Ann Shelton was born in Timaru, New Zealand. She currently lives and works in Auckland City. She currently lectures in photography at Manukau School of Visual Arts, The University of Auckland at Manukau.
Exposition Are we not drawn onward to new era - Ann Shelton, Murray Hewitt Modifier l'image
Ann Shelton's latest project focuses on the particular histories and shared narratives of trauma, failure, and anxiety that circulate in relation to the social and cultural histories of a particular group of trees. The recently completed work Seedling, Lovelock's ‘Hitler Oak', Timaru Boys High School, Timaru, New Zealand depicts a now fully grown oak given, according to urban myth, to Jack Lovelock by Adolph Hilter, as a seedling at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
The lives of this and the other 130 seedlings presented to the 1936 gold medalists have been controversial. In the same way that landscapes can prompt memory, anxiety and learned associations; so too can a tree chart trauma. An early indicator of globalisation and a marker of political and social change, this oak tree image has become...