Unmasked
Sidney Nolan and Ned Kelly 1950 - 1990
11 November - 4 March 2007
Venue: Heide III: Central Galleries
Curator: Kendrah Morgan and Damian Smith
Myself 1988
oil and spray enamel on composition board
122.0 x 92.0 cm
Private collection, United Kingdom
Image courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
© The Sidney Nolan Trust
Presented by Connex
Sidney Nolan’s original Ned Kelly series, painted at Heide during 1946–47, has been widely acclaimed and extensively researched. Much less attention however, has been given to the artist’s numerous later representations of the legendary Australian bushranger. This exhibition explores, for the first time, Nolan’s ongoing artistic engagement with the Kelly myth after he left Australia permanently in 1953, a fascination that lasted for the next three decades.
For Nolan, Ned Kelly was an intensely compelling figure: he was of working class Irish–Australian stock like the artist himself; a natural leader with an instinctive command of language; and an archetypal tragic hero. As Nolan’s career developed, he became
inextricably associated with Kelly and the iconic black square mask he had invented to represent the outlaw.
This exhibition reveals the ways in which Nolan's Kelly, behind the black mask, was a complex figure whose significance reaches well beyond the shores of his native homeland.
