B.
Goosebumps
Behind the scenes
It's sixty years today since Christchurch's most notorious murder.
On this day in 1954, best friends Pauline Parker (16) and Juliet Hulme (15) killed Pauline's mother, Honora, in Victoria Park, Christchurch. After a sensational week-long trial they were found guilty, sentenced to indefinite imprisonment, and ordered never to contact each other again. The murder, which was seen by many as the sign of an impending crazed-teen apocalypse, inspired Michaelanne Forster's play Daughters of Heaven and Peter Jackson's film Heavenly Creatures. It is also, of course, the elephant in the room behind Ann Shelton's jarringly serene Doublet - a paired photograph taken at the site of the murder. This, by the way, may or may not have been the point of the trail where my sister used to grab my shoulder and whisper 'THIS is where they did it!' in my terrified ear.
Ann Shelton Doublet 2001. Photograph. Purchased, 2004. Reproduced with permission
Related
Collection
Ann Shelton Doublet (after Heavenly Creatures), Parker/Hulme crime scene, Port Hills, Christchurch, New Zealand
In 1954 the nation was gripped by news of the horrific murder of Mrs Honora Parker on a walking track in Christchurch’s Port Hills. The subsequent court case inspired several books, and a feature film by Peter Jackson, Heavenly Creatures. Ann Shelton’s photograph pictures the track where it happened, perhaps – the exact spot isn’t public knowledge. Shelton says that this work is “in one sense a response to my earlier career as a press photographer and to the focus of the media on the heightened moment of the events … I have attempted to address the representation of trauma outside the moment of its occurrence.” Shelton’s image depicts the path mirrored and diverging. We might imagine that in one image the event occurs: in the other, perhaps it does not, and three people leave the park.
(Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary, 15 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)