Recent fieldwork, residencies and material experiments
Yunbenun (Magnetic Island), 2026
Research visit to make underwater recordings and explore distinctive coastal geology, on Wulgurukaba Country.
With thanks to Anne Tumik, who took the photographs in which I appear.
K’gari field trip, 2025
Sunshine Coast Creative Alliance / University of the Sunshine Coast
Selective, place-led creative technology intensive on K’gari, on Butchulla Country. Through field recording, ecoacoustics and interdisciplinary workshops, the program explored practices responsive to island ecologies, knowledge systems and place. The exchange with a generous and inspiring cohort was central to the experience.
The experience on K’gari marked the beginning of my practical exploration of field recording and opened a new direction in my practice.
With thanks to Marcia Grimm, who took the photographs in which I appear.
Sound and listening
My interest in sound emerged through Hear/Here and porous, where questions of hearing and not hearing made me question the authority often given to hearing and sight. On K’gari, I began exploring those questions through field recording.
I do not assume that sound creates a universal connection to place. Listening is selective, culturally shaped and mediated by our bodies and recording technologies. Field recording has become a way of considering what sound allows me to notice about a place and what my own habits of listening might prevent me from knowing.
K’gari is a living cultural landscape under the continuing custodianship of the Butchulla people, and I invite listeners to hear these recordings with this in mind. I recorded through embodied attention, remaining present to changing conditions and recognising that my body, equipment and decisions shaped what was captured. The recordings are not neutral accounts of place, but partial encounters made from a particular position.
I made many recordings, and these selected excerpts show an early stage of this enquiry.
Clips from select recordings
Recorded from a listening position on the south east coast at dawn, as bird calls emerged against the continuing sound of the ocean.
Recorded in an inlet as it trickled into the ocean.
My heartbeat at a moment on K’gari. Rather than recording my surroundings, I recorded my body’s response to being there.
Recorded during an unexpected encounter with a young wongari (dingo). I recognise the privilege of having been present and share this recording, acknowledging the Butchulla people as the Traditional Custodians of K’gari, and the cultural significance of wongari on Butchulla Country. Further information about Butchulla cultural protocols is available here.
Bundanon Artist in Residence, 2024
I was selected to participate in Bundanon’s Artist in Residence Program alongside fellow artist Katrina Garvey, on Dharawal and Dhurga-speaking Country. We investigated sensory knowledge and the movement of information between artists and audiences.
The residency also gave me space to think more closely about my relationship with photography. I was conscious of the landscape’s layered histories. The privilege of being given time and access to work there came with a responsibility to consider what I photographed and carried away.
I have become increasingly uneasy with my own act of “taking” photos and with the currency images acquire as they circulate, so I used a Polaroid camera. Its limitations felt appropriate. Each exposure produced a single object and did not allow me to comprehensively document place.
Bundanon marked the beginning of my ongoing Polaroid practice and deepened my enquiry into photography’s act of taking.
material experiments
Polaroid skins
I have been working with the structural layers of polaroids, separating and dislodging them to explore the instability of surface and the image as residue.