Fiona Pardington

Fiona Pardington (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Clan Cameron of Erracht) is responsible for some of the most memorable images in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand artmaking. She works from her home in Te Waipounamu, New Zealand’s South Island.

At the heart of Pardington’s practice is an abiding concern with emotion and affect. A practitioner with over three decades experience as an exhibiting artist, she has explored the on-going capacities of photography by attending to that which is hidden or unseen in the photograph as much as what it may represent. In the late 1980s she was amongst a group of women artists who challenged photography’s social documentary aesthetic, prevalent in the previous decade. She went on to focus on the still-life format, recording museum taoka (Māori ancestral treasures) and other historic objects such as hei tiki (greenstone pendants) and the now extinct huia bird. In these works, she brings to a contemporary audience an awareness of traditional and forgotten objects. Pardington is renowned for her ability to breathe life force back into these objects and to raise global awareness of the importance of conservation. She interrogates death and celebrates collecting and preservation.

Pardington has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the Moët et Chandon Fellowship (1991–2), the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship (1996–7) and the Kāi Tahu residency at the University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka (2006). In 2011 Pardington became a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate, and in 2016 was named a Knight (Chevalier) in the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Prime Minister, the first New Zealand visual artist ever to receive this honour. In 2017, Pardington was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit and in 2025 was promoted to an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to photography.

Pardington’s upcoming series Taharaki Skyside will be shown at the 61st International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia from 9 May – 22 November 2026. She has previously been included in important group exhibitions and biennales including: Middle of Now | Here, Honolulu Biennial (2017); lux et tenebris, Momentum Worldwide, Berlin (2014); The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, Kyiv International Biennale (2012) and Ahua: A Beautiful Hesitation: 17th Biennale of Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2010).

Her works have been extensively collected by all of Aotearoa New Zealand’s major public galleries, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Musée du Quai Branly (Paris), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, US), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Artist CV ↓

Fiona Pardington | STARKWHITE

Artists

Billy Apple®

Martin Basher

Rebecca Baumann

Andrew Beck

Whitney Bedford

Mikala Dwyer

Alicia Frankovich

Marti Friedlander

Bill Henson

Jamie Te Heuheu

Len Lye

Richard Maloy

Laith McGregor

Jonny Niesche

Seung Yul Oh

Ani O’Neill

Fiona Pardington

John Reynolds

Grant Stevens

Heather Straka

Yuk King Tan

Gordon Walters

Clinton Watkins

Mark Whalen