John Kelly (b.1965)

John Kelly presently lives in London. He studied at the Slade School of Art after completing his Masters of Arts in painting. Many of his works make reference to William Dobell's appointment as an official artist commissioned to make papier-mâché cows during the Second World War. The cows were meant to distract Japanese pilots surveying rural areas for military defense bases. Kelly has been intrigued by the seemingly bizarre government ruse and has dedicated much of his oeuvre to this subject, creating surreal images of cows positioned in empty rural settings. While Kelly’s paintings are surreal they are not a novelty, his skilled draughtsmanship and precise execution of paint instead reveals an intelligent sociological commentary on Australia's war effort by an artist of great technical merit. In 1997 Kelly was awarded a Samstag scholarship and was chosen to display his work in the Les Champs de la Sculpture II on the Boulevard Champs Elysee, Paris in 1999.

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