SPECIAL VIEW OF NED KELLY EXHIBITION
DID you know there is a series of Sidney Nolan’s unique art in the Cairns Regional Art Gallery?
On September 9, 14 lucky school kids from Holy Cross School, Trinity Park were able to see these amazing paintings but we didn’t travel to the art gallery. These lucky students visited the gallery virtually.
The paintings are about 80 years old. Sidney Nolan made 26 paintings in the Ned Kelly series but only 25 are in the Cairns Regional Art Gallery.
Originally these paintings were donated to the Australian Art Gallery by Sidney Nolan’s family.
If you were to sell all the paintings you would be looking at $100 million.
During the virtual tour Mr Jim from the gallery told us all about the paintings.
We learnt about Sidney Nolan’s style of art which was mostly his own. Ned Kelly was a famous bushranger who lived in the 19th century around the time of the Eureka Stockade. He was a bank robber and a horse stealer and not afraid of the police.
Ned’s family had a lookout peacock who alerted them when the police were nearby. The Kelly family lived outside of Melbourne in Beechworth.
The story had a sad ending when Kelly was hung on November 11, 1880. Sidney Nolan, through his paintings, raised the legend of Ned Kelly.
At the end of our tour, students were able to ask many questions and were given an education resource on the Ned Kelly series. The lucky 14 students received a cool pack of photos from the art gallery of the paintings.