Born as Kenness George Kelly in Kingston, Jamaica, he migrated to Britain in 1957 and lived in Brixton, South London.

[2] In 2011 Fowokan featured in "Better than Good", an arts education initiative to highlight the achievements of Black artists in Britain.

Kelly believes that art has an important role to play in the struggle to define and redefine a contemporary African world-view.

In today's African artists' work, he argues, we must see the eyes and hands of the contemporary artist, looking anew, through the prism of an African aesthetic, speaking in a new world with the voices of the ancestors, voices for so long silenced; in doing so, their art will offer new generations the opportunity to look again with fresh eyes, to see themselves in new ways.

[8] But he also introduces forms that allude to a fascination with Africa and the African Diaspora, such as The Lost Queen of Pernambuco — a sculpture inspired by the story of a settlement of Africans who, across the 18th and 19th centuries, escaped enslavement and lived as a community on the border of Brazil and Dutch Guiana for 90 years, only to be re-captured due to their lack of vigilance.