Leila Jeffreys’ artworks have captured the Australian imagination, inspiring Bird Nerd, a documentary by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). In 2022, Australia Post released a set of stamps of her iconic images from her High Society series, a love letter to the budgerigar.
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Leila Jeffreys is a renowned contemporary artist working across photography, moving image and installation. She is best known for images of birds, photographed at human scale, that explore and subvert the conventions of portraiture.
Each photograph is a result of a long process of fieldwork in collaboration with conservationists, ornithologists and sanctuaries, which often propel the creation of programs to protect endangered habitats. Her work draws attention to the interdependence between species, and its impact on each bird, as a concrete individual.
“Through a unique combination of technical skill, ingenuity, patience and empathy, Leila creates objects of art that are luxurious visual pleasures in themselves. By abstracting her subjects from their accustomed context, she demands focus on form, composition, and colour. Stark and warm, objective and celebratory at the same time, her photographs not only enhance our personal surroundings by their own decorative presence, but expand our joyous understanding of the world we inhabit, yet customarily see so incompletely in the short time allotted to us.“
Dr Sarah Engledow
Historian and curator
National Portrait Gallery, Australia