Heather B. Swann for Tidal Wave: A Shift in Scale

For contemporary Australian artist Heather B. Swann, the leap from monumental bronze to the microscopic surface of a pearl was never really a leap at all — it was a continuation. Her long fascination with the myth of Leda and the Swan, with its charged themes of transformation and the animal body, finds an unexpected echo in the pearl itself: a substance formed through irritation inside a living creature. In our conversation with Heather, she talks about how drawing remains the constant thread running through her practice even as scale radically shifts her thinking, and why she sees the person wearing her jewellery not as a passive owner but as a performer whose body completes the work.

PO8: How do you see the relationship between the mythical themes in your past work and the organic, material reality of the pearls you are using now?

HS: I have spent years working with the myth of Leda and the Swan, exploring that intense collision of transformation, power, and the animal body. When I began working with pearls, the connection was immediate. A pearl is born from the exact same energy—it is a physical transformation born from irritation inside a living, animal body. That visceral parallel resonated deeply throughout the entire making process.

PO8: Did moving from large-scale sculpture to the tiny surface of jewellery change the way you use drawing as a tool for thinking?

HS: Drawing is the heartbeat of my practice; it is how I solve problems and find form before it ever becomes a three-dimensional sculpture. However, shifting to the scale of a pearl's surface completely altered the relationship between my hand and my mind. Working that minutely forced my thinking to become incredibly condensed, compressing the expansive gesture of drawing into a microscopic, highly concentrated form of problem-solving.

PO8: Do you consider the person wearing your jewellery to be a collaborator, and does their body influence the actual physical design of the object?

HS: I have always viewed my sculptures as "sculpture performance tools", objects designed to activate space and invite collaboration. Because of this, I absolutely think of the earring wearer as a performer. Imagining the specific movements, weight, and presence of the body that will eventually carry this work completely dictates how I shape and structurally balance the piece.

Heather B. Swann with Gallery Director Melanie Katsalidis at the opening of Swann's show, Melanie and The Night Falls at Station Gallery, 2025.