Exhibitions
Fiona Pardington | Taharaki Skyside
09.05 - 22.11
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Presented by the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa | Creative New Zealand and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will feature Taharaki Skyside, Fiona Pardington’s powerful new series of large-scale photographs.
Pardington (Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Clan Cameron of Erracht) turns her lens on taxidermied birds held in museum collections across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia: specimens shaped by the intertwined histories of colonial collecting, scientific classification and cultural loss. Focusing on species endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand, and working through Dante’s poetic vision of the Southern Hemisphere as the location of Purgatory, her portraits honour the deep spiritual and cultural significance of these manu (birds) to Māori, while confronting the legacies that placed many of them in vitrines rather than in the wild. Some, like the huia and whēkau (laughing owl), are long extinct; many others remain critically vulnerable.
Exhibitions
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