Nicole Smede is a warrimay and cross-cultural multidisciplinary artist based on Wadi Wadi Dharawal Country, working across sound, voice, poetry and installation. 
Her practice explores the interrelationship between land, language and memory, guided by ancestral knowledge. Through immersive installations, soundscapes, compositions and poetic works, she invites deep listening as a form of connection, restoration and return to Country and knowing.

Her practice moves across landscapes, blending field recordings, voice, instrumental composition and spoken word to create atmospheric works that are both grounded and otherworldly. Drawing on experimental and traditional forms, she builds layered sonic textures that explore blood memory, ecological balance, and renewal. Community collaboration is central to her process, working with Elders, custodians, young people, and artists across disciplines to co-create works that reflect lived experience, intergenerational knowledge, and the stories embedded in place.

Smede’s compositions have been commissioned by leading Australian festivals and ensembles, including Canberra International Music Festival, Ensemble Offspring, Open Field Arts Festival and River City Voices. Her voice features on award-winning film and television soundtracks including Goldstone, Black Cockatoo Crisis, and 1919. Her poetry appears in national anthologies including Guwayu: For All Times, What We Carry, and the Australian Poetry Journal, and her sound and video installations have been exhibited in regional and metropolitan galleries across Australia.

She has received numerous fellowships, residencies and commissions, including the Space to Create Residency through ANU and Yil Lull Studio, the First Nations Residency Fellowship at Bundanon, the APRA AMCOS Women in Music Mentorship, and the Ngarra-Burria First Peoples Composers Program. 

In 2025, she premieres Nyiirun Yiiga (We Are Here), a large-scale choral work for over 200 voices, yidaki and percussion, in her ancestral Gathang language; and her solo exhibition Bagandha yanggamba-ngga (Country Sings in Me), a 9-channel video and sound work, is presented at Shoalhaven Regional Gallery.

Nicole is a member of Mudjingaal Yangamba, an intergenerational South Coast Koori women's choir dedicated to revitalising language, cultural expression and personal stories through song. 

Her work is held in national collections and her compositions are represented by the Australian Music Centre.

Images: @teschka