Arts
Shelton began her career as a photojournalist working for daily newspapers, before deciding she wanted more control over her images and deciding to go to art school. As an artist, her work mixes conceptual and narrative traditions of photography. In large-scale, hyper-real photographs she explores histories of people and of places, often bringing forgotten or controversial histories to light. Shelton has also shown a steady interest in the nature of the archive, exploring the collections of others in her work. Shelton first came to attention with the series Redeye. Selected from thousands of photographs taken over a period of two years, the work document Auckland's art scene and its gallery openings, performances and underground events, especially those taking place around the artist-run space Teststrip. Described by the artist as a 'social diary', the series was described by Auckland Art Gallery photography curator Ron Brownson as 'some of the most inventive and risk taking in recent art in New Zealand'. A recent series, jane says, created for her 2016 exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Dark Matter, features plants traditionally associated with treatments for women's fertility placed in ikebana-like arrangements against vibrant coloured backgrounds. The artist spent a year researching, collecting, arranging and photographing the plants, which include thistle, fennel, rhododendron and yarrow.