Artwork Information

Australia’s most famous folk hero, Ned Kelly, and his gang, was a theme that Sidney Nolan returned to repeatedly throughout his career. Not many of us could identify a photograph of Ned Kelly, yet the outline of his homemade mask has become part of our Australasian visual language. Unlike this example, in most of Nolan’s depictions of the mask, the cut-out rectangle becomes a window on the space behind Kelly, rather than revealing the individual within. (Headlands, 2002)