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    HomeCollectionPortrait of a life-cast of ‘Pouka-lem’, Aotearoa New Zealand
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    Fiona Pardington

    Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1961
    Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Māori, Clan Cameron, Scottish

    Portrait of a life-cast of ‘Pouka-lem’, Aotearoa New Zealand

    • 2010
    • Pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag
    • Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2010
    • 1770 x 1400mm
    • 2010/043

    Tags: koru (pattern), life masks, Māori (culture or style), men (male humans), moko, people (agents), portraits, spirals (geometric figures), tattoos

    Save to My Gallery

    Exhibition History

    Ayesha Green All of my Lovers are Immigrants (Smooth my Pillow) (detail) 2020. Acrylic on canvas. Private collection
    Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania
    Charles Meryon NOUVELLE- ZÉLANDE Greniers indigènes et habitations à AKAROA (Presqu’île de Banks) 1845 1860. Etching. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū 1972
    K⁠Honoka
    Rita Angus A Goddess of Mercy date unknown. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Gallery. Purchased by Christchurch City Council 1956
    Portraits and Personalities: Portraits from the Permanent Collection
    Bill Culbert Pacific Flotsam (detail) 2007. Fluorescent light, electric wire, plastic bottles. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 2008. Image courtesy of Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth.
    Brought to Light: A New View of the Collection

    Related reading: Ka Honoka

    Notes
    Happy Birthday Akaroa Museum

    Happy Birthday Akaroa Museum

    Big Congratulations to Akaroa Museum on their 50th anniversary which they are celebrating this weekend.

    Article
    A Tale of Two Chiefs

    A Tale of Two Chiefs

    If you have recently visited He Taonga Rangatira: Noble Treasures at the Gallery you will have been struck by Fiona Pardington's two large photographic portraits of lifelike busts of Ngāi tahu tipuna (ancestors).

    Continued

    Collection
    Nouvelle-Zélande

    Louis Auguste de Sainson Nouvelle-Zélande

    Collection
    Coiffures diverses des habitans de Tonga Tabou, lle des Amis

    Louis Auguste de Sainson Coiffures diverses des habitans de Tonga Tabou, lle des Amis

    Louis Auguste de Sainson was the official artist aboard Captain Dumont d’Urville’s Astrolabe. He spent three months in New Zealand in 1827 on a maritime mapping survey between Tasman Bay and the Bay of Islands, followed by a month in Tonga. A substantial publication on d’Urville’s 1826–29 voyages through Asia and the Pacific was published in Paris in 1833, profusely illustrated by lithographic prints after de Sainson’s drawings.

    D’Urville and his crew had close contact with people they met, including the Totaranui chief Tehinui (or Tehi-Noui) and his travelling companion Kokiore (or Koki-Hore) depicted in print 2, who were sketched by de Sainson after coming aboard at Palliser Bay (near present-day Wellington). Tehinui and Kokiore at first both intended to reach Europe, but instead disembarked at Tolaga Bay, later finding their own way home. In summarising his portrait sketching process, de Sainson later recalled: “What I was doing caused a lot of laughter; every minute they tried to escape me.” (Kā Honoka, 18 December 2015 – 28 August 2016)

    Collection
    Nouvelle-Zélande

    Louis Auguste de Sainson Nouvelle-Zélande

    Louis Auguste de Sainson was the official artist aboard Captain Dumont d’Urville’s Astrolabe. He spent three months in New Zealand in 1827 on a maritime mapping survey between Tasman Bay and the Bay of Islands, followed by a month in Tonga. A substantial publication on d’Urville’s 1826–29 voyages through Asia and the Pacific was published in Paris in 1833, profusely illustrated by lithographic prints after de Sainson’s drawings.

    D’Urville and his crew had close contact with people they met, including the Totaranui chief Tehinui (or Tehi-Noui) and his travelling companion Kokiore (or Koki-Hore) depicted in print 2, who were sketched by de Sainson after coming aboard at Palliser Bay (near present-day Wellington). Tehinui and Kokiore at first both intended to reach Europe, but instead disembarked at Tolaga Bay, later finding their own way home. In summarising his portrait sketching process, de Sainson later recalled: “What I was doing caused a lot of laughter; every minute they tried to escape me.” (Kā Honoka, 18 December 2015 – 28 August 2016)

    Collection
    Nouvelle-Zélande - coffre en bois sculpté [Plate 59]

    Louis Auguste de Sainson Nouvelle-Zélande - coffre en bois sculpté [Plate 59]

    Louis Auguste de Sainson was the official artist aboard Captain Dumont d’Urville’s Astrolabe. He spent three months in New Zealand in 1827 on a maritime mapping survey between Tasman Bay and the Bay of Islands, followed by a month in Tonga. A substantial publication on d’Urville’s 1826–29 voyages through Asia and the Pacific was published in Paris in 1833, profusely illustrated by lithographic prints after de Sainson’s drawings.

