Give Peace a Chance Is the Peace Movement still relevant for our contemporary, post-truth, social media driven society? William Kelly is an artist who has devoted his life to giving peace a chance and working in socially engaged art. Born in Buffalo, New York, Bill Kelly remembers that he once called a park bench his home and found employment as a steel worker, taxi driver and welder. He was also awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and for a while served as the Dean of the Victorian College of the Arts. He now works from a studio in rural Victoria and makes art that has received widespread recognition. Kelly is soft-spoken and quick to describe himself as the luckiest artist alive, in a quiet, but consistent manner has devoted his life and art to the peace movement and is widely considered as the moral conscience of Australian art. He is a gifted, and at times brilliant, natural draughtsman, who frequently weaves his compositions together like a tapestry allowing the accumulated power of the images to develop a singular strong and dominant voice. Between August 2014 and December 2016 Bill Kelly has been a recipient of a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria with the initial idea of developing an artists book dealing with socially activist art in Australia, but the idea morphed in form, scale and theme. The intimacy of the artists book was swapped for the most public of art forms, the banner, and a private whisper became a public declaration. Banners have always been a public art and in many instances have been associated with peoples’ movements, whether this be May Day demonstrations or the Banners of Pride created by trade unions over the ages. The State Library of Victoria has its iconic domed reading room that I consider as one of the most beautiful spaces in the world and one in which I have spent many years of my life. Bill Kelly’s idea was to create a grand Peace Banner, in the form of a twelve-metre-long print, that would be suspended from the dome in the public reading room. Technically this is one of the largest fine art prints made in Australia, possibly only rivalled by the thirty-five-metre long screenprint made at Megalo in Canberra to commemorate its thirty-five year history . Bill Kelly’s work, titled Peace or War: The Big Picture, has as its basic compositional unit a street scene where elements from Giorgio de Chirico, Balthus and Georges Seurat – three of the artists who have changed the way we see the world – contributing iconic elements to the design. This composition is then repeated several times on the banner stressing how society by employing different technologies constantly sets out to destroy the same social fabric. The street remains the same as do the human victims, what changes are the technologies employed to kill people, from primitive means to American stealth bombers. At the bottom of the banner is a dense block of handwritten names of the ‘foundation’ consisting of the names of those who thought that social norms should be challenged and needed to be changed. Amongst the more than a hundred names are included Marcel Duchamp, Noel Counihan, Lin Onus and Salman Rushdie . The fundamental question posed in this banner is why should society regard war as a norm and peace as an interlude and not consider peace a basic human right. Bill Kelly poses the big question on a grand scale and he is one of the few artists who has the skills, imagination and the ability to pull this off to create something which possesses a solemn beauty, a monumental presence and punches a strong message. While a philosophy prevails among some artists that artists should not in their work make overt political statements and that this belongs more to the realm of politicians and social commentators, Kelly looks to the tradition of Goya, Picasso and Rivera and sees the role of the artist to engage with society and be both the visual chronicler of their time as well as the conscience of their society.
In a world that sometimes appears to be hurtling along a path of self-destruction and within a milieu of art making that has lost itself in pattern-making and self-centred esoteric theory, Bill Kelly’s art brings together two democratic art mediums, that of printmaking and the banner, to produce a powerful work that shouts its message to give peace a chance. This is a celebration of the values of the State Library of Victoria to be free, democratic and secular and a strong affirmation that art has the power to alter society and to join the ranks of those who are fighting the good fight. It is critical for us to remember that despite all obstacles, peace must win as the alternative is too frightening to even contemplate. William Kelly’s banner in the Dome Reading Room of the State Library of Victoria, Peace and War: The Big Picture, will remain on display until Sunday December 11, 2016
16 Comments
4/12/2016 17:33:00
My heart is breaking reading this Sasha. I have just read "Poor Fellow My Country" by Xavier Herbert and feel as if nothing will change because most of the people in any given community are not capable of deep emotional and philosophical reflection. I applaud the installation of Kelly's work however because if those of us who are "conscious" don't persevere then humanity is lost, and it just may be that we are becoming increasingly aware as a community that survival of our species is absolutely dependent on these messages being reiterated over and over again. On another note, I heard your comments on Radio National about censorship in art and that in itself is an interesting road to follow - perhaps even related at some level to Kelly's work - i.e. what messages and standards are we prepared to tolerate and instil in the interest of the greater majority?
