Seedling, Urho Karhumäki’s Olympic Oak, Tervalampi, Finland. In 1936 Olympic Medals were still awarded in what was called The Arts Competitions where artists competed in categories such as sculpture, drawing, painting and architecture. Karhumäki was awarded Gold in the poetry competition for his composition Avoveteen (Into free water). Today only a stump remains at the corner of the small, private graveyard where Karhumäki is buried

Shelton’s massing of large scale diptych photographs of oak trees comprising in a forest forms a charged reminder of past atrocities and histories. The trees are individually survivors from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, given as seedlings to the 130 Gold Medallist athletes by Hitler or Olympic Committee members and subsequently planted around their home towns. Shelton tracked down many of the living trees around the world, initiated by the presence of the oak given to Jack Lovelock for his 1500m win and now growing in Shelton’s hometown of Timaru. in a forest is a psychical reminder of National Socialist Germany and a past that the world swore never to forget or repeat, and conveys the long history of nature symbolism in Europe as well as modes of disbursal of ideological power.

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