Fiona Pardingon: Mauria Mai, Tono Ano Fiona Pardington has been photographing taonga (treasures in M
Fiona Pardingon: Mauria Mai, Tono AnoFiona Pardington has been photographing taonga (treasures in Māori) for over a decade. She searches for forgotten museum objects that were once cherished — such as hei tiki (neck ornaments) or taxidermied extinct animals — and deliberately re-presents them as portraits imbued with a sense of their past value.The title of this work translates from Mâori as ‘to bring to light, to claim again’. Each of the seven silver gelatin photographs depicts a Ngai Tahu heitiki (greenstone pendant) from the Auckland Museum. All from South Island locations, the heitiki are very sacred objects and it took Fiona Pardington 18 months to get permission from hapu (sub-tribes) to photograph them. Traditionally worn close to the heart, heitiki are fertility symbols and so are strongly connected with life and death.Pardington has used an average of ten flashes for each exposure. This process recalls a Mâori idea that light is held within greenstone, suggesting that what Pardington was doing was not illuminating the heitiki, but releasing a light that was already there.Pardington was born in Auckland. She is of Scottish and Mâori (Ngai Tahu, Kati Mamoe) descent. Since graduating with a degree in photography in 1984 from the University of Auckland, Pardington has exhibited widely and lectured on photography throughout New Zealand. She lives in Auckland. -christchurch galleries -- source link
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