John Kelly

John Kelly's art has always had a strong vein of ironic wit. He became renowned for his incisive depictions of Dobell's Cows. William Dobell, a renowned Australian modernist was, during World War II, bizarrely commissioned to manufacture papier-mache cows and move them around airfields in an attempt to convince the enemy that they were farms. Dobell wryly observed that he thought the authorities underestimated the quality of the eyesight of Japanese airmen.

The consonance between Kelly's cows and the name 'Moo Brew' resulted in Moorilla approaching him to design our beer labels.

Kelly suggested that the connection was a little trite and that he wasn't working with cows anymore. Some negotiation led to labels being commissioned which result from his new direction. On these labels Kelly is railing against apparent corporatizing of art by the Australian Arts Council.

The Council logo consists of an image of the sun and a kangaroo and they insist that the images never be separated or altered. Kelly's beer label designs cleverly embed these logos in an art context. Of particular interest is 'Alien (Skull)' which redefines the Sidney Nolan masterpiece 'The boy and the moon', (also known as 'Moonboy'), using the sun and the ears of the kangaroo from the Council logo.