Swan song

Swan Song is a series that follows the swan into the wetlands of Perth at first light, dwelling quietly among them and attuning to their ancient, pipe-like calls, sounds that once carried across a landscape shaped by water.

These wetlands, formerly prevalent throughout Western Australia, sustained rich biodiversity and provided life, nourishment, and ecological balance. Now increasingly abstracted, drained, fragmented, and urbanised, they persist as traces of what was once the dominant terrain. The work lingers in this threshold space, where the swan’s voice becomes both memory and witness to a vanishing and vital ecology. A glimpse into what the soundscape would have been like in West Australia pre-colonisation.