Aldous Kelly

Aldous Kelly, tinted electric blue against hot orange, chin on fist, five marker pens in his shirt pocket. One of his own characters, a dog-headed figure in a yellow jumper, perches on a bed of spikes beside him and appears to be telling him something.
A round, fuzzy, mint green bobfish with enormous yellow eyes and a pink mouth open in what might be alarm, or might be song.
Lilac jellyfish trailing their tentacles above a row of purple striped fish with headlamp eyes, all facing the same way like a queue.

Aldous Kelly makes worlds for Ten Days on the Island. For Festival 2027 he’s dived down into the deep ocean off Tasmania for inspiration. It is Aldous’s second world for the Festival, after the bioluminescent ocean, glowing marsupials and aurora australis of his award-winning artwork in 2025.

He grew up in New Zealand and his first ‘proper’ job was on a fishing boat, so the sea is not unfamiliar ground. For his 2027 artwork he started by chatting with Tasmanian marine scientists at IMAS and came away struck by how much of the depths are yet to be discovered.

We know more about space than we do about the deep sea. Every time they go down there, they find a new organism.

It’s kind of reassuring that there is a place on Earth that our insatiable quest for knowledge and domination is yet to conquer.

These gaps gave him permission to invent his own creatures, his Unknown Things.

Aldous’s usual subjects have mostly been people, drawn as though they had not noticed anyone was looking. He has turned the same eye on these creatures. Artistic Director Marnie Karmelita says of Aldous’s creations, ‘I want to get to know the characters in Aldous’s mind’s eye, to understand more about myself and our unique part of the world through his interpretation.’ His Unknown Things will appear through the programme and out into public spaces across the Festival.