Cultural depictions of Ned Kelly a "significant respect for authority". Former criminal and celebrity Chopper Read produced numerous paintings of Ned Kelly, alluding directly to Sidney Nolan's imagery. One of Read's paintings features Kelly with a woman's breasts. He explained that "it relates to the fact that I think Kelly was a homosexual, ... I'm not really a fan of his. I'm tired of people calling me the modern-day Ned Kelly." However, Read compared himself with Kelly in some of his paintings. One such self-portrait titled "Tast Ful Old Criminal" ["sic"] was purchased amid controversy by the State Library of Victoria in 2003. "The Story
Cultural depictions of Ned Kelly Cultural depictions of Ned Kelly Ned Kelly was a 19th-century Australian outlaw and bushranger whose life has inspired numerous works in the arts and popular culture, especially in his home country where he is viewed by some as a Robin Hood-like figure. A melodrama, "The Kelly Gang", by Arnold Denham, was popular in Australia in the late 1890s. Other plays inspired by the story include: "Ned Kelly", a large-scale musical by Reg Livermore and Patrick Flynn, played in Adelaide and Sydney in 1977 and 1978. In 2012, Matthew Ryan's stage play "Kelly" premiered at Queensland Theatre Company, focusing on Ned