He was most often associated with other west coast Canadian artists, including Vikky Alexander, Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas, Roy Arden, and Ken Lum.

[1][3] His wide-ranging and often genre-busting work frequently engaged with technologies of the past: literary, psychological, and musical texts, optical devices, and film as a historical medium.

[10] Until 1997, when he represented Canada at the Venice Biennale with the film loop Vexation Island, Graham was most well known for his series of photographs of Welsh oaks seen upside-down.

[11] For this project, he employed a photographer to take black and white negatives of majestic, isolated trees in the English countryside[12] with a large-format camera.

[14] A postage stamp depicting Graham's photograph, Basement Camera Shop circa 1937 was issued on March 22, 2013, by Canada Post as part of their Canadian Photography series.

[15][16][17] In 1994, Graham began a series of films and videos in which he himself appears as the principal character: Halcion Sleep (1994),[3] Vexation Island (1997) (shown at Canadian pavilion of the 1997 Venice Biennale),[2] How I Became a Ramblin' Man (1999),[2] and The Phonokinetoscope (2002).

In this work, Graham takes up a prototype by Thomas Edison and puts forward an argument for the relation between sound and image in film.

[21] The film Lobbing Potatoes at a Gong (1969) (2006), shot on 16mm and presented as a looped projection, fictitiously documents a 1969 performance strongly reminiscent of the Fluxus movement.

The artist, played by Graham, is shown sitting on a chair in the setting of an alternative cultural institution, with an audience watching him trying to hit a gong with potatoes.