Alan Kelly, Noongar artist, was born c. 1939 and grew up in a tent in the bush at Brunswick Junction, which is about 25km northeast of Bunbury in the southwest of Western Australia. When he was eight years old, police visited the school Kelly was attending and took him away without informing his parents. He travelled by train to Katanning and was then taken to the Carrolup Native Settlement in the back of a truck.
Kelly lived at the Carrulop Native Settlement (often known as Marribank to people in the southwest of Western Australia) for eight years during the late 1940s and early 1950s. This corresponded with the period when the humanitarian couple Noel and Lily White managed and taught at the settlement, and encouraged the children to paint and draw their surroundings. In an artist’s statement that accompanied Kelly’s work in the 2008 exhibition 'Revealed: Emerging Artists from Western Australia’s Aboriginal Art Centres’, which took place at the Central TAFE Art Gallery in Perth, Kelly states:
“As children at the mission we would use anything available to paint and draw; pieces of cardboard and charcoal from the fire were used when we had no materials. We painted scenes from the bush which was our escape from the pain of missing our families.”
Paintings and drawings made by the Carrolup children artists were subsequently toured and sold to collectors in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and America.
In 2009 Kelly was the last surviving artist to have spent time at Carrolup during those years. He was continuing to paint in association with Mungart Boodja Art Centre in Katanning, creating works in the style of the Carrolup children artists. Exhibitions in which he has participated include 'Land, Culture and Identity’ (2007) at the Vancouver Art Centre, Albany, Western Australia; 'Revealed: Emerging Artists from Western Australia’s Aboriginal Art Centres’ (2008) at the Central TAFE Art Gallery in Perth; and 'The Legacy of Koorah Coolingah’ at the Brisbane Powerhouse, Queensland (2009).
- Writers:
- Fisher, Laura
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
