NEW ZEALAND PHOTOGRAPHER FIONA PARDINGTON REPRESENTS AOTEAROA AT THE VENICE BIENNALE

Photographer Fiona Pardington (Auckland, New Zealand, 1961) is presenting Taharaki Skyside, a new body of work, at the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition opened on May 9 and remains on view through November 22, 2026, in Venice, Italy. The exhibition is presented by the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa (Creative New Zealand) and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, with curators Felicity Milburn and Chloe Cull.

Pardington, of Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, and Clan Cameron of Erracht descent, turns her lens on taxidermied birds held in museum collections across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. The large-scale portraits focus on species endemic to New Zealand, including the huia and the whēkau (laughing owl), both now extinct, as well as others that remain critically vulnerable. The series builds on her 2024 exhibition Te taha o te rangi / The edge of the heavens and extends a practice of working with museum archives that spans more than two decades.

The photographs are carefully staged, lit, and shot to capture not only the birds' physical characteristics but what Pardington describes as the essence of their spirit. The work engages with Māori creation narratives in which birds hold central roles, and with the concept of manu as intermediaries between the living and the dead. Pardington draws on Dante's poetic vision of the Southern Hemisphere as the location of Purgatory as a structuring framework for the series.

Taharaki Skyside also interrogates the history of museology — the ways in which institutional classification and ethnographic containment have shaped the fate of both species and cultures. The series is in dialogue with the tradition of ornithological illustration, particularly the work of John James Audubon (1785–1851).

The frames of the photographs incorporate colors drawn from the skies of the Hunter Hills near Waimate, in the South Island of New Zealand, where Pardington lives — colors she recognized in the sunsets and sunrises of Venice during a visit in 2024. The frames were designed in collaboration with her brother, artist and designer Neil Pardington, who serves as creative director for the project.

Taharaki Skyside will be on display until November 22, 2026, at Istituto Provinciale per I’Infanzia Santa Maria della Pietà di Venezia, Riva degli Schiavoni, Castello 3701, Venice (Italy).