As the Sun headed to the oceanic horizon, a crowd gathered to witness Whalefall in the old Port Beach Shed. It’s one of Fremantle Bienalle 2025’s Sanctuary-themed events.
I saw it last night and it’s on again tonight night 8-11pm. Wear a jacket. It’s an outside event.
As the Biennale info advises, Artists Ben Frost and Tom Mùller collaborate on Whalefall, a new temporary work conceived in response to the landmark Port Beach Shed — a skeletal, stand-alone structure that stands sentinel at the intersection of Tydeman and Port Beach Roads, gazing out over the vast Indian Ocean.
The work pays homage to a rare and solemn event: the appearance of a lone sperm whale, the largest of the toothed whales, which came dangerously close to Port Beach before becoming stranded on a sandbar near Rockingham. Despite efforts to assist, the whale died, leaving behind a haunting presence.
Whalefall transforms the existing building edifice into a sanctuary of sound and light — a spectral memorial to this marine giant. The structure becomes an illuminated carcass, pulsing with sonic echoes that reference the whale’s extraordinary acoustic world. Sperm whales communicate and echolocate through powerful clicks, trumpets, and codas, with vocalisations reaching up to 230 decibels — the loudest of any animal on Earth.
In this work, Frost and Mùller evoke the ghostly resonance of these underwater signals, reimagining the shed as both a beacon and a requiem — a place where land meets sea, memory meets myth, and silence is filled with the language of giants”
It was a haunting experience.
Note: the show runs for 20 minutes, starting at 8 pm and there are 2 shows each hour.
*Story and photographs by Jean Hudson @jeansodyssey
Jean Hudson is our Shipping and Sailing Correspondent and also a regular feature writer, reviewer and photographer here on the Shipping News. You may also like to follow up her informative Places I Love stories, as well as other feature stories and Freo Today photographs, right here.
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