2025
EXHIBITION: A Nest in the Hills: The Symbiosis of Women and Birds in Contemporary Australian Art, Mudgee Arts Precinct, NSW, curated by Lizzy Galloway, 12 December 2025 – 15 March 2026. Artists include: Petrina Hicks, Anna-Wili Highfield, Deborah Kelly, Lucy Culliton, Leila Jeffreys, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Michelle Cawthorn, Dianne Fogwell, Kim V. Goldsmith, Denise Faulkner, Nicole Ison, Fleur MacDonald, Aleshia Lonsdale, Kim Harding, Michelle Steven and Pamela Welsh. MORE
WORK: An Unkindess, 2025, field recorded soundscape composition in stereo playing on loop throughout the exhibition space, duration: 7 minutes
Ecofeminist and philosopher, Val Plumwood wrote that “In re-animating (matter), we become open to hearing sound as voice, seeing movement as action, adaptation as intelligence and dialogue, coincidence and chaos as the creativity of matter.” What if we heard the ubiquitous Australian Raven’s iconic call not as noise but dialogue in an overdue and much needed conversation—between them and with us.
The hero of An Unkindness is the Australian Raven, who make quiet, croaky murmuring sounds when giving each other attention on the roost, yet whose territorial call is the familiar slow, high ah-ah-aaaah—the last drawn-out note reverberating through soundscapes across Australia. The volume, pitch, tempo and order of notes changes depending on the message—it’s how they communicate with other birds. When foraging, ravens also make a call and answer sequence when out of sight of one another, and when birds in flocks fly across the territory of other ravens, they make a single high-pitched caa to say: We’re just passing through!’.
Often collectively called ‘crows’, the evolution of the highly intelligent Corvid family that includes ravens and crows is intimately entwined with ours. Ravens of all species have been credited as way-finders, messengers, keepers of secrets, and talisman, also associated with bad luck, death and the dark arts. Despite or because of this, ravens and crows are one of the most persecuted birds in human history. The raven’s collective name includes an unkindness, a conspiracy, and a treachery, while a group of crows is commonly called a murder. It is indeed an unkindness.
EXHIBITION: Resonance: Dialogues in Art and Ecology, Southern Forest Arts’ The Painted Tree Gallery, Western Australia, curated by Sharmila Woods, 29 November 2025 – 1 February 2026 . Artists include: Tarsh Bates, Renata Buziak, Kim V Goldsmith, Lee Harrop, Susan Hauri-Downing, Catherine Higham, WhiteFeather Hunter with Kate Goff, Forest Keegel, Heidi Kenyon x Friendly Conspiracy, Linda Knight, Annette Nykiel, Perdita Phillips, Jane Richens, Debbie Symons, Cassandra Tytler, and Clarice Yuen. An exhibition of Australian members of ecoartspace. MORE
WORK: Anywhere on Earth, 2025, experimental soundscape composition in wall mounted timber vessel, with headphones, duration: 5 minutes
More than half the life on Earth is in the soil beneath our feet. It’s the most biodiverse habitat on the planet. As humans we assume this world is silent. Miniscule and microscopic species shuffle, scuttle, scamper, wriggle, and burrow between particles and pores, shifting and reshaping with the seasons and time—time we cannot fathom.
Soil fauna, fungi, bacteria and plants live symbiotic, intimately connected lives attuned to circadian and circannual rhythms, interrupted by climate change and human activity. Anywhere on Earth demands we lean in and listen to earthworms, ants, crickets, slaters, and beetle larvae, and the microscopic life we can only imagine challenging anthropocentric views of time, scale, and value. This multi-layered, often acousmatic composition of field recorded sound is the soundtrack to a more collaborative and resonant dance of life, where the heartbeats of humans and more-than-humans are in sync with Earth’s cyclical rhythms.
Anywhere on Earth is a 20-track mix including field recordings of wind, rain, invertebrates, electromagnetic fields, the melody of wind on fencing wire, photosynthesising plants, dewy sundews, birdsong, my slowed heartbeat, and drone chords.
The following presentation was recorded by curator Sharmila Wood as part of a series of artist talks for the Resonance exhibition.
2024
EXHIBITION: First Families, Maliyan Cultural Centre, Wellington NSW, 2 November – 13 December 2024. First Families was a partnership between Wellington Local Aboriginal Land Council, Wellington Aboriginal Corporation Health Service, and Orana Arts funded by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund.
WORK: Yarngun, 2024, a multi-track soundscape composition in wall mounted timber vessel, with headphones, duration: 6 minutes
When they came to Australia, my convict and settler ancestors relied on the natural environment of their new country to survive, but found the landscape, its trees and soils unfamiliar and hostile. There are trees alive today in Wellington, New South Wales, Australia,. that bore witness to the injustices of colonisation and settlement in the early 1830s, surviving to mark the generations who followed.
Yarngun explores this history in a composition of field recordings from the junction of the Wambuul Macquarie and Bell Rivers—a site of cultural and historical significance to the traditional owners of the land, the Binjang people of the Wiradjuri Nation, as well as to those who later lay claim. The story is told through the crackles, rumbles and creaks deep inside a majestic River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) that has stood over the river junction for at least 200 years, and the voice of water, wind, leaves, birds, frogs and insects that give this place its sonic identity; and the recorded words of a descendent of one of Wellington’s first families. Yarngun is a traditional Wiradjuri word meaning the roots of a tree—the foundations of living beings that grow, branch, flower and seed new generations.
My deepest gratitude to proud Wiradjuri woman, Kerryann Stanley for sharing her family history journey with me in the creation of this work and giving voice to the importance of knowing your roots to a deep sense of identity and belonging.
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