Cow Up A Tree - John Kelly
{*Freda Watkin}

John Kelly, who is currently in London for his second solo exhibition, has been selected as the Australian representative at the Les Champs de la Sculpture 11, an international sculpture exhibition to be held in Paris later this year.


'Cow up a tree', 1998, John Kelly

Following this the exhibition will tour the Hague (Netherlands), Kyoto (Japan) and Lai (Taiwan). It is hoped that the exhibition will also be hosted by an Australian city.

John will be exhibiting his Cow up a Tree sculpture on the Champs-Elysee. This cast bronze sculpture measures 8 metres in height and weighs 4 tonnes. The inspiration for this work is William Dobell's cows. During World War 11, Dobell was employed to make realistically painted papier-mache cows and move them around airport bases in the hope of fooling the Japanese pilots. This bizarre project triggered John into painting a prolific series of imaginary cows.

John's multiple works, with their sense of tragic absurdity, obviously pay homage to both the historical moment and Dobell's cow, however, they are representative of much more. These witty, surreal animals are also metaphors for Australia's colonial history, the waste of war and the Australian larrikin vitality. The concept for the sculpture emerged during a 1995 trip to Barcelona. John Kelly states, Cow up a Tree first appeared in my sketchbook whilst I was travelling..... I was contemplating what would happen during a flood on Dobell's airfield. I had thoughts of papier-mache cows floating away and being stuck in the trees.

To John the image seemed very Australian and this was confirmed by an impromptu survey. The Spanish found the drawing Cow up a Tree to be absurd while Australians instantly recognised it as a flood. Since then I have found other Australian Artists who have used the idea of an object up a tree in their work, such as Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale.

In 1994 John Kelly was awarded a residency at the Australia Council studio in Barcelona which was followed in 1995 by an exhibition of his work Piccadilly Gallery in London. In late 1996 he received a twelve months Samstag Scholarship to study at the Slade, London. The Samstag Scholarship was crucial in allowing me to live and work in London. I developed a body of work called Paint the Dead Horse which was shown as my one person exhibition in 1997. The Piccadilly Gallery takes part in numerous art fairs across Europe......they have shown my art work at the Basel Art Fair.....through this my work has been bought by collectors from around the world.

John now intends to split his time between Australia and the UK and will be exhibiting at Niagara Gallery, Melbourne later this year. This coming show, "Heads and Tales - First Past the Post-Modern" was painted in Melbourne between November 1997 and May 1998.

*The resource material and images accompanying this article are Courtesy Niagara Galleries. Additional references and quotations are from; Kelly: London to Brighton, Artlink, Vol 18 NO 4, 1998. & John Kelly, Asian Art News, Australian Supplement, May/June 1995.

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