'Cow Up a Tree'

A quick trip down to the Docklands at lunchtime today to have a look at what a $50 million toy looks like. James Packers new 'yacht' is in town at the moment possibly to entertain the high rollers during the upcoming F1 Grand Prix. It was big and sleek, but not really that interesting to look at from the outside.

I decided I'b be much happier to blip the 'Cow Up A Tree' sculpture which sits down along the docks directly opposite Etihad Stadium.

This is a sculpture by John Kelly which has has been exhibited on a famous Parisian boulevard, at a world-renowned Arts festival, in a distinguished French museum and permanently in the newly developed Melbourne Docklands.

Kelly's art reflects his preoccupation with the interplay, and occasional surprising interchange, of reality and non-reality, humour and seriousness. Cow up a Tree is the conjunction of two Australian histories - Australian floods and Dobell's cows -- which contain these opposites. Floods occur frequently in Australia, usually wreaking destruction and tragedy. But they can also have absurd outcomes, such as objects ludicrously stranded in trees. The episode of the artist Dobell - later Sir William - being engaged to make camouflage cows in a futile exercise to deceive enemy pilots during the Second World War, contains a wealth of absurd elements, yet beneath its surface Kelly detected serious matters for research. Central to the story was the issue of camouflage, the function of which is to conceal reality; it is non-reality masquerading as reality.

Another scorcher of a day coming up tomorrow, and I've just received an email from school advising that the school will be closed due to the Total Fire Ban and extreme weather expected.