close to the wind

close to the wind

Ann Shelton

Curated by Heather Galbraith

Two Rooms
16 Putiki Street, Newton, Auckland

26 September - 26 October 2019
Preview Wednesday 25 September 6 - 8 pm

Ann Shelton The Lady's Maid, Valerian (Valerian sp.), 2019

close to the wind sets up conversations between selected works by Ann Shelton (2001-2019), and 19th century historical vernacular photography from a private collection, in order to identify and attend to certain omissions and presences. Shelton’s works presented here, tap into a range of urgent societal concerns and tensions, prioritizing female experiences and narratives; including access to abortion, fertility and women’s relationships to crime. The title of the exhibition alludes to the idiom of ‘sailing too close to the wind’, where an individual and/or action is on the verge of doing something illegal or improper, or when a scenario includes a key agent or character who has intentionally or unknowingly moved towards implied danger or precarity. close to the wind seeks to provide a space for consideration of some of the societal frameworks that suppress, define, pass judgement, essentialise or denigrate female experience, and a tendency to perpetually, repeatedly, sail too close to the wind.