“Cow Up a Tree” by John Kelly

In celebration of Australia Day yesterday, we thought we’d share one of our favorite installations in one of our favorite cities. “Cow Up a Tree” is the aptly-named bronze sculpture by Australian artist John Kelly on the shore of Melbourne’s dockland precinct that depicts a cow helplessly stuck in the branches of a gum tree. Displaying his quirky Aussie humour and bringing an inside joke in Australian history to life, Kelly’s sculpture is an homage to helpless victims of flood waters and Australian artist Sir William Dobell, who when tasked with camouflaging airfields during World War II, filled them with paper mâché cows in hope of fooling Japanese pilots.