Ann Shelton
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1967
Wintering, after a Van der Velden study, Otira Gorge
- 2008
- C-type photograph
- Purchased, 2009
- 1214 x 3040mm
- 2009/026:a-b
- View on google maps
Tags: appropriation (imagery), landscapes (representations), mountains, natural landscapes, reflections (perceived properties), rivers, snow (precipitation), symmetry, trees
A small watercolour study of a mountain stream at Otira Gorge by van der Velden provided the inspiration for Ann Shelton’s Wintering, after a Van der Velden study, Otira Gorge. However, her response to the original study in the Hocken Library’s collection, which can be viewed in the next gallery, is monumental in scale and invites comparison with van der Velden’s large paintings of the same motif. Shelton elevates the mana and significance of the small study. In travelling to the Otira region to make her response to van der Velden’s work, Shelton follows in the footsteps of the many colonial photographers who worked in the region. Her contemporary view, with the cascading torrent of the Otira River, densely forested mountain slopes and threatening storm clouds, highlights the beauty of the Otira Gorge – a landscape that has changed little since it was photographed in the mid nineteenth century. (Van der Velden: Otira, February 2011)
Exhibition History
Related
Commentary
Representing Women: Ann Shelton’s Dark Matter
What is ‘dark matter’? For theoretical physicists it is matter that cannot be directly observed but whose existence is nevertheless scientifically calculable – productively present yet simultaneously invisible. In a similar vein, the everyday phrase ‘dark matter’ describes objects, conditions and situations that harbour unease or trauma. Trauma that is often concealed, repressed, or buried. Both definitions are active in Ann Shelton’s mid-career review exhibition Dark Matter, and they provide a rich point of entry into this compelling collection of her photographic work. These are photographs that bristle with intensity and refuse to let their subjects die a quiet archival death.
Notes
Otira: It's a state of mind
It's always a good day when new artworks arrive at the gallery to enter the permanent collection and so it was when Grace Butler's large oil painting In the Otira Gorge turned up. It has been very generously bequeathed to the Gallery by her daughter, Grace Adams who recently passed away.