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21 May, 1997 |
‘Redeye’ by Ann Shelton.
Robert McDougall Annex.
6 June-6 July, 1997
This stunning collection of photographic images on display at the McDougall Art Annex has been downloaded from a cast of literally thousands collected over the last few years. One Auckland artist/critic, Giovanni Intra noted " in the world today, the most interesting photography has betrayed theory and converted to social life. Ann Shelton’s flashlit wake-up calls in this exhibition and her soon to be published book Redeye illuminate an incandescent new age of Auckland social existence,...Shelton’s new book is part fashion, part accident and part sheer embarrassment. Rather than make you remember and feel concern, Shelton’s is a kind of photography which makes you forget you cared in the first place."
Described by the senior Curator of Photography at the Auckland Art Gallery, Ron Brownson, as "some of the most inventive and risk taking in recent art in New Zealand", Shelton’s work fits very much into the international genre of new-documentary photography depicting friends and participants in her immediate environs, each captured with the clarity and immediacy of the artist’s snapshot camera. These depictions at home, art openings, performances and various underground events have the speed and drama of the events and people taken within them.
Shelton’s images are organised on a visual, rather than narrative basis, and reveal the formal concerns of colour, shape, texture and content in several large, variously sized blocks. She exhibits her work in the form of A1 sized lazer copies, and would prefer her photographs to be seen en masse, with each image building upon and vying with the next, rather than as a series of isolated, self-contained statements. Her work can be seen at the McDougall Art Annex, in the Arts Centre from 6 June to 6 July.
The Robert McDougall Art Gallery is Christchurch’s public art gallery which features regularly changing exhibitions of international and New Zealand historical and contemporary art. The McDougall Art Annex is one of New Zealand’s leading contemporary art venues. The Robert McDougall Art Gallery is located in the Botanic Gardens, behind Canterbury Museum. The McDougall Art Annex is situated across the road in the Arts Centre, Worcester Boulevard. Hours at both galleries are 10 a.m. until 4.30 p.m. daily. Guided tours are available on request and admission is free.
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Advance copies of Ann Shelton’s Redeye book will be available from the McDougall Art Annex from the middle of June. The official launch of the book in Auckland is 27 June, 1997.
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