Hei Tiki (female)

"I think that photography is very much a place of mourning for the things that are valuable in life."

- Fiona Pardington



This monochrome mural print is one of a series of large-scale portraits by renowned photographer Fiona Pardington of Māori objects and natural history specimens housed in museum collections around the world.



The cardinal characteristics of the sculptural genre known as hei tiki are elevated in this striking portrait. A balanced composition shows a strong figure with enlarged head, tilted at an angle with eyes that confront the viewer; strong arms rest on flexed thighs, the feet are drawn together. This viewing of the hei tiki at close distance is integral to the artist’s ambition to emphasize the singularity of this figure, emphasizing its subjectivity - its personality and individuality. The diffuse light and saturated quality of the image create a quiet, moving effect emphasizing the ethereal aspect of artist Fiona Pardington’s singular and highly personal encounter with this museum object.



Fiona Pardington is drawn to the subjects in museums whose weighty histories and spiritual intensity she can explore. Though the highly controlled, almost contrived arrangement of static objects in her compositions are evocative of still life and align with the European vanitas tradition, works such as Hei Tiki (female) also engage with elements of portraiture. Pardington’s connection to her subjects is clear: “I’ve personalized them, made portraits of them,” she explains, “… just treated them like they were individuals” (Owen Craven, ‘Profile: Fiona Pardington’ in Artist Profile, Nov 11, 2014, p. 67). The selection of each ‘artefact’ or specimen is grounded in a personal encounter with the artist.



Early in her career, the artist developed an interest in analogue darkroom techniques, most notably hand printing and toning which she has come to specialize in. Her photography has always examined the material potential of tonal qualities, and the discharge of light, in a consideration of how one might connect the material with immaterial (or spiritual) realms. The artist’s intention is to guide a reflection on the transition across fragile borders, and lightly perceived thresholds, including those that exist between the past and the present; between life and death. Each portrait is an intimate presentation of the once living and once loved; each an index of the ‘orphaned’ object, whose ancestral links (to original owners, a family, one’s known Māori forbears) have been severed, lost during their trajectory into the museum. Pardington’s chosen role is to restore dignity, by embedding each subject in new genealogical lines that allow an alternative, future history to be revealed.



The technical accomplishments of composition and the quality of lighting enhance the intensity and spiritual dimension that Pardington strives for in her work. The sumptuous inky black background is consistent throughout her oeuvre. Despite the fact her solitary ‘found’ subjects are sourced from the shelves of museum repositories, Pardington’s ambition is to liberate the works from scientific framing or museological systems of classification (especially the so-called ‘orphaned’ works with missing provenance) so that she can assist in returning them to the light. Lifting her subjects out of the sterile environment of the cabinet or museum storage facility, she directs the consciousness of the viewer to engage with the ahua, or living agency, in her subject, teasing out this sensibility even if it may seem outwardly eclipsed, distant or absent. The work mourns the loss of ancestral ties through a lack of recorded provenance whilst eliciting reverence for each subject. As such, Pardington’s works embody, rather than simply critique, the complexities of the archive, of museums, of life itself. Using long exposures and measured bursts of light Pardington sets out to reveal the mauri (life force) expressed as light and energy that Māori understand is held within all living beings. Pardington uses the phrase ‘a beautiful hesitation’ to describe photography’s power to pause time and transcend the conditions of the material world. Her practice breathes life into the objects she encounters.