Bailey is known for her striking images of young people, including her own children, set in the open, granite countryside and box ironbark bushland that surround her central Victorian home.

Within this environment she explores themes of girlhood, boyhood, young parenthood, regional life and the drought.

Bailey has exhibited her large-scale photographs across Australia since the late 1990s. Her work has been shown at leading galleries, including The Australian Centre for Photography, the Art Gallery of NSW, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Monash Gallery of Art, Monash University Museum of Art, Stills Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery and many regional galleries throughout Australia.

Bailey was a finalist in the Centre for Contemporary Photography Documentary Photography Award and Exhibition in 1999 and 2003, the Energex Contemporary Art Prize in 2004, the National Photographic Purchase Award in 2003 and 2005, the Citigroup Private Bank Australian Photographic Portrait Prize in 2005, the Olive Cotton Award in 2005, the J Ulrick and W Schubert Photography Award in 2004 and 2005, the Adelaide University Visual Art Prize in 2006, the W & W Bowness Photography Prize in 2007 and 2009, and the City of Hobart Art Prize in 2007.

Awards and grants include an Arts Victoria, Arts Development Grant in 2009, Regional Arts Victoria Grant in 2006, Adelaide University Visual Arts Prize in 2006, NAVA Visual and Craft Artists Grant in 2005, National Photographic Purchase Award in 2003 and 2005, and an Australian Post Graduate Award in 2003.

Bailey’s works are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Monash Gallery of Art, Monash University Museum of Art, the FM Curtis Collection at La Trobe University, Adelaide University, Bendigo Art Gallery, Albury Regional Art Gallery as well as in private collections.

Bailey lives with her family in Kangaroo Flat, an outer suburb of Bendigo. She joined Oculi in 2006.