For more than 20 years Giles Walker has been turning industrial odds and ends into fully functional kinetic robots.

The UK scrap artist was recently in Australia taking one of his more provocative works to the streets of Melbourne.

His robot, made of mannequin limbs and scrap materials from discarded cars, has a CCTV camera for a face and gyrates around a pole.

"It's going to the idea of voyeurism and then the issue of who has the power in voyeurism — is it the watched or watchers — which is kind of an argument that goes around the idea of stripping and pole dancing," he said.

"Who has the power, is it the stripper or the people watching?"

Recently the piece was put on the back of a ute and taken through the streets of Melbourne.

Mr Walker said when he first made the robot in the early 2000s, he was making a statement about the idea of the "surveillance state".

"I built it at a time when Britain had been called the most surveyed society in the world and we were being told that having CCTV cameras all around the place was going to stop crime.

"The first thing was there are these kind of mechanical peeping toms all round London looking at you."

Degenerate, underbelly robots

Giles Walker builds his robots out of scrap materials like mannequins and old car parts. ( ABC: Jason Om )

Mr Walker has a history of making art that explores the most disenfranchised parts of society.

"Most robots, they're a vision presented to you of an efficient future or a better future," he said.

"The robots I build tend to be the degenerates or the underbelly of society.

"The unemployed, the homeless, the sex workers."

Mr Walker likes using oily, old car parts from scrap yards and using them to build intricate robots with moving parts.

"I discovered the windscreen wiper motor and all the other 12 volt elements, like the electric windows inside the cars, and sort of put them inside the sculptures, making bits move.

"To be honest I'm not into the technological side particularly, it's more I'm into the end result."

Homeless robots tell real stories

The homeless robots drew massive crowds in England. ( Supplied: Giles Walker )

One of his most provocative and memorable artworks was the "homeless robots" he built for his Outside The Box project in 2010.

Mr Walker spent six months recording his conversations with homeless people and using them in the work.

"I went round recording about 60 different homeless people telling their life story and then I programmed their stories into this robot so every time someone walks past it a new story will come out.

"The irony is you stick a homeless robot there and it got a massive crowd so people will take notice of a homeless robot but not a homeless person."

A 'sense of violence'

The Last Supper robots sit around the table and have an eerie conversation. ( Supplied )

One of his most recent artworks, called The Last Supper, was modelled on the story of the final meal Jesus shared with his Apostles before his crucifixion.

"The piece has been to LA and it's now about to go into the London Science Museum for three months next year as part of a big robot exhibition they're doing."

Thirteen robots sit around a table talking to each other and the effect is both humorous and frightening.

"The dialogue doesn't really make exact sense but it sort of enhances this sort of threat, sense of violence that runs underneath the piece."

As part of the same exhibition, Mr Walker has recreated one of the world's first robots.

Eric the robot was built in the UK in the late 1920s but he disappeared and no one knows what happened to him.

Mr Walker has built a replica of Eric in his workshop, ready to be shown in January next year.