By Anna Donne
Sunshine and District Historical Society
I’ve always thought Sunshine had a bit of a country town feel about it, albeit more culturally diverse than the country town of my early years! People are friendly, residents tend to shop locally and neighbours know each other. But even I thought the sculpture of a man holding a cow in the middle of the Sunshine shopping centre was a bit of a stretch.
The sculpture by artist John Kelly, titled ‘Man lifting cow’, is over five metres tall and located in Hampshire Road in Sunshine.
I was interested then, to read that ‘Kelly’s cows’, of which there are many including ‘Cow in a tree’ in Melbourne’s Docklands, are not a reference to rural life, but are in fact a reference to Australian artist William Dobell’s ‘cows’.
The story goes that in the 1940s, Dobell and other Australian artists were hired as camouflage artists to disguise local airfields and deceive Japanese air force planes, including painting rows of cabbages on aircraft hangars to make them look like market gardens. Further to this is the story that Dobell, who went on to win the Archibald Prize, was one of several artists who were ordered to make papier mache cows and move them around Australian military bases to fool Japanese pilots.
Although there’s little historical evidence these cows existed, it’s a great story and apparently acted as an inspiration for Kelly, who was fascinated by Dobell’s cows. The elongated neck of many of Kelly’s cow sculptures is also said to be a reference to Dobell’s 1943 portrait of Joshua Smith. At the time, Dobell’s portrait was surrounded in controversy when, after winning the Archibald Prize, it was challenged on the grounds it was a caricature. Dobell appealed and subsequently won the case and, history tells us, went on to create papier mache cows!
The link to Sunshine is even greater. In 1965, John Kelly, who now lives in Ireland, immigrated with his family from Bristol as a baby, and grew up in Sunshine North. His entry into the art world was helped significantly by his mother and an empty milk carton.
Kelly was one of seven children and showed a strong creative side from an early age. He was accepted into art college, but his parents could not afford the tuition fees. In 1983 however, his mother entered, and won, a competition called ‘Win a Wish’ on the back of a milk carton. Her wish was to send her middle child to art school.
In an interview with the ABC in 2016, Kelly said his parents did not really understand his interest in art, but they supported him nonetheless.
“(Mum) wrapped the whole empty carton in Christmas paper, and obviously it stood out,” Kelly said.
The family did not have a phone, so the message that Kelly’s wish had been granted came via the local shopkeeper. ‘That’s how I got my start.’ Kelly went on to have sculptures exhibited worldwide, including Paris, Monte Carlo and in 2016, Sunshine.
And again, Kelly has his mother to thank for his Sunshine sculpture. On a trip home from Ireland, Kelly’s mother showed him a newspaper clipping of an advertisement calling for local artist submissions. This started a conversation between Kelly and the Brimbank City Council, that eventually led to the council commissioning Kelly to create a sculpture that would ‘act as a beacon signifying Sunshine’s re-emergence as one of Australia’s great centres’.
The 5.5 metre sculpture was cast in Bronze at Sunshine’s Fundere Fine Art Foundry. It took twelve months to sculpt and was officially unveiled in 2016. The cost of the materials was covered by Brimbank City Council and other grants, but Kelly donated his time to the project to ‘leave a legacy in his hometown.’
The sculpture was originally cast in bronze and remained that way until 2025, when it was painted, bringing Kelly’s original vision for the landmark to life.
Over the years there have been numerous interpretations of the sculpture; the square shape of the cow referencing the milk carton on which Kelly’s art career started, the cow a reference to Sunshine’s agricultural past, the Jungian symbol for mother being a cow as a reference to his mother, the man in overalls referencing his father’s work in the quarry.
Ultimately Kelly described the sculpture simply as ‘an acknowledgement to his parents’.
