BIRD Years
Bringing together works from the last eight years, Bird Years, is a solo exhibition by Western Australian artist Anna Louise Richardson. The show considers how birds have woven their presence through significant moments in the artist’s life.
The exploration of the human–animal connection is a thread that runs deeply through Anna’s practice. Working from a farm in regional WA, her artworks take a radically optimistic lens on the everyday, using animals as stand in subjects to reflect on human experience.
‘Hope is the thing with feathers’, a sentiment expressed by Emily Dickinson, quietly suggests that birds have always existed as soulful messengers. Appearing as signs, guides and reflections, they are symbolic beings that can be seen as living between worlds. For Anna these feathered companions evoke an awareness of the cycles of life and death, and the adaptability and vitality of nature to make the most of the conditions we are in.
Working primarily with charcoal and graphite on cement fibreboard, Anna creates drawings that blend realism with stylised elements, such as enlarged scale, flattened perspectives, and cut-out shapes, to heighten the emotional impact of familiar animals.
Each work in the exhibition carries a narrative that resonates on a personal, spiritual, and emotional level, delving into themes of parenthood, family, and connection to place.
Presented as a pop-up exhibition at Lawson Flats, Perth.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE CATALOGUE
The exploration of the human–animal connection is a thread that runs deeply through Anna’s practice. Working from a farm in regional WA, her artworks take a radically optimistic lens on the everyday, using animals as stand in subjects to reflect on human experience.
‘Hope is the thing with feathers’, a sentiment expressed by Emily Dickinson, quietly suggests that birds have always existed as soulful messengers. Appearing as signs, guides and reflections, they are symbolic beings that can be seen as living between worlds. For Anna these feathered companions evoke an awareness of the cycles of life and death, and the adaptability and vitality of nature to make the most of the conditions we are in.
Working primarily with charcoal and graphite on cement fibreboard, Anna creates drawings that blend realism with stylised elements, such as enlarged scale, flattened perspectives, and cut-out shapes, to heighten the emotional impact of familiar animals.
Each work in the exhibition carries a narrative that resonates on a personal, spiritual, and emotional level, delving into themes of parenthood, family, and connection to place.
Presented as a pop-up exhibition at Lawson Flats, Perth.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE CATALOGUE
Photography: Aaron Claringbold
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Left: Anna Louise Richardson, Sign I, charcoal on cut cement fibreboard, 121 x 26 x 4cm
Middle: Anna Louise Richardson, Sign II, charcoal on cut cement fibreboard, 112 x 23 x 4cm
Right: Anna Louise Richardson, Sign III, charcoal on cut cement fibreboard, 122 x 28 x 4cm
Middle: Anna Louise Richardson, Sign II, charcoal on cut cement fibreboard, 112 x 23 x 4cm
Right: Anna Louise Richardson, Sign III, charcoal on cut cement fibreboard, 122 x 28 x 4cm
Finding a black feather is said to be an omen of positive change. A sign that something good is coming. We should pay attention to these gifts from nature. They show up literally in our paths, blow in on the breeze and sick out of the grass like flags showing the way.
Anna Louise Richardson, Swans, 2025, charcoal on cut cement fibreboard 71 x 174 x 3.5cm
Commissioned for Room Service, an immersive event that saw an historic hotel transformed as part of the Fremantle Biennale in 2025. Richardson’s work plays with the site’s history, depicting a pair of towel swans made with vintage textured towels imagining what may have greeted hotel guest in their rooms. The works are a kitsch representation of aspiration, love, and appeal to a sense of joy.
Anna Louise Richardson, Nest, 2024, graphite on paper, 56 x 76cm
Anna Louise Richardson, Swallows I, 2024, graphite on paper, 56 x 76cm
Anna Louise Richardson, Swallows II, 2024, graphite on paper, 56 x 76cm
The humble Kanamit (in Noongar), or Welcome Swallow, earned its English name – and status as the bird most tattooed on human flesh - from sailors, drunk with relief at the sight of these red-faced, agile flyers - so often the first harbingers of land ahoy. For a young Richardson, they were avian housemates whose cup-like cocoons of dried mud would adorn the eaves of her home on the family farm in the outskirts of Perth. The earthen armature of these nests so quaintly fitted with materials borrowed from the human and natural worlds the species readily move between - hair, fabric, stuffing, grass, feathers, fur - were accessible sources of wonder for Richardson and her sister as they watched generations of families hatch, grow and discover their dynamic language of flight.
Anna Louise Richardson, Am I being told off (butcherbird), 2022, charcoal on cement fibreboard, 97 x 123cm
In the years following her mother’s devastating death in 2020, Richardson was visited by birds, which she felt were visitations from her mother. She diarised these close encounters that often occurred in moments of emotional tension, then drew the birds of prey she met – owls, crows, eagles - monster sized, with eyes turned to the viewer as if seeking emotional resonance from animal witnesses.
Anna Louise Richardson, Chooken, 2022, graphite on paper, 37.5 x 53cm
Drawn around the time Richardson became an Aunty, Chooken (her child’s portmanteau of chook and chicken) embodies the sense of satisfaction that comes with becoming an aunty, an experience so close but so different from being a parent. For Richardson a broody chicken seemed a fitting depiction: warm, caring, fierce when needed, but not that responsible.
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L: Anna Louise Richardson, Aziza's Zodiac (July), 2018, graphite and glitter on paper, 100 x 70cm
R: Anna Louise Richardson, Aziza's Zodiac (April), 2018, graphite and glitter on paper, 100 x 70cm
R: Anna Louise Richardson, Aziza's Zodiac (April), 2018, graphite and glitter on paper, 100 x 70cm
These drawings form part of a series that reflect on changing artistic practice whilst navigating new parenthood, told through interactions with animals each month for a year. Serving as a record of Richardson’s oldest child’s personal history on the farm the work became a large scale zodiac calendar that diarised the first year of motherhood. Each piece has a story and reflects on the quiet space of early parenthood to reveal meaning from the everyday lives of animals whose world we occupy.