The ‘Lost’ Kellies

They accused him of bushranging, they threw everything at him to bring him to trial, they then hung the young man and he has become a folk hero in the process.

Ned Kelly was immortalised into our artistic psyche by the late great Australian artist Sidney Nolan who simplified his form into the basic black blocks of a horizontal rectangular visor, a thin black neck and a vertical rectangular bodyshape, dangling legs and arms  with a a rifle floating around the gestural form. 

I have been fossicking in Op Shops looking for canvasses to paint over, discarded Sunday painters that offspring throw away when their owners pass on, completely covering the original but retaining the frames with my new paint. But every now and again, I come across a rather delightful image which is painted well yet lacks a story to be of any memorability, so these I appropriate by adding Nolan’s idea of Kelly to their originality rendering the whole as a completely new idea, this is poetic theft, a theft of memory but a birth of a new idea.

My Kellies have had a wonderful life, he is found in many places, not just the boundaries of Northern Victoria, but extending across the border into NSW, the beaches and in fact to Greece, Italy and other untapped tourist areas. Here is Kelly photo-bombing clichés, taking selfies, adorning structures and symbolically rising from the ocean.

The Lost Kellies fill in the gaps of a modern-day rascal being hunted and chased around the country with time to dream of leisure times and a happier circumstance.