Jane Kelly (born 7 May 1956) is a journalist and artist, affiliated with the

Stuckist Stuckism () is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson (artist), Charles Thomson to promote Figurative art, figurative painting as opposed to conceptual art.National Museums Liverpool National Museums Liverpool, formerly National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around Liverpool in Merseyside, England. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The mu ...

2004, She was dismissed from the ''

Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily Middle-market newspaper, middle-market Tabloid journalism, tabloid conservative newspaper founded in 1896 and published in London. , it has the List of newspapers in the United Kingdom by circulation, h ...

'' after exhibiting a painting of serial killer Myra Hindley.Wells, Matt and Cozens, Claire (200
"Daily Mail sacks writer who painted Hindley picture"
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

''. Retrieved 24 April 2006.

Life and work

Jane Kelly was born in

Charlton, London Charlton is an area of southeast London, England, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. It is east of Greenwich and west of Woolwich, on the south bank of the River Thames, southeast of Charing Cross. An ancient parish in the county of Kent, i ...

, and educated at Pendeford High School,

Wolverhampton Wolverhampton ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands of England. Located around 12 miles (20 km) north of Birmingham, it forms the northwestern part of the West Midlands conurbation, with the towns of ...

, and Stirling University, where she graduated in 1978 in history and fine art. 1978–79 she taught in

Sosnowiec Sosnowiec is an industrial city county in the Dąbrowa Basin of southern Poland, in the Silesian Voivodeship, which is also part of the Metropolis GZM municipal association.—— Located in the eastern part of the Upper Silesian Industrial Re ...

University,

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, since when she has worked as a journalist, including the ''Walsall Observer'', ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'', ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'', ''

'' and ''

Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first ...

''. She said: :In the 1970s it was Lynda Lee-Potter against Jean Rook on the ''

'', and we younger women writers all thought we would inherit that. But it's faded out. There's been a change in editorial approach. Perhaps lippy women aren't as much of a draw as they were. In 1995, she took an Advanced Diploma in Painting at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. In 2000, she exhibited in the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

Summer Show. The same year, she was a guest artist of the

Stuckist Stuckism () is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson (artist), Charles Thomson to promote Figurative art, figurative painting as opposed to conceptual art.The Stuckists Punk Victorian ''The Stuckists Punk Victorian'' was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art.Moss, Richard"Stuckist's Punk Victorian gatecrashes Walker's Biennial Culture24, 17 September 2004. Retrieved 3 December 2009. It was held at the Walker A ...

'' show at the

Walker Art Gallery The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group. History The Walker Art Gallery's collection dates from 1819 ...

during the 2004

Liverpool Biennial Liverpool Biennial is the largest international contemporary art festival in the United Kingdom. Since its launch in 1998, Liverpool Biennial has commissioned over 380 new artworks and presented work by over 530 artists from around the world. ...

. At the time she was a writer on the

, but was dismissed after a painting by her, ''If We Could Undo Psychosis 2'' featuring Myra Hindley, was exhibited in the show. The painting shows a family group of a mother and child with child-killer Myra Hindley substituted for the father and holding a teddy bear. The incident was reported on the front page of ''

'' newspaper, which commented: :Stuckism, the art movement founded by

Tracey Emin Dame Tracey Karima Emin (; born 3 July 1963) is an English artist known for autobiographical and confessional artwork. She produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, Neon lighting, neon text ...

's former boyfriend to oppose the pretensions of

Britart The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsm ...

, claims to advocate 'honest, uncensored expression'. Unfortunately, the ''

'' does not appear to share those values. It described how the paper welcomed a previous work exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Show by Kelly showing London Mayor

Ken Livingstone Kenneth Robert Livingstone (born 17 June 1945) is an English former politician who served as the Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 until the council was Local Government Act 1985, abolished in 1986, and as Mayor of Londo ...

in the context of the 1944 Stauffenberg plot against

Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

. The ''Daily Mails managing editor, Lawrence Sear, who dismissed Kelly, described as "absolute rubbish" the claim that the loss of her job was related to her artwork. She has said that she was never given a full reason for her dismissal, but that she had previously also got into trouble by trying to introduce the term "

German expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...

