SARAH ENGLEDOW PLAYS WINGMAN TO LEILA JEFFREYS.

Knowing even a bit about birds, we know they don't get dressed. What they've got on, they don't put on. In Leila Jeffreys' photographs, every bird is naked - and entirely comfortable with it. Yet, as I look at them, I keep thinking of words like raiment' and livery. Look at the black silk attire of the red-tailed black cockatoos, hairpins of glass and amber beads, gorgets spangled with gold, scalloped and tiered satin opera capes; the tiny fluffy trousers on the boobook owl, a creature from a fable; the gannet's breast plumage, like furled curled petals of a Chinese white chrysanthemum; the sheath over the minuscule silvereye, filaments of mythological metals - silver, gold and gamboge - wrought by fairies.