Brian P Kennedy reveals how Sidney Nolan created his signature work. Rarely seen outside of Australia, the series is on view at IMMA in November
In June 1977, John and his wife Sunday Reed, packed up their ‘Ned Kelly’ paintings in crates and sent them to Canberra, gifting them ‘with love’ to the Australian people.
The Reeds had commissioned the series about the story of Australia’s famed bushranger from Sidney Nolan in 1945-47 while he was staying at their home at Heide near Melbourne, having deserted the Australian army. Nolan had been involved in a lengthy affair with Sunday Reed. He later remarked: ‘Really the Kelly paintings are secretly about myself. You would be surprised if I told you. From 1945 to 1947 there were emotional and complicated events in my life. It’s an inner history of my own emotions, but I am not going to tell you about them.’
John McLaughlin assesses heneghan peng’s dramatically sited but elegantly unobtrusive visitor centre for the Giant’s Causeway in Antrim
Peter Pearson makes a plea for re-roofing Kilmacurragh, the Queen Anne house set in an arcadian parkland in County Wicklow
Peter Murray finds similarities between the fictional character Kim and 19th-century photographer John Burke, whose path in Afghanistan, has been retraced by Simon Norfolk