Ngā Wāhanga: excerpts from Fiona Pardington’s Collections at Papakura Art Gallery

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6Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably. — Walter Benjamin (1)

Ngā Wāhanga, meaning to take a part, alludes to an exhibition of selected artworks from Fiona Pardington’s practice; it is also highly suggestive of the partiality of the objects in her photographs. The fragmentary nature of museum objects such as hei tiki, taxidermy birds and wax cast mushrooms are suspended in space and time, creating a desire for the site or context from which they are detached.(2) It is this desire that has propelled Pardington to use museum collections as the impetus for new artworks, repurposing functionality and extend-ing the journey of these objects through pho-tography. Ngā Wāhanga selects works from five series: Eight Shells 2004, Fugitive Beings 2004, The Heart Derelict 2006, Phantasma 2011 and Metaphysical Landscapes 2012. The collection of images reflects Pardington’s ability to bring new life to museum collections, reconciling histories through the photographic reproduc-tion of museum objects. The earliest work in this exhibition is taken from the series Eight Shells 2004. The suite of photographs document shells at Otago Museum, collected by ethnologist and art historian James-Herries Beattie.(3) In the work D63.32 Taiwhatiwhati or Roroa = Otago Paphies australis Gemelin 1790 & *D63.28 Pipi North Island Roroa South Island Paphies australis Gemelin 1790, Pardington draws our attention to the duality of objects and the distinct bi-cultur-al cataloguing system inscribed on the object itself. Visible on the shell is a lightly written inscription, most likely written by Beattie him-self, denoting the Māori names of shells while

a bolder inscription displays the museum clas-sification numbers in a manner that is almost corrective.(4) Pardington quotes the museum labelling as her title, adding yet another clas-sification, the Latin genus of each shell. This focus on labelling alludes to the complexity of categorisation within museums and opens up the potential readings of scientific artefacts. Pardington’s interest in natural history collections continues in the series Fugitive Beings 2004. In this series, Pardington casts her lens on ornithological specimens held in the Canterbury Museum collection. Here, she photographs the collection of taxidermy birds as seen in Huia Lovers 2006. In this work Pardington creates new ‘ways of seeing’ and understanding huia within a Māori context. Huia play an important role in Māoridom, they are often associated with dignity and wisdom; their feathers worn only by high-ranking chiefs. In 1905, the Duke of York (soon to be George V) was gifted with a singular huia feather by a Māori elder, which he then wore on his hat. This lead to the adoption of huia feather as a popular feature in Victorian dress and it was the de-mand for the rare species that contributed to their extinction. While analogue photography immediately draws a sense of historicism, Huia Lovers evokes a wider stream of conscious-ness where photography can act as a place of memory and mourning.(5) The ability of photography to act as a portal between the past and the present is reflected in the adoption of photographic representations within Māori culture. In some meeting houses photography has taken the place of ancestral representations in carv-ings to strengthen the ability to remember and revere ancestors.(6) In the same tradition, Pardington’s images Traditional Heitiki No.2

The State of the ObjectAne Tonga


7662.5 and Traditional Heitiki 1953.42.4 Heitiki, reclaims green stone hei tiki from the JH Burnet Collection in the Whanganui Museum. Light and scale bring the hei tiki from the darkness of the storeroom into the light of the living pre-sent. In the images Traditional Heitiki No.2 62.5 and Traditional Heitiki 1953.42.4, the hei tiki have been stripped of their context and colour, hand printed with silver hues as if in search of the mauri or essence of the object. Pardington continues to identify the mauri of museum objects in the series The Heart Derelict. This series was made during her time as the Ngāi Tahu Artist in Residence in 2006 at the Otago Polytechnic – Te Kura Matatini ki Otago. Here, Pardington studied nests from the Otago Museum collection, some of which can be located and some that have not yet been identified. Within her photographs, the nests are re-contextualised and given a second life. In A Tui’s nest with Four Eggs 2006, the photographed nest protects four trans-lucent eggs; the unprotected nest heighten the fragility of life and death, the lives inside the eggs undetermined, vulnerable and open to danger. In contrast, Rifleman 2006 depicts a nest with a thicker wall that almost encloses the nest from visibility. The tiny opening reveals a vacant nest transforming into an active space and place where Mauri is upheld.(7) Mining the museum, as both the sub-ject and mode of practice, has lead Pardington to explore several international collections.(8)Included in this exhibition are three works from the Phantasma series 2011. In this series Pardington photographs wax cast mushrooms created by botanist Jean Baptiste-Barla (1817-1896) from the collection at The Museum de l’Histoire Naturelle in Nice, France.(9) Within each of Pardington’s photographic

