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Fiona Pardington
Fiona Pardington A220848 2019. Pigment inks on Hahnemühle Photo Rag. Courtesy the artist and Starkwhite
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Join artist Fiona Pardington (Ngāi Tahu, Clan Cameron, Ngāti Māmoe) and Gwynneth Porter in conversation in Pardington's exhibition Tiki: Orphans of Māoriland.
This body of spectral photographs indexes an unusual collection of tiki from the Wellcome Collection in London that has researchers puzzled – who made these curio-objects, and for whom? Enterprising Māori, Pākehā crafters (or forgers), or European lapidarians? Join the discussion and explore the images with this key Maōri artist and explorer of photographic boundaries and the space between fact and fiction.
Dr Fiona Pardington, who last year was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, was named a Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Prime Minister in 2016. Pardington is the first New Zealand visual artist to receive this honour.
Related
Exhibition
Tiki: Orphans of Māoriland
31 January – 12 July 2020
Orphaned faux hei tiki and a complex story of interaction, exchange and exploitation.
My Favourite
Fiona Pardington’s Still Life with Barley Grass and Freesia, Waiheke
The most magical book I held in my hands as a child was called Ratsmagic, and it belonged to my sister. It was a dark, threatening masterpiece of a picture book, in which a bluebird is kidnapped by a witch, right when she is due to lay her egg. The animals in the valley where she lives whisper to one another “Bluebird is with egg, BLUEBIRD IS WITH EGG” with a fierce and mythological importance. A clever rat is sent to save her from her terrible fate.
Commentary
Beyond The Fields We Know
In the canons of received taste, the unicorn figurine doesn’t rank terribly highly beyond kitsch. Sitting in your hand, it’s cutesy, twee, trivial and quaint (though a piece of master-worked Venetian glass from Murano is a pricey and collectable item).