Luke Kelly is a Wellington-based artist, working primarily in
the graphic design field. Kelly's artwork involves an abstraction
of the mechanics, tools and constructions of the nautical and
engineering industries, themes drawn largely from his coastal
upbringing.
Alongside painting, Kelly reconstructs nautical and industrial
objects such as wings and hulls as wall-mounted, mixed-media
constructions or sculptures, involving aluminium, bitumen,
plywood, encaustic, industrial canvas and
other, less-common art materials.
In doing so, Kelly downplays the common understanding of such
forms as functional objects, instead holding them up as aesthetic
objects in their own right and thereby illuminating aspects of
their construction, their monumentality, their texture and graphic
illustration as aspects of aesthetic interest.