like burning books in some ways. It's like denying the past if you get rid of it completely."

Nevertheless, she remained concerned about statues perpetuating outdated values in public places.

In some cases, such statues represented "an invader" or people who caused great harm.

Captain Cook statues and plaques, for example, have been the focus of concern in Australia.

In Newcastle, Mr Orr's research found that activists allegedly removed Cook plaques from the Civic Park fountain in 2020 and 2021.

There has also been a reckoning on the essence and meaning of public monuments in the UK. This led to a conversation in Britain about statues and monuments effectively endorsing imperialism and white supremacy.

"Monuments demonstrate how visual and material culture can be weaponised to obscure the violence that characterised British colonial expansion," University of Nottingham postdoctoral research fellow Rebecca Senior wrote in The Conversation in 2020.

She argued that some monuments had been designed to conceal oppression. Their existence served to sanitise violence and erase brutal aspects of history.

Elsewhere, a movement to remove Confederate monuments in the US began after the 2015 Charleston Massacre, in which a white supremacist murdered nine African Americans at a church in South Carolina.

Another wave of Confederate statue removals and renamed places happened in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

In the former Soviet Union, statues of Stalin, Lenin and other communist leaders have been removed and placed together in parks in Lithuania and Hungary. They echo evil and horrifying histories of state propaganda and oppression.

A/Prof Cushing said moving statues to parks doesn't necessarily create opportunities for reflection.

She wondered what else could be done to tackle the statue dilemma "in a way that would protect the historical fabric".

One solution, she believed, was to establish new ways for statues and monuments to be interpreted.

As such, the project was created to offer "the possibility to rework statues in a way that expresses different views".