John Kelly & Rena Shein

John Kelly

Born 1962 in Armadale, Australia
Lives in Kempsey / Dunghutti, Australia Dunghutti

Rena Shein

Born 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa
Lives in Sydney / Gadigal, Australia

John Kelly is a Dunghutti Elder from Kempsey, Australia. He is an artist, cultural adviser, and teacher. His painting The Bunyip hangs in Parliament House of NSW and a series of charcoal drawings were exhibited as part of a tribute to Nelson Mandela. He has exhibited at Washhouse Gallery and Boomalli Galleries and created the first Aboriginal Art design for the Deadly Awards. Kelly’s art imparts his strong sense of culture and traditional knowledge through which he teaches young children, mentors young men in traditional practices and engages community in the preservation and celebration of culture.

Rena Shein’s practice seeks strength-based approaches between Western healing psychotherapeutic modalities, Aboriginal knowledge systems and practices and contemporary art. As an artist with an inheritance of migration and cultural displacement, her multidisciplinary practice takes place at the juncture of relationship to people and place, engaging with notions of materiality, memory and healing.

Nyanghan nyinda me you 2016 – ongoing
clay, stringybark, paperbark, cotton thread
Courtesy the artists
Co-created with Dalaigur Preschool & Family Services Community, Booroongen Djugun Community, Green Hill Public School, Catherine Keyzer and Julia Sideris of we3

Artist and Elder John Kelly paints and draws stories from Dunghutti Country where he lives and actively shares his passion for his culture. Residing in Kempsey on the mid north coast of NSW, he plays an integral role in revitalising traditional practices by passing on his cultural knowledge through his work with schools and youth mentorships.

In 2016, Kelly met Sydney-based artist, Rena Shein at Dalaigur Preschool in South Kempsey where their collaborative partnership began. Shein’s multidisciplinary practice is informed by a history of migration and displacement, creating transformative and safe spaces that explore the tactility of art making as a collective action of remembering, exchange and healing.

Their collaboration, Nyanghan nyinda me you, springs from interwoven participatory experiences with children from Dalaigur Preschool and their families. The first was the harvest of the bark canoe from a stringybark eucalypt undertaken by a group of close-knit men with cultural connection to Kelly. It was followed by a canoe-making demonstration, where the local community could participate in rope making to complete the vessel. In another space, Shein led a contemplative making of clay eggs and nests with the children and their teachers, shaped by Kelly’s Dunghutti story of the King of the Birds. For rīvus, the canoe was dried and sealed to house the eggs and nests created by the community. The stitched bark cloth is a symbolic representation of the collaboration between Shein and Kelly.

23rd Biennale of Sydney (2022)