The subject of her research and advocacy was previously intellectual property rights for artists; it is now public art from the 20th century.

The additions included section 92A that said "Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers".

[7] Late in 2008, Holloway-Smith founded the Creative Freedom Foundation (CFF), with her civil union partner, to campaign for the repeal of section 92A.

[16] Ghosts in the Form of Gifts (2009) was a collection of ten substitute pieces produced with an open design RepRap 3D printer.

Holloway-Smith gifted the 3D printer instructions for the collection from her official website under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

"[16] Pioneer City was a series of works on extra-terrestrial colonisation inspired by Holloway-Smith's interest in the exploration of Mars.

She created a marketing campaign to sell the idea of a better life in Pioneer City with advertisements on the billboard and a website.

[32] Holloway-Smith's Whisper Down the Lane (2012) ran alongside the exhibition and combined her interests in intellectual property rights and 3D technologies.

[33] Holloway-Smith gifted the 3D printer instructions for 12 miniatures from her official website under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

[19] He wrote that it was "... one smart project, charged in its complexity by contemporary issues of copyright, reproduction and future changes to the art market.

[35] Between 2014 and 2019, Holloway-Smith researched the effect of international, particularly American, leadership and control over the Internet on the national identity of New Zealand.

[37] Holloway-Smith aimed to demystify SX for the public by showing its route, physical nature and the limits of New Zealand's control over it.

The station for New Zealand's first international telephone cable, closed in the 1980s, contained boxes of colourful ceramic tiles.

They belonged to Te Ika-a-Maui (1962) (English: the fish of Māui) a mural created for the station by New Zealand artist E. Mervyn Taylor (1906–1964).

He dismissed the marker posts as "a little unnecessary visual frill" and wondered whether the scuba dive had taken place or been faked.

However, he was positive about the Whenuapai video writing "This work isn’t subtle, but it adventurously explores an important subject in ways that cleverly physicalise and visualise the unseen.

"[54] Holloway-Smith titled her thesis The Southern Cross Cable: A Tour: Art, the Internet and National Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand.

[64] In 2015, the E. Mervyn Taylor Mural Search and Recovery Project was launched for CoCA's 130th anniversary, the following year, with Holloway-Smith as director supported by Sue Elliott.

The remainder had suffered various fates: being moved to a private space or an unknown location, being walled in, painted over or destroyed by demolition.

[66][67] The project aimed to protect Taylor's remaining works, but members of the public also let them know about murals by other artists.

In 2018, the project concluded with the publication of a book Wanted: The Search for the Modernist Murals of E. Mervyn Taylor edited by Holloway-Smith.

[72][73] In 2019, Holloway-Smith collaborated with Artspace Aotearoa to research public works by New Zealand artist Guy Ngan (1926–2017).

In the early 2020s, the ministry funded PAHANZ to raise awareness of public art by putting the register of works on the web.

[80][81] For the structure on its roof, Ngan created his first major public work Untitled (1956) a glass mosaic frieze.