Exhibitions
Events
On display
Artist Talk: Ann Shelton
Ann Shelton The Scarlet Woman, Valerian (Valeriana sp.) from the series jane says. 2015–ongoing. Pigment print
Talk
Past event
Meet at the front desk
Free
Join artist Ann Shelton as she discusses the shifting narratives of her work on the exhibition’s opening day.
Dark Matter represents the conceptually based photography of Ann Shelton. Presented in series, Shelton’s work spans identity and reality within a feminist form of socio political expressionism, where the realm of womanhood is observed through a mindful, rigorously determined and ever expanding lens.
Exhibition organised by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
Related reading: Artist Talk
Exhibition
Ann Shelton: Dark Matter
15 April 2018
An expansive view of Ann Shelton’s tightly conceived, large scale and hyperreal photography
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)
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.