" into some copy about the performing dwarves used in the MGM film, '' The Wizard of Oz'', some of whom came from Weimar Germany. She said that the acting feature editor at the time had never heard of such a thing and told her "what the fuck is German Expressionism? I have never heard of it and neither have our fucking readers." Her own explanation of her painting in the show catalogue was: :I've always been fascinated by Myra Hindley's disastrous life and because hers was the first horrible crime I knew about as a child. I wanted to see what she might have looked like in the kind of family situation she was always denied. The painting sold to a

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

Commissioner A commissioner (commonly abbreviated as Comm'r) is, in principle, a member of a commission or an individual who has been given a commission (official charge or authority to do something). In practice, the title of commissioner has evolved to incl ...

for £3,500. In December 2006, her show, ''Stupid English Men'', was held in a

Brighton Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...

gallery, Art Café. Her painting of Tim Walker, ''

The Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, first published on 5 February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings. It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Tele ...

s theatre critic and diarist, was stolen from the gallery. In August 2007, she appeared in the documentary, ''The Daily Mail Diet'', on

Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American former politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He previously served as ...

Current TV Current TV was an American television channel which broadcast from August 1, 2005, to August 20, 2013. Prior INdTV founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, with Ronald Burkle, each held a sizable stake in Current TV. Comcast and DirecTV each held a small ...

internet video site, where she showed a painting of ''Daily Mail'' editor, Paul Dacre behind a prawn cocktail, which Kelly said represented "a little bit of taste, but very predictable, bland and no surprises—it's from a different age where people had a more limited palate", and that she had depicted him as a stern figure as he "loves the 50s he wants people to go back to a time of discipline"."Wednesday August 22: Putting Dacre in the picture
''

'', 24 August 2007 (scroll down). Se
the painting
Retrieved 28 March 2008. She explains the other figure in the painting: "The Mail has always been slightly prurient and a bit scared of sex and I wanted this figure to represent that—it's slightly nasty and a bit threatening." The documentary, on the same principle as the film '' Supersize Me'', showed film maker Nick Angel consuming only one news product—the ''Daily Mail''—for four weeks, a diet, which Kelly considered, "dangerous—it would be like eating hamburgers and nothing else—you're starving yourself." ''The Guardian'' challenged ''Daily Mail'' journalists to print out her picture and post it on the newsroom wall. Kelly's work is mainly preoccupied with

The Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

and she sees herself as a "post-holocaust painter". She has visited

Zandvoort Zandvoort () is a municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. It is one of the major beach resorts of the Netherlands; it has a long sandy beach. It is bordered by coastal dunes of Zuid-Kennemerland National Park and the Amsterdam ...

beach, 15 minutes from

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

, where

Anne Frank Annelies Marie Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – February or March 1945)Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new li ...

used to go regularly as a child, accompanied by her family. Kelly made a painting based on this visit which was auctioned by

Sotheby's Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

on 28 April 2006, in aid of victims of trauma. The painting was sold for £1,500 to an Irish collector. Kelly said, "It was rather a lonely job going out to Zandvoort to make the drawings for the painting and sometimes I doubted my sanity in doing it at all." Her work has been shown at the Cristus Gallery, Sandgate, The Royal Academy Summer Show, The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, The White Cube, London, the Sackville Gallery, London, the Excel Centre, Manchester, the MacRobert Arts Centre, Stirling and the Wolverhampton City Art Gallery. In May 2010, she was diagnosed with

ovarian cancer Ovarian cancer is a cancerous tumor of an ovary. It may originate from the ovary itself or more commonly from communicating nearby structures such as fallopian tubes or the inner lining of the abdomen. The ovary is made up of three different ...

. She has kept a blog on her dealings with the

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

called ''Icantbelieveitsreallycancer''.ICANTBELIEVEITSREALLYCANCER blog
/ref>

Gallery

Image:Jane Kelly. Happy Family.jpg, ''Happy Family'' Image:Jane Kelly. Psychosis 1.jpg, ''If We Could Undo Psychosis 1'' Image:Jane Kelly. Death of Sandy.jpg, ''Death of Sandy'' Image:Jane Kelly. You Fuck You're in My Blood.jpg, ''You're in My Blood You Fuck''

Notes and references

External links

Jane Kelly's paintings on the Stuckism International website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelly, Jane 1956 births Living people 20th-century English women artists 21st-century English women artists Alumni of Central Saint Martins Alumni of the University of Stirling Alumni of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Artists from the Royal Borough of Greenwich British contemporary painters English contemporary artists English women painters Journalists from London Painters from London People from Charlton, London Stuckism Writers from the Royal Borough of Greenwich

Life and work

Gallery

See also

Notes and references

External links