Robyn Lees-West is a UK-born textile artist who relocated to Australia in 2012 and now works from a home outside Melbourne, where the local birdlife has become her primary source material. Her practice centers on faux taxidermy: sculptural birds built entirely from reclaimed and retro fabric rather than any animal remains, a choice rooted in a childhood pull toward Victorian-era taxidermy museums combined with a long-running fascination with colour and pattern. While birds dominate her output, her fabric menagerie extends further, with rats and cats also taking shape under the same stitched, faux-taxidermy approach, broadening the range of creatures she reimagines in cloth.
Technically, the work leans heavily on patience and hand skill. Each sculpture involves many hours of stitching and embroidery, with fabric manipulated and layered in ways that approximate the texture and movement of real fur or feathers. The pieces are built from recycled and vintage textiles, a material choice that keeps the sculptures colourful and pattern-heavy while tying the practice to slower, resourceful craft traditions rather than mass production. That combination of salvaged cloth and dense handwork gives every piece a distinct personality — some are described as having their own quirks, right down to the occasional hat.
What makes the project compelling beyond its craft is the quiet reversal at its core: taxidermy, historically tied to preservation of the dead, is rebuilt here as something soft, replicable and entirely cruelty-free. By substituting cloth for skin and feathers across birds, rats and cats alike, Lees-West keeps the ornamental language of natural history display while stripping out its darker material history, turning a Victorian curiosity into a contemporary, sustainable form of storytelling. Her stated ambition to eventually build larger-scale pieces suggests the work is still expanding in scope, treating each new creature as both a technical challenge and a continuation of the same fabric-based menagerie.
More info: Instagram.
