WILLIAM KELLY
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BIOGRAPHY
William Kelly is a humanist artist, social activist and pacifist. His work has been exhibited in over 20 countries and is in many public, corporate and university collections internationally including the National Gallery of Australia, the United Nations and elsewhere. His time as a Fellow at the State Library of Victoria and the Baldessin Press led to his creating a monumental print Peace or War/The Big Picture. The studies for that work now form an exhibition of his Can Art Stop a Bullet? currently at the Guernica Peace Museum, Guernica, Spain and a feature documentary film of the same title was released in 2020 to great acclaim..
CONNECTION TO BALDESSIN STUDIO
I first met George Baldessin in 1970 and later became aware of him building a studio in St. Andrews. For various reasons it wasn’t until 2015, when I received a Fellowship to the State Library of Victoria and was lucky enough to also be granted a Baldessin Press Residency, that I got to visit what is now the wonderful artist haven of Baldessin Studio. The work created there Not in My Name reflects my stance as a pacifist and social activist. - William Kelly
ABOUT THE ARTWORK
The works in this folio, Not in My Name, reflect my concerns as a pacifist about - on the one hand - the tragedy of deaths in war (especially children and civilians) and – on the other hand – the courage of those who stood, and stand today, against war. In all areas, whether relationships with our Indigenous brothers and sisters, treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, acceptance of the tragedy of homelessness, violence in our homes, violence on our streets, violence across borders…we can be better than we are and we must learn to treat each other better than we do.
