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FIONA PARDINGTON in Fragments of Empires
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Young Hawk, Hag Stone and Paper Nautilus, Ripiro Beach (2014)
The idea of empire implies a distinction between those colonised and those who were governed by them, yet human nature is such that bloodlines quickly become blurred. The Scottish and Māori heritage of New Zealand artist Fiona Pardington is typical of this blurring. In her case, complex genealogy on both sides encompasses the stories and lineages of both victors and victims of empire which she refashions through art into a new and masterful hybridity. Young Hawk, Hag Stone and Paper Nautilus, Ripiro Beach (2014) is one of a series of still lifes she has recently made that are symbolic laments about how nature and history are being deformed. Reminiscent of eighteenth century Dutch still lifes, these painterly photographs with their careful inflections of strong colour (in this case blood red), are, at a time of natural pollution and global warming, hymns to fragility and balance as well as, more starkly memento mori.
— text by David Elliott
Lux et Tenebris (2014)
Pardington’s installation Lux et Tenebris (2014), the first she has made, uses the old sink of the former hospital room in which the exhibition is situated as a receptacle for highly reflective crystal vessels and several small antelope skulls she found in Berlin. The idea of the vessel is extended into a void or portal in the ominous forms of galvanised bathtubs, relics from Hitler’s public health campaigns, that, one lying, one standing, appear like coffins in the shadows. The dark water in one parses the reflection of a small spotlight. High in the corner of the room, the work is completed by a barely visible photograph. Taken around 1900, it shows a wooden carving of a critical moment in an ancient Māori myth: trickster Māui attempts to attain eternal life by climbing into the vagina of Hine-nui-te-pō, the goddess of night and death, but the sound of a bird wakes her and the unfortunate boy is crushed by her obsidian vagina dentata.
— text by David Elliott
Fiona Pardington in Fragments of Empires photo gallery
Fragments of Empires exhibition page