Seedling, Jack Lovelock’s Olympic Oak, Timaru Boys’ High School, Timaru, New Zealand. Featured in Leni Riefenstahl’s (1938 film) Olympia, Lovelock set a new world record and won Gold in what some regard as one of the finest 1500m Olympic finals of all time. In his thesis James Constandt refers to Lovelock entrusting his seedling into the care of teammate Cecil Matthews to deliver it home to New Zealand. By the time it arrived it was in poor condition but was nursed back to health and in 1941 was planted at Timaru Boys’ High School

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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