Goldie Kelly, Noongar artist, was the son of Henry and Bella Kelly and had three brothers: Simpson Kelly, Greg Kelly and Flemming Kelly. The four boys were taken away from their parents in the 1940s and placed in the Carrolup Native Settlement in Katanning, Western Australia. Bella became a renowned artist whose works are associated with the Carrolup style, and Simpson, Greg and Goldie all pursued art at some stage in their lives. The artist Graham Taylor remembers Goldie as an inmate in Fremantle Prison in the 1970s when Kelly, along with fellow Carrolup student Revel Cooper, was among an older generation of inmates who painted regularly and sometimes demonstrated painting techniques to the younger men (Taylor, pers. comm. 2009). According to Winmar (1991, pg 12), Bella and Goldie exhibited together in Perth in 1970.

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Writers:
Fisher, Laura
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011