Book: Taharaki Skyside

Fiona Pardington: Taharaki Skyside

Fiona Pardington: Taharaki Skyside, published by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu

Brimming with beauty and loss, the avian portraits of Fiona Pardington (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, and Clan Cameron of Erracht) resurrect the charisma and wildness of native birds preserved as taxidermy specimens in museum collections around Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.

On these pages, her manu are not merely replicated but reborn.

Fiona Pardington: Taharaki Skyside includes texts by Geoffrey Batchen, Maia Nuku (Ngāi Tai), Hana O’Regan (Kāi Tahu), Harry Rickit (Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi), Megan Tamati-Quennell (Te Ātiawa, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāi Tahu) and Andrew Paul Wood alongside Pardington’s exquisite artworks and provide insights into the artist’s practice.

Designed by the artist’s brother, artist and designer Neil Pardington, it includes colourways representing Aotearoa skies at dawn. and explores the practice of an artist at the height of her career and reveals the monumental works she has created for the New Zealand Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale.

Highlights

• More than 25 pages of artworks, including photographs created for the Venice Biennale.

• A poetic introduction in te reo Māori and English by Dr Hana O’Regan (Kāi Tahu), leader in Māori cultural development, te Tiriti o Waitangi rights, language advocacy and education.

• Curator for the Arts of Oceania at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Maia Nuku (English and Ngāi Tai) considers manu in te ao Māori and the histories of bird portraiture.

• Art critic Andrew Paul Wood reveals meaningful connections between Pardington’s works, Dante’s Purgatorio and the Southern Cross.

• Oxford University Professor Geoffrey Batchen discusses Pardington’s work within the wider international history of photography.

• Art historian Dr Harry Rickit (Te Arawa and Ngāpuhi) considers metaphors of infinity in Pardington’s practice, connecting Taharaki Skyside to Venice’s scientific and artist past.

• Curator Modern & Contemporary Maori and Indigenous Art Megan Tamati-Quennell (Te Ātiawa, Kāti Māmoe, and Ngāi Tahu) explores the themes and subjects that thread through the history of Pardington’s work, and the artist’s distinct aesthetic and conceptual approach.

Priced at $75.00, you can buy the book via the Christchurch Art Gallery, either in person or online.

Look inside Fiona Pardington: Takaraki Skyside

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