Fiona Pardington Still Life with Albatross Feathers with Pounamu and Coral Hearts, Ripiro 2013. Archival inkjet print, gesso and acrylic polymer on canvas
Fiona Pardington My Mother's Roses, Pomegranates and Silver Platter of Ihumoana, Ripiro Beach 2013. Pigment inks on Hahnemuhle photo rag 308gsm
Fiona Pardington Still Life with Young Kahu, Hag Stone and Paper Nautilus, Ripiro Beach 2014. Archival inkjet print, gesso and acrylic polymer on canvas
Fiona Pardington Moonlight de Sade 2010
This exhibition is now closed
A survey exhibition by a leading New Zealand photographer explores sex, death and the female gaze.
This exhibition spans thirty years and brings together more than 100 photographs by one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most important, and most celebrated, photographic artists. Pardington is of Ngāi Tahu descent, and the exhibition ranges from her intimate family portraits to large-scale images of Māori taonga and museum objects held here and in France.
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Date:
9 July – 6 November 2016 -
Exhibition number:
1014
Collection works in this exhibition
Related reading: Photography, exhibition-1014, Fiona Pardington, EY
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.
Director's Foreword
Another Big Step Forward
Since mid July we’ve been enjoying the first major exhibition change downstairs. While it was difficult to say goodbye to Unseen and Op + Pop – and to be rid of the colourful castor sugar (some 600kg were required) with which Tanya Schultz made Pip & Pop’s Newest New World – it’s now so rewarding to be the final venue for City Gallery Wellington’s exhibition of Kāi Tahu photographer Fiona Pardington’s A Beautiful Hesitation. Designing the display and augmenting the content of this show for our audiences feels like another big step towards being fully operational.
Commentary
The Camera as a Place of Potential
To Māori, the colour black represents Te Korekore – the realm of potential being, energy, the void, and nothingness. The notion of potential and the presence of women are what I see when I peek at Fiona Pardington’s 1997 work Moko. And I say peek deliberately, because I am quite mindful of this work – it is downright spooky. Moko is a photographic rendering of a seeping water stain upon the blackboard in Pardington’s studio, taken while she was the recipient of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship in Dunedin in 1997.
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).
Notes
Venice Biennale 2026 Announcement
We are delighted to finally be able to publicly share the very exciting news that the Gallery has been selected as the delivery partner for Aotearoa New Zealand’s exhibition at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Notes
Creative New Zealand announces La Biennale di Venezia artist and partnership with Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
Esteemed artist Fiona Pardington MNZM (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Clan Cameron of Erracht) will represent New Zealand at La Biennale di Venezia in 2026.
Notes
Largest ever Fiona Pardington exhibition opens in Christchurch
Death, sex, flesh and the female gaze are among the many themes explored in the Gallery’s newest exhibition, Fiona Pardington: A Beautiful Hesitation.
Notes
Mauria mai, tono ano by Fiona Pardington
This article first appeared in The Press on 11 May 2005
Artist Profile
Larence Shustak
Welcome to the world of Larence Shustak—a rule-breaker and image-maker who came of age in the creative cauldron that was New York City in the 1950s. He used a camera as a paintbrush, documenting as well as creatively interpreting his subjects: street people and nudes. Old folks and children. Jazz legends.
Commentary
Representing Women: Ann Shelton’s Dark Matter
What is ‘dark matter’? For theoretical physicists it is matter that cannot be directly observed but whose existence is nevertheless scientifically calculable – productively present yet simultaneously invisible. In a similar vein, the everyday phrase ‘dark matter’ describes objects, conditions and situations that harbour unease or trauma. Trauma that is often concealed, repressed, or buried. Both definitions are active in Ann Shelton’s mid-career review exhibition Dark Matter, and they provide a rich point of entry into this compelling collection of her photographic work. These are photographs that bristle with intensity and refuse to let their subjects die a quiet archival death.
Commentary
Laurence Aberhart
New Zealand artist Laurence Aberhart is internationally regarded for his photographs of unpeopled landscapes and interiors. He photographs places redolent with the weight of time, which he captures with his century-old large-format camera and careful framing. But he’s always taken more spontaneous photographs of people too, particularly in the years he lived in Christchurch and Lyttelton (1975–83) when he photographed his young family, his friends and occasionally groups of strangers. ‘If I lived in a city again,’ he says, ‘I would photograph people. One of the issues is that I even find it difficult to ask people whether I can photograph a building, so to ask to photograph them – I’m very reticent. I also know that after a number of minutes of waiting for me to set cameras up and take exposure readings and so on, people can get rather annoyed. So it’s not a conscious thing, it’s more just an accident of the way I photograph.’
Artist Profile
The Devil’s Blind Spot
Te Puna o Waiwhetū Christchurch Art Gallery has a long-standing tradition of curating exhibitions of emerging and early-career artists. We do this in order to contribute to the ecology of the local art world, as well as because – quite straightforwardly – we’re interested in the practices of artists at all stages of their careers, and would like to bring the work of outstanding younger artists to wider public attention. The Devil’s Blind Spot is the latest in this ongoing series, but unlike earlier exhibitions, it’s concerned with a single medium – photography.
Commentary
The Lines That Are Left
Of landscape itself as artefact and artifice; as the ground for the inscribing hand of culture and technology; as no clean slate.
— Joanna Paul
The residential Red Zone is mostly green. After each house is demolished, contractors sweep up what is left, cover the section with a layer of soil and plant grass seed. Almost overnight, driveway, yard, porch, garage, shed and house become a little paddock; the border of plants and trees outlining it the only remaining sign that there was once a house there.
My Favourite
Selwyn Toogood, Levin
I spent much of my adolescence in hospital, confined to bed due to a chronic illness. With a 14" TV beside me, I’d travel to imaginary places via the controller of my Nintendo games console. At the time, I couldn’t imagine walking to the letterbox, let alone experiencing the more exotic places of the world.
Article
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).
Article
New Zealand in the Biennale of Sydney and the Biennale of Sydney in New Zealand
and the Biennale of Sydney in New Zealand