Anna-Wili Highfield

is an Australian artist, living and working on Gadigal land, Sydney.

Often made by commissions, Highfield’s sculptures are collected worldwide. They have been featured in numerous publications and held the cover of Sculpture Review USA. She has exhibited in Australia and overseas. Highfield has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The National Art School, Sydney.

Highfield’s works explore the organic qualities and resistance of materials, generating a tension between a complex realism of form and the limitations and economy of materials used. They represent life in an immediate way that conveys the energy, movement, and physical character of different creatures. Her aim is to engineer a moment of contact with nature, in a way that emphasises both the differences and startling similarities, of human and animal forms and consciousness.

Georgina Cole.

Her work has an ease and friendliness, like tokens of goodwill between her and the viewer.

Oliver Watts.

Exhibitions include:

Sydney Contemporary, Olsen stand, 2022.

Mating Dance, Glasshouse Regional Gallery, Port Macquarie, 2021 and Mudgee Arts Precinct, 2022.

Companions, Olsen Gallery, Sydney, 2019.

Spirit Faces, Olsen Gruin Gallery, NYC, 2018.

Animals, Carriageworks, Sydney, 2015.

Highfield has collaborated with Hermès in Megeve, Istanbul, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney, 2011 to 2023.

News:

Anna-Wili’s portrait busts of composers; Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO, Hildegard Von Bingen and Nina Simone; commissioned by The Composing Women’s Program at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and The University of Sydney, have been acquired by Chau Chak Wing Museum, Sydney. They remain on display at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where they were unveiled in 2022.