In bringing these usually hidden zones to light, Pardington has documented the expansive back-of-house storage spaces, usually off-limits to the public, belonging to a diverse set of archives, galleries and museums. The scenes within are presented at a large scale: sharply focused, formally cohesive, meticulously composed. At first reading, their spacious format, impartial fluorescent lighting and highly readable detail presents Pardington as an objective viewer, but it quickly transpires that the word ‘loaded' is apt for both theme and series. It is the vaulted status of the rooms filled with specimens, paintings or Pacific and Māori ancestral treasures that provides much of The Vault's magnetic charge.

The large scale of the photographs from The Vault is one place to begin in considering the images as more than documentary, with the evidently high degree of aesthetic deliberation in their making providing another aspect for consideration. The visual intensity of the grouped collection of collections and the residual series of afterimages also offer keys to the accomplishment of Pardington's art. A rich anthology of visual data has been harvested, and his images are generous in poetic nuance, regularly carrying a lavish collage aesthetic and sometimes conveying rude and jarring facts. These storage spaces, it appears, are where taxidermied beasts are sent to pasture; portrait sitters wait to be remembered; or skeletons and mannequins stand at awkward rest. Immaculately mounted and brought together on the gallery walls, these photographic images transform waylaid specimens and treasures into strange art. There are unanticipated details to be found, interpretations to be read, and an expansive story that builds as each scene is encountered