Photos that tell stories from our colonial past

Ann Shelton is one of New Zealand’s most prominent and prolific artists working today in the medium of photography. She was born in Timaru and attended Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, earning a BFA in 1995, and later an MFA at Vancouver’s University of British Colombia.

Shelton has forged an international career, her latest exhibition, the missionaries, is showing from today at the Aigantighe Art Gallery.

Shelton’s works often emphasise the tension between a highlycomposed image and the complex stories it contains. Lately, Shelton has been exploring this idea as it relates to plants, looking at how once seemingly innocuous botanicals are tightly bound to feminist, colonial and national histories.

The missionaries contrasts the highly stylised forms of floristry with the often unruly histories embodied by these plants. It documents the plant species brought here by early settlers to examine what these reveal about the settler psychology, as well as the consequences on the local ecosystem, situating this within a wider interrogation of relationships to nature.

In The Woodswoman, Gorse (Ulex europaeus) (pictured), farmers and keen walkers will recognise the sharp barbs of gorse bush protruding from the vase.

Though we now know gorse as a pest that has spread to the detriment of native species, gorse was originally imported by settlers to use as hedging, to provide shelter for crops and stock, and to help combat soil erosion

It was, like all of the plants featured in the missionaries – a slice of home in new, faraway land – but that slice has proliferated and created vast problems within Aotearoa’s delicate ecosystems.

Far from simple flower arrangements, the missionaries is a fine example of Shelton’s compelling and complex artistic practice.

The exhibition closes on August 15. The artist will give a public talk about the exhibition at the Aigantighe tomorrow at 2pm. All are welcome.