ARTIST PROFILE
Jess Leonard
Jess Leonard is a Sydney based emerging artist working across various photographic mediums, including a recent return to film. Her practice investigates the life and death of birds and animals, arousing morbid curiosities whilst exploring the beauty in what has passed on. Jess graduated Sydney University’s College of Arts majoring in photomedia, and received the Deans award for her year. Since then, she has continued to work and study in the arts and museum industry and has made the finals of various prizes, awards, and group exhibitions.
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Statement
Perhaps uncanny and slightly macabre, my works explore themes of nature and death. Through specimens of decay, such as mould, roadkill, and taxidermy, I attempt to arouse morbid curiosities and seek to reveal a beauty in death, playing on the relationship between the organic and the unnatural. Furthering these investigations, recent works examine humanity’s connection and estrangement from nature through the introduction of figurative elements.
Left to decay by the roadside or preserved for display, I’m fascinated by conflicting processes of death and the methods of preservation put in place to defy it. Photography, like taxidermy, is an act of conservation, and I’m interested in how subjects are suspended in time through the lens. Never decomposing past the point of the photograph, decay is defied, and death ultimately conquered.
CV
2024 Finalist Lethbridge Landscape Prize, Brisbane
2023 Group Show ‘Home’ Saywell Gallery, Marrickville
2023 Highly Commended Mullins Conceptual Art Award, Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre
2022 Finalist Du Rietz Art Award, Queensland
2022 Finalist Lethbridge 20,000 Small Scale Art Award, Queensland
2022 Finalist The Percival Photographic Portrait Prize, Townsville
2021 Finalist Prospect Portrait Prize, Adelaide
2021 Finalist Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, Campbeltown
2021 Finalist Northern Beaches Environmental Art and Design Awards, Manly
2021 Finalist Ravenswood Australian Womens Art Prize, emerging artist, Sydney
2021 Highly Commended Lethbridge Landscape Prize, Brisbane
2021 Finalist Reimagine Art Prize, Hornsby
2021 Group Show, The Birds, traffic jam galleries, Sydney
2020-2022 Curated ‘Untitled’ group exhibition at traffic jam galleries, Sydney
2020 Finalist in the Tony White Memorial Art Prize, Arts in the Valley Kangaroo Valley
2020 Finalist The Little Things Art Prize, Saint Cloche gallery, Sydney
2020 Finalist Stanthorpe Art Prize, Queensland
2020 Finalist Lethbridge 20,000 Small Scale Art Award, Queensland
2020 Group show, Untitled. 2020, traffic jam galleries Sydney
2019 Finalist Pro Hart Outback Art Prize, Broken Hill
2019 Finalist Banyule Works on Paper, emerging artist, Victoria
2019 Brunswick Small Works, Brunswick Street Gallery, Victoria
2019 Finalist Lethbridge 20,000 Small Scale Art Award
2019 Highly Commended in the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize – Emerging
2018 Finalist Kangaroo Valley Arts Prize
2016 University of Sydney Collage of Arts Deans Graduate Award
STUDY
2016 Bachelor of Visual Arts Sydney University College of Arts, Major in Photomedia
2024 Post Graduate Certificate Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, Deakin University
