March 12th to April 3rd


John Kelly explores Australian history and art history through idiosyncratic symbols and deconstructions.
Renowned for his paintings of Dobell's cows; the cow imagery stems from a specific story about William Dobell's employment in WWII. Dobell was one of a group of artists who made papier-mâché cows for strategic placement around defence bases. The desire was to have Japanese pilots believe the area was nothing but benign farmland. In his work, Kelly tracks these lost works by Dobell, inserting them into Australian art history.
Kelly also pays hommage to another Australian artist Sidney Nolan, as can be seen in ‘Nolan’s Light’ left.


In more recent work, Kelly has focused on branding and logos. Aroused by the endeavor of the Australian Council for the Arts to brand the arts through their logo depicting a kangaroo and sun. Kelly is concerned about Australian culture, in the larger sense, blindly adopting the criteria of others – prescriptive, doctrinal approaches seemingly adopted with little thought or debate.