In a smaller number of works, the performers improvise, each session commencing with two or three bodies huddled under loose pieces of felt and concluding when all the felt drops to the ground. Ferran intended that out of this unpredictable process previously unseen images could emerge.

The title Box of Birds happens to be a New Zealand expression, almost unknown in Australia, for joyous exuberance or wellbeing: ‘How are you today? Box of birds!’ To Ferran it suggests something else – “the fluttering energy of unquiet spirits in a confined space.”

Anne Ferran has been exhibiting since the 1980s. Her landmark series Scenes on the Death of Nature, presented at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, in 1987, established her as one of Australia’s leading photographic artists. She has been the recipient of prestigious awards, fellowships and grants, which include winning the Higashikawa International Photographer Award (2009), and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photographic Award (2003). This year Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, WA presented a major survey show of Ferran’s work, which tours to the Australian Centre for Photography, NSW. This follows The ground, the air, another large-scale show that marked the culmination of her decade-long work Lost to Worlds, and was presented by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Wollongong City Gallery. Her work is held in major public collections, including the International Museum of Photography, New York, NGA, NGV, Monash University, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, AGSA, and AGNSW.