    D’Urville and his crew had close contact with people they met, including the Totaranui chief Tehinui (or Tehi-Noui) and his travelling companion Kokiore (or Koki-Hore) depicted in print 2, who were sketched by de Sainson after coming aboard at Palliser Bay (near present-day Wellington). Tehinui and Kokiore at first both intended to reach Europe, but instead disembarked at Tolaga Bay, later finding their own way home. In summarising his portrait sketching process, de Sainson later recalled: “What I was doing caused a lot of laughter; every minute they tried to escape me.” (Kā Honoka, 18 December 2015 – 28 August 2016)

    Collection
    Nouvelle Zélande. Pirogue de L'Anse de l'Astrolabe. (Baie Tasman.), Pirogue du Canal de l'Astrolabe. Pl. 35

    François-Edmond Pâris, Pierre Langlumé, Jean-Antoine Laurent, Joseph Tastu Nouvelle Zélande. Pirogue de L'Anse de l'Astrolabe. (Baie Tasman.), Pirogue du Canal de l'Astrolabe. Pl. 35

    Aged just twenty when he joined Dumont d’Urville’s 1826–29 Pacific survey, François-Edmond Pâris created a comprehensive visual record of ships and boats encountered. In 1827 he recorded vessels he saw at Ūawa Tolaga Bay and Paepae-o-Tū Bream Bay, and Te Tai-o-Aorere Tasman Bay and Tāmaki Strait, Auckland.

    (Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)

    Collection
    Sydney from the North Shore

    Conrad Martens Sydney from the North Shore

    Conrad Martens left England for Rio de Janeiro in 1833. By December had reached Montevideo, Uruguay, where he joined Captain FitzRoy and Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle, becoming ship’s artist on a survey of South American coasts. In 1835, Martens settled in Sydney and became an admired landscape painter who also produced popular hand-coloured lithographs.

    (Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)

    Collection
    Nouvelle-Zélande, Presqu’île de Banks. Etat de la petite colonie Française d’Akaroa. Vers 1845 - Voyage du Rhin.

    Charles Meryon Nouvelle-Zélande, Presqu’île de Banks. Etat de la petite colonie Française d’Akaroa. Vers 1845 - Voyage du Rhin.

    Described as the father of modern etching, French naval officer Charles Meryon was one of the most important artists to work in Waitaha / Canterbury during the colonial era. He served on the Rhin, stationed at Akaroa between 1843 and 1846, to look out for the French settlement there. Meryon made numerous pencil studies at Akaroa which he later used as the basis for this series of etchings completed back in Paris during the 1860s. He planned to publish these and other images of the Pacific in an album, which unfortunately he never completed. The story of the French attempt to settle Te Waipounamu / the South Island is a fascinating chapter in New Zealand’s history. A French whaling captain, Jean Langlois, purchased 30,000 acres from Kāi Tahu on Horomaka / Banks Peninsula in 1838 and returned to France to get government support to establish a French colony at Akaroa. It was from here that he hoped the French would be able to expand throughout the rest of the South Island. A company was formed and sixty- three French and German settlers set sail on the Comte de Paris. They arrived at Akaroa in August 1840 only to find a Union Jack flying at Takapūneke / Green’s Point signalling that British sovereignty had already been claimed. Today, Akaroa continues to retain something of a French flavour.

    (Pickaxes and shovels, 17 February – 5 August 2018)

    Collection
    Le Ministère de la Marine

    Charles Meryon Le Ministère de la Marine

    Charles Meryon’s fantastical Parisian scene presents the French Admiralty building with a flying horde being delivered from the far ends of the globe. The crowd below is thrown into disarray as Roman charioteers, whales and whaleboats, a waka with sails, an anchor, serpents, cowboys and horses with fishtails prepare for landing.

    Meryon’s impaired mental state in this period is the usual explanation given for this extraordinary etching. At the same time, it may be viewed as an image laden with personal symbolism as the confounding facts, fantasies and errors of the past make their perplexing return.

    Meryon spent three years in Akaroa from 1843–46 as a young naval cadet, protecting the fledgling French settlement. Although this particular colonising plan did not succeed, the streetlamps of Paris were fed a regular supply of whale oil from Banks Peninsula in this period. For Meryon these were formative years and regularly revisited in his imagination. (Kā Honoka, 18 December 2015 – 28 August 2016)

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