Dark Matter comes to Christchurch Art Gallery

Thursday, 14 December 2017

Ann Shelton Golden Girl [twin set #1]. From the series Abigail’s Party 1999. C-type print.

Dark Matter comes to Christchurch Art Gallery

The first major review of New Zealand photographic artist Ann Shelton’s 20 years of practice opens this Saturday at Christchurch Art Gallery.

Dark Matter uncovers the unknown substance in Shelton’s work, in which time, place, narrative, trauma and female authorship unfold in shifting and destabilising ways.

Christchurch Art Gallery director Jenny Harper says Shelton, who was born in Timaru, is one of New Zealand’s leading photographic artists.

“Ann Shelton’s recent work combines performance and photography. Through deep research, she highlights and draws attention to our varied and collective histories and to the phenomena of cultural memories. Shelton exposes and activates those various histories through photography and performance in her new series jane says,” says Harper.

Dark Matter will present a significant selection of past work, including some previously unseen photographs from the 1990s, and the more recent series, jane says (2015), which looks at histories that connect plants and female stories relating to fertility and reproduction.

Also featured are early series that brought her to attention as an artist using photography, including Redeye (1995–97), which recorded the artist’s social scene in Auckland in the early 1990s, as well as works that show her transition from photographing others to photographing place, such as Abigail’s Party (1999) and K Hole (2000).

Other bodies of work, a library to scale (2006) and room room (2008), illustrate the role of the photograph in the archiving and surveillance of social and personal life.

Shelton says she offers new ways to look at histories that have been, and continue to be, manipulated and contrived in various ways.

“My work investigates the social, political and historical contexts that inform readings of the landscape, archives and the cultural and medicinal use of plants.”

Ann Shelton: Dark Matter is on display at Christchurch Art Gallery from 16 December 2017 to 15 April 2018. Entry is free. The opening of the exhibition is accompanied by the following free events:

• Friday 15 December
7:15pm: The Physical Garden (performance, 20 mins)

• Saturday 16 December
2pm: Artist talk: Ann Shelton
3pm: The Physical Garden (performance, 20 mins)

Ann Shelton: Dark Matter has been organised by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

ENDS

About Ann Shelton

Ann Shelton (MFA, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada) was born in Timaru, New Zealand. Shelton’s internationally recognised, large scale and hyper-real photographic works operate at the nexus of conceptual and documentary modes, investigating the social, political and historical contexts that inform readings of the landscape and its contents. Shelton’s work has been exhibited extensively in New Zealand and internationally over the last 25 years, with showings in every major New Zealand institution. Shelton is recognised as one of New Zealand’s leading photographic artists and is the paramount winner of two major New Zealand contemporary art awards (National Contemporary Art Award 2006 and CoCA Anthony Harper Contemporary Art Award 2010).

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