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Gail Schmidt
5/12/2016 10:39:58
If only someone could advocate on Bill Kelly's behalf for this artwork to be purchased and permanently displayed at the Australian War Memorial. I'm certain the necessary dollars could be raised via a crowd funding source.
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Sasha Grishin
5/12/2016 15:44:29
Or for that matter - if the SLV bought it for its collection
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Jeffrey Taylor
12/12/2016 17:47:43
It's my sense that the AWM don't collect art works that critique the impact of war as such nor do they collect works that advocate a position on the 'peace movement'. More is the pity and I hope I am Positioning Australian communities for City Deals proven wrong. Maybe we need an Australian Peace Museum next door that chronicles such works.
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11/12/2016 20:48:22
It's a great work, it commands its space and delivers its message with ease and resolve. As the street motif repeats over time, marking decade by decade, a puctorialcadrnce is established. Figures pass through the filmic plains as artistic messanger if failed hope. Black, white, black, white death marches on. Oh heed the message, the silent banner schemes, stop tbefore it's too late!
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11/12/2016 21:21:08
Thank you Sasha for your observations and insights. As you imply, Bill Kelly is an inspirational artist and human being. We discovered this during his SLV Amor Residency at Baldessin Press. His life and message is always one of Peace and simplicity, in a society or world that seeks to over complicate matters. Good compassionate communication is key to peace-making, and Bill does just this through his art and life. All strength to him!
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dale hess
11/12/2016 21:26:08
Bill Kelly's dramatic banner makes a bold statement about human nature and the choices made between war and peace, between violence, death and destruction, and nonviolence and creation and nurturing of life. It is a work that needs to be studied. I hope that the SLV buys it for its collection.
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Philippa Schapper
12/12/2016 05:52:53
Sasha thank you so much for this blog. I was at Bill Kelly's floor talk where he contextualized and provided entry points for the banner. Your piece has added to its gravitas...and it's a fine thing you do drawing attention to the importance of the work and the action behind and around the banner.. I a member of the rural community in which Bill works, and I appreciate being helped to not underestimate the significance of the work Bill has done and is doing.
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David Hanna
12/12/2016 12:36:02
I rather like Sasha's suggestion that the SLV purchase the piece given it was created there - and it fitted the space in the wonderful Reading Room so well.
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Lyn Gallacher
12/12/2016 13:05:58
I've watched this work grow from an all encompassing, generous conversation into the banner that it is. So chuffed it is being so well received. Long may the conversation continue.
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12/12/2016 18:02:46
Bill Kelly's art speaks of an uncompromising commitment to peace, It does this in ways that are imaginative, poetic and visionary, yet utterly realistic.
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Robert McLean
16/12/2016 20:47:55
Bill epitomises the thought “That we should be what we want to see” – he is a truly kind and gentle man, so much so that mostly I feel inadequate in his company as I fall well short of the personal standards he exhibits, but interestingly apply to anyone else.
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19/12/2016 11:36:43
As a journalist and a friend I have known Bill for a number of years and I know he is an artist who walks the talk on peace, art and the nobility of man. Thank you for your thoughtful writing Sasha - it was an inspiration and a joy to read. I too hope the banner is purchased for the nation - its beauty and power should be available for all Australians and future generations.
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Kate Baker
19/12/2016 12:01:38
I agree this work should be on permanent display in a significant public space. Never has this work be more relevant and thank you for your excellent and thoughtful article. It was so great to see this work given such support and there really was something profound about seeing it hanging in the domed reading room of the SLV. I've met and photographed Bill Kelly and he lives his own message, a remarkable artist and a remarkable human being.
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William Chandler
2/1/2017 22:14:53
It is 2 January 2017. A New Year. What to say? Let's dust off the depressing events of 2016 (and a history beyond), renew our faith in the importance of creative humanity as part of the universal world in which we all live, and celebrate the steady and constant message Kelly portrays that peace is more important (and useful and productive) than war.
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Sasha Grishin
2/1/2017 23:47:06
While inspired by your enthusiasm, Bill Kelly's scroll was designed for the SLV Dome Reading Room and in this sense is site specific and should, if appropriate, be acquired by the SLV. Difficult to find appropriate display spaces in other institutions where the scroll could be suspended.
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GRISHIN'S ART BLOG
Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA is the author of more than 25 books on art, including Australian Art: A History, and has served as the art critic for The Canberra Times for forty years. He is an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Canberra; Guest Curator at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and Honorary Principal Fellow, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Melbourne. Archives
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