arrangements, the darkened backdrop heightens the rhizomatic nature of mushrooms that appear almost overnight. In Amanita muscaria 2011, Clitocybe geotropa (back) 2011 and Trompette des Mortes/Craterellus cornicopioides 2011 Pardington takes Barla’s models beyond a simple scientific reading to explore the peculiar role of mushrooms as figures of the imagination. Amanita muscaria is notorious for its use by shamans of many cultures, taken to achieve communion with the divine other realm.(10) However the red capped mushroom with white spots also draws on archetypal image of a toadstool, seen throughout many childhood books and films. Other playful and whimsical references are echoed in the work Clitocybe geotropa (back), a gregarious mushroom that usually forms fairy rings. Pardington comments, “I loved fairy rings and always made a point of trying to stand inside one on the slim hope of catching a glimpse of a fairy.”(11) The most recent artworks included in Ngā Wāhanga are from the series Metaphysical Landscapes 2012, a series of still-life arrange-ments that tread the slippery distinctions between the real and surreal. The images have a painterly quality that visually reference seventeenth century painting traditions, such as the exploration of light by painters such as Caravaggio, as well as the 16th century vanitas traditions. In Still Life with Seaweed and Lemons the hyper real luminosity of the lemons juxtaposed with the low-lit miniature skull imply a correlation between life and death.(12) The skull itself is the top part of a gear stick and intri-cately alludes to the car culture in New Zealand that equally draws a correlation between speed, desire and death. Pardington deconstructs master narratives of the still life, heightening the importance of composition to construct


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10new narratives. Understanding the importance of scientific examinations of flora and fauna, Pardington uses native greenery such as pūriri in Still Life with Freud and Pūriri and puhoehoe in Still Life with Puhoe. As Walter Benjamin comments, “every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disap-pear irretrievably.”(13) Pardington re-presents objects to contemporary audiences, offering new opportunities to reclaim these objects in the present. Her search for mauri opens up the potential to understand museum collections in ways that go beyond the disciplines of science, history, ornithology, anthropology or ecology. By bringing Pardington’s photographs into Papakura Art Gallery, we are given the opport-unity to stand in front of each work and search for mauri ourselves.

(1) Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ in Illuminations ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969) 255.

(2) Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums and Heritage (Cal-ifornia: University of California Press, 1998), 19.

(3) Beattie examined and published extensively on Māori, particularly from the South Island, and Pākehā pioneers.

(4) http://www.jonathansmartgallery.com/content/view/36/38/

(5) Megan Tamati-Quennell and Peter Shand, “Fiona Pardington: Interviewed by Megan Tamati-Quennell and Peter Shand” in Contemporary New Zealand Photographers,

ed. Lara Strongman (Auckland: Mountain View, 2005), 17.

(6) Michael King, The Silence Beyond: Selected Writings by Michael King (Auckland: Penguin Group, 2011), 230.

(7) Gina Irish, The Heart Derelict: Fiona Pardington (Otago: Otago Polytechnic, 2008), 6.

(8) Prior to this Pardington created the series Ahua: A Beautiful Hestitation. Pardington photographed a collection of casts made by Pierre Alexander Marie Dumoutier from 1837-40 held in the Musee de l’Homme and the Auckland War Memorial Museum. See The Pressure of Sunlight Falling, ed. Kriselle Baker and Elizabeth Rankin.

