ARTIST:
TITLE: Bloody Ned Kelly
MEDIUM: Japanese woodblock print
SIZE: 45*31cm
EDITION: 25
FRAMED: Yes
A friend of the Kelly family Aaron Sherritt had been acting as a double agent for them against the police. It slowly dawned on Ned that Sherritt had become a traitor. He was shot by his life long friend Joe Byrne.
"Sherritt would be the fourth man to die in the Kelly saga and his death was dramatically staged in an attempt to ambush the police...as Ned had planned, the police guard did nothing but call for reinforcements and a trainload of troopers and horses was sent up from Melbourne.
However, the train was running a day late and Ned and his compatriots were very inebriated at the Glenrowan Inn by the time the train arrived the next day. All were fatally wounded except Ned who was shot many times.
This print shows the grain of the timber running horizontally in a static, staccato fashion like a heart monitor that can't find a heartbeat. In the centre of all this is Ned holding his mother's cap full of his own blood, the circle for the first time connected to him physically.