PHOTO 2024

Instagram account launched to explore the life and legacy of Lola Montez

1.10.20

New Zealand artist Ann Shelton has launched an instagram account to allow audiences to engage with archival material relating to Lola Montez, the subject of her PHOTO 2021 commission.

The life of Lola Montez transcends truth and slips into desiring myth. A radical and mercurial figure Montez exceeded prescribed parameters of femininity and ignored limits and existing conventions controlling women’s bodies. Montez toured Australian gold rush towns during the 1850s as a performer – and was notably the first woman ever photographed smoking.

Follow now on Instagram @elizagilbertandlolamontez.

Ann Shelton will be presenting a new work inspired by Lola Montez for PHOTO 2021, in partnership with the Metro Tunnel Creative Program. To find out more about Ann Shelton’s practice, read her Q&A here.

Lola Montez, ca 1850. Daguerreotype. 21.6 x 16.5 cm (8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.) Albert Sands Southworth & Josiah Johnson Hawes.

Lola Montez, ca 1850. Daguerreotype. 21.6 x 16.5 cm (8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.) Albert Sands Southworth & Josiah Johnson Hawes. www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/268341

Founding Partners
  • Bowness Family Foundation
  • Naomi Milgrom Foundation
Major Government Partners
  • City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program
  • Creative Victoria
Major Partners
  • Maddocks

PHOTO Australia respectfully acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands upon which we work and live, and the rich and diverse Indigenous cultures across what is now called Australia. For over 60,000 years, Indigenous arts and culture have thrived on this sacred land, and we honour Elders and cultural leaders past and present. This was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.

01–24 March