IN what will be his last tenure as artistic director of the Fremantle Biennale, Swiss-West Australian curator Tom Müller is steering the festival through the 2025 edition with a bold site-responsive project at the heart of the city’s historic port region.

Running from November 13-30, SANCTUARY 25 will transform the coastline, hidden buildings and waterways of the Walyalup/Fremantle region. 

Müller’s own creative contribution is the repurposing of a skeletal building at the corner of Tydeman and Port Beach Road owned by Fremantle Ports. He describes scoring access as a “personal victory”.

There, a sound-and-light work titled Whalefall, co-created with internationally-renowned composer Ben Frost, will pay tribute to a sperm whale-stranding event.

“In late ’23, a lone sperm whale beached itself at Port Beach and I remember it ended up dying on the sandbar at Rockingham,” Müller said.

“Many of us who witnessed that, it left quite an impression. 

“Then the sound musician from Iceland, ex-Melbourne, is a sperm whale sonic specialist; he’s got some amazing field recordings. 

“I’m a sperm whale buff myself from a different perspective, and was like ‘hey, let’s work together and maybe pay tribute to this whale that sort of graced our shoreline temporarily, and using this relic of a building as kind of a way of reawakening the colossus.

“We’re going to be using these field recording of whales that have been remastered and recomposed into a 20 minute show, and I’ll be using a few drones and a few lighting fixtures and really lots of very, very loud music – but all about the whale. 

“They’ll be running for two nights, five sessions; they’re free to the public to come in.

Müller described the build-up to the festival as “a bit more challenging this year”, with fewer new venues to deploy. 

At the festival’s main hub, the Manjaree (Bathers Beach) precinct, they are erecting a temporary “community kitchen” atop the remnants of an old colonial whaling station.

“There’s an actual foundation for the old colonial whaling station so we were building around that and we had the archaeologist watching if we were to unearth an artefact. … from a regulatory and compliance respect it’s been extremely painful and labourious, I’ve gotta say — like next level.”

“However we felt committed in addressing that area as an ongoing festival site. … There’s the Sound Sauna, Duncan Wright’s Veil contemplation camera obscura, which is like this homage to his late grandfather, which is all about looking at the beach in reverse inside a black cabin.

“There’s Sound Sauna where we commissioned over 30 different composers, musicians, spoken word and performance artists all talking back to the Indian Ocean. 

“That’s a real real win to have that in there. 

Müller says the architectural design of the kitchen by local architects Officer Woods, was anchored in sustainability and reuse. At the same time, the festival team dealt with multiple government departments, heritage regulators and community stakeholders.

“The artwork behind winning over the various jurisdictions and stakeholders, and having all these different state government departments down there working with us and understanding why it is that we are doing these things, and actually getting through that, was a personal victory for all of us. 

“But it’s just great to bring that piece of land back to the people and creating little activations that maybe augment what it’s already doing. 

“We’re doing little swimming sessions in the morning. 

“There’ll be lots of community activations beyond the actual works themselves so, yeah, we were excited about what Manjaree can feel and look like for three weeks.”

Manjaree

Müller revealed that the festival’s engagement with the Arthur Head / J-Shed precinct is part of a longer strategic vision tied to the 2029 centenary, and plans to hand the area to First Nations groups.

“Absolutely: So already a few years ago, a part of the bigger design was — knowing that the J shed tenancies would obviously come to an end at some stage — we had put a proposal in to imagine a temporary bathhouse at the J-shed,” he said.

“The idea was to hand over the J-shed tenancy to the first nation’s group, which is what the City’s long-term strategic plan is looking at; by 2029 we hand the whole Arthur Head precinct back to the First Nations group for them to do what they need to do and so we had offered to create a transitional interstitial activation.

“That was met with some protest from the community on a number of fronts, so that’s why we kind of deflected and did something a bit more modest with a Sound Sauna, but very aware of it and looking forward to seeing what comes up next.”

The festival’s theme, Sanctuary, underpins the artistic program this year and interrogates how we define sanctuary in a shifting world.

“This place is so much of a bubble, which we love and celebrate, and how do we invite other people that maybe don’t live or work here to bring a sense of self into this place, so how do we define sanctuary? 

“Is it about being safe from others?

“Is it about feeling in solidarity with community around you; all these provocations and questions are put to all the artist as a way of thinking of how you temporarily occupy space. 

“When you make work what does it mean to impose or impress something upon the landscape that’s quite established, everyone’s happy — do we need it? 

“How sanctuary has shifted in meaning from its inception in the early kind of medieval times to today and how we make collective sanctuary today.”

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A tin garden shed sits quietly by the sea. Inside, it’s dark, warm, cocooned from the wind and salt. A single aperture faces the ocean, casting light across the walls — a vast seascape and a horizon, shaped by the shifting light. It’s not quite an image — more a suggestion, a feeling, an atmosphere, that changes as the light moves. And when the sun goes down, it disappears. 

Created by Fremantle-based artist Duncan Wright, Veil transforms a place of deep personal resonance: his late grandfather’s studio. The shed’s façade is covered in years of careful inscriptions — remarks, quiet thoughts and family occasions — once scrawled by artist Gareth Morse. A place of deep reflection and experimentation for his grandfather. Veil is a posthumous collaboration across generations — an attempt to glimpse what lies beyond the visible.