Stilling the Glance: Works from the McCahon Residency

Fiona Pardington
Stilling the Glance: A Selection of Works from the McCahon Residency

Opening preview with the artist
5.30 - 7.30pm Thursday 20 February
{Suite} Level 2, 147 Cuba Street, Wellington

Artist talk 1pm Friday 21 February

Fiona Pardington’s work undertaken during her 2013 Colin McCahon Artist’s Residency is seductive and strikingly surreal. Her images of carefully composed tableaux of sourced objects, dramatically lit against dark backgrounds, emit an energy comparable to McCahon’s own spiritually intense paintings.

In response to the local landscape, Pardington’s ambiguous and allegorical works include flowers from McCahon’s garden and dried e-ihumoana (Portuguese man-o’-war) from the coast. Skulls, candles and crystal, in the tradition of the vanitas painting, combine with handcuffs and a gilded dildo – an erotic element recurs through Pardington’s art practise, as do themes of memory, collecting and the history of the photographic image.

Fiona Pardington holds a PHD in photography from the University of Auckland. Born in Devonport, New Zealand and of Kai Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Scottish descent, she has received many fellowships, residencies, awards and grants including an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award.

ENDS

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