Seton’s studio practice has investigated the relationship between the individual and society, with a particular interest in the power structures that determine our attitudes and behaviour and affect our choices. This can take the form of explicit political commentary, whether on Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers (in Refoulement, 2014, Someone Else’s Problem, 2015, and The Island, 2017), or on government surveillance and displays of overt power (Elegy on Resistance, 2012 and Panoply, 2007). But Seton often also examines our expectations about cultural forms and traditions such as memorialisation, to question how we determine what has value and deserves to be recollected and valorised. This enquiry has critiqued the form and processes of art and materiality itself (Roughing Out, 2013, Cargo, 2018 and Once There, 2019), but also includes reflections on the reliability of personal memory and its role in the construction of the self and identity (Meet me Under the Dome, 2020, A History of Forgetting, 2022 and Permanent Good Stream, Some Rocks, 2022).

Seton has exhibited in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India, the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, the Canberra Public Art Festival, and Kunstenfestival Watou, Belgium, and in exhibitions at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Gertrude Contemporary, Fremantle Arts Centre, the Samstag Museum in Adelaide, and multiple regional galleries across Australia. He was the first Australian artist to win the Sovereign Asian Art Award in 2020 and was awarded the Mordant Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome in 2019. He also won the Contemporary Talents Prize at the Fondation François Schneider, Wattwiller, France in 2017.

In 2021, the Australian War Memorial awarded Seton the major Sufferings of War and Service commission for his work Every Drop Shed in Anguish, which opened in the Sculpture Garden in 2024. His work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian War Memorial, Newcastle Art Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, the Danish Royal Art Collection, Copenhagen and numerous other private and public collections.