(9) Models like those found in Barla’s collec-tion were originally created and circulated around French boroughs so that the public might be educated about which mush-rooms were edible and which were poison-ous. Fiona Pardington and Andrew Paul Wood Mushrooms: The Champignons Barla. (Wellington: Milne Print, 2011), 1.

(10) Ibid., 2.

(11) Fiona Pardington and Andrew Paul Wood Mushrooms: The Champignons Barla. (Wellington: Milne Print, 2011), 3.

(12) In conversation with Fiona Pardington.

(13) Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ in Illuminations ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), 255.


1110A Tui’s nest with Four Eggs; toned silver bromide fibre based print, 550 x 420mm framed, 2006 (from The Heart Derelict, 7 December - 24 February 2007, edition of 5)

Rifleman; toned silver bromide fibre based print, 550 x 420mm framed, 2006 (from The Heart Derelict, 7 December - 24 February 2007, edition of 5)

Huia Lovers; toned silver bromide fibre based print, 480 x 590mm framed, 2006 (from Fugitive Beings, edition of 5)

Taiwhatiwhati Otago 0.63.32; Otago Museum Herries-Beattie Collection, toned silver bromide fibre based print, 450 x 585mm framed, 2004 (edition of 5)

Clitocybe geotropa (back); pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, 900 x 900mm, 2011 (from Phantasma, 9 September – 22 October 2011, edition of 10)

Amanita muscaria; pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, 825mm x 1100mm framed, 2011 (from Phantasma, 9 September – 22 October 2011, edition of 10)

Trompette des Mortes/Craterellus cornicopioides; pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, 825mm x 1100mm framed, 2011 (from Phantasma, 9 September – 22 October 2011, edition of 10)

Traditional Heitiki No.2 62.5; from The Burnet Collection Whanganui Museum, toned silver bromide fibre based print, 550 x 420 mm framed, 2008 (edition of 5)

Traditional Heitiki 1953.42.4; from The Burnet Collection Whanganui Museum, toned silver bromide fibre based print, 550 x 420mm framed, 2008 (edition of 5)

Still Life with Pohue,Passionfruit and Hibiscus; pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, 825 x 1100mm framed, 2012 (from Metaphysical Landscapes, 21 September – 20 October 2012, edition of 10)

Still Life with Freud and Puriri;pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, 825 x 1100mm framed, 2012 (from Metaphysical Landscapes, 21 September – 20 October 2012, edition of 10)

Still Life with Seaweedand Lemons;pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, 825 x 1100mm framed, 2011 (from Metaphysical Landscapes, 21 September – 20 October 2012, edition of 10)

Still Life with Takahikare Wings and Blackberry Wine; pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, 825 x 1100mm framed, 2011 (from Metaphysical Landscapes, 21 September – 20 October 2012, edition of 10)

ngā wāhanga: excerpts from Fiona Pardington’s collections

Exhibited works (in date order):

Papakura Art Gallery 8 June – 20 July 2013 Curated by Tracey Williams

All works courtesy of the artist and Two Rooms.

Fiona Pardington is represented by Two Rooms, Auckland, New Zealand.


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Published by Papakura Art G

allery on the occasion of the exhibition ngā w

āhanga: excerpts from Fiona Pardington’s collections held at

Papakura Art G

allery from 8 June to 20

July 2013.

With thanks to Fiona Pardington and Tw

o Rooms.

Editor: Tracey William

sText: A

ne TongaD

esign: Nell M

ay

ISBN: 978-0

-473-24806-2

Text: © Papakura A

rt Gallery, A

ne Tonga 2013

Images: ©

Fiona Pardington and Two Room

s

All rights reserved. N

o part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted w

ithout prior permission of the publisher.

16


Documents

Ngā Wāhanga: excerpts from Fiona Pardington’s Collections at Papakura Art Gallery