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Fiona Pardington My Mother's Roses, Pomegranates and Plastic Bottles,
Ripiro Beach 2013. Pigment inks on Hahnemühle paper. Image courtesy of the artist and Starkwhite, Auckland
Largest ever Fiona Pardington exhibition opens in Christchurch
Exhibition
Death, sex, flesh and the female gaze are among the many themes explored in the Gallery’s newest exhibition, Fiona Pardington: A Beautiful Hesitation.
The exhibition brings together more than 100 photographs as a comprehensive survey of Pardington’s work spanning 30 years.
'It reveals the key concerns that have shaped the creativity of one of New Zealand’s most important photographers,' says Deputy Director Blair Jackson.
The exhibition ranges from intimate family portraits to expansive projects involving objects and taonga from museum collections in New Zealand and France. It also tracks Pardington’s use of different photographic processes, from expertly produced analogue hand-printings through to large-scale digital works.
'A Beautiful Hesitation will broaden viewers’ understanding and appreciation for Pardington’s significant and highly celebrated work,' adds Jackson.
Working with the seasons, Pardington’s recent still-lifes incorporate materials salvaged from beaches, riverbeds, second-hand stores and the side of the road — all with deep personal and cultural meanings.
The salvaging of found objects and images runs throughout her art practice. The One Night of Love series re-presents photographs of female nudes taken from a found cache of magazine proof-sheets. The medical suite series, from Tainted Love, re-photographs images of disease from medical textbooks.
Specific bodies of work hold particular relevance to Pardington’s Māori descent and to Christchurch history, including photographed shell specimens originally collected in the 1920s as part of a study into traditional Ngāi Tahu food sources. Childish Things, photographed at Canterbury Museum, represents fragments of letters written by an immigrant child, Arthur Barker, who arrived in Canterbury aboard the Charlotte Jane in 1850.
A new acquisition, Still Life with Wild Wheat and Freesias, Waiheke, will be exhibited at the Gallery for the first time, along with Pardington’s very recent Flora_Unicorn, from a series of photographs which she describes as 'impossible objects'.
A Beautiful Hesitation has been developed in association with Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and City Gallery Wellington by curator Aaron Lister. It has been presented in both Auckland and Wellington, and is accompanied by a book bringing together new and classic writings on the artist’s work, published by Victoria University Press.
Related reading: Photography
Exhibition
Fiona Pardington: A Beautiful Hesitation
9 July – 6 November 2016
A survey exhibition by a leading New Zealand photographer explores sex, death and the female gaze.
Collection
Fiona Pardington Still Life with Barley Grass and Freesia, Waiheke
“Every object has a particular meaning for me, a certain feeling, an emotion, a history – often a history I can sense, even though I can’t tell you its story.” —Fiona Pardington
Fiona Pardington’s still-life photographs assemble a myriad collection of objects that carry highly personal meanings for the artist. Objects, both found and owned, are assembled in the European still-life tradition but on the artist’s terms. Water held in containers, like the vase in this work, represent South Island creeks and rivers reflecting Fiona’s connection to Te Waipounamu through her Ngāi Tahu and Clan Cameron heritage.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Fiona Pardington Believe
History often only tells one side of the story. This photograph by Fiona Pardington was inspired by visiting the archive of Dr A. C. Barker at Canterbury Museum. He was the ship’s surgeon on the Charlotte Jane, the first colonial ship to reach Canterbury, and made photographs of early Christchurch. The letters his children wrote to their uncle in the 1860s provide a view of early Canterbury childhood from the perspective of colonising settlers.
Fiona has said: “I was drawn in by the delicate fine paper, iron gall inks, smudged and blotched marks, spelling mistakes and a smeared fingerprint – a tantalising forensic touch. I immediately had an aching feeling in my bones, for the land, the birds impacted by the Pākehā kids and their guns, gulls and adventures. I could feel their father standing there with his camera, and marvelled at the wobbly copperplate words giving a rare and earnest view into a child’s world in the Christchurch bush teeming with a luxuriance of native wildlife I could only mourn today.”
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
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Commentary
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Commentary
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Article
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