Fiona Pardington Reveals Exhibition Concept Going To Venice Biennale

Aotearoa New Zealand artist, Dr Fiona Pardington (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Clan Cameron of Erracht), announces her 2026 Venice Biennale exhibition: Taharaki Skyside. 

Her major new work for Venice builds on the content of her 2024 series Te taha o te rangi, ‘the edge of the heavens’ which consists of photographs of Aotearoa New Zealand birds preserved as taxidermy specimens in museum collections. 

Applying the precision, care and responsiveness to historical and cultural resonances she has previously brought to taonga, Pardington’s remarkable avian portraits engage with the tradition of memento mori. By resurrecting their dignity, charisma and wildness, Pardington also brings these long-dead birds vividly to life. 

Taharaki Skyside makes direct connection with the realm where birds act as messengers between the mortal and spiritual worlds, she says. 

“Birds can symbolize familial love, romantic attachment, ecological warnings, they can be intimations of mortality, and in my work they can also represent individual people in my life. The ideas I am conjuring remind us of the integral significance of manu within te ao Māori – as sources of food and materials, and intermediaries between human and divine worlds,” says Pardington. 

“Taxidermy occupies a unique space between love, death, and fetish. When photographing in museum collections, I have observed the artifice of the birds’ presentation, the way they have been posed, the care with which they have been assembled, and, sometimes, their worn condition. By using strategic lighting and angles I am trying to draw out their charisma – to free them from the constraints of being mere objects,” she says. 

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Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is Creative New Zealand’s delivery partner for 2026, and Pardington’s Venice project is curated by Chloe Cull and Felicity Milburn. Throughout her practice, Pardington has drawn acclaim for images that invite us to see and feel the world in a new way, says Milburn. 

“Her works for Taharaki Skyside carry vital relevance in a global context. Her images underscore the far-reaching and devastating losses – ecological and cultural – that have occurred as the result of human impact and colonisation.” 

“She opens up moments of extraordinary resonance and recognition that transcend time and place, life and death,” Milburn says. 

Taharaki Skyside opens at La Biennale di Venezia on 9 May 2026. 

Bio notes: 

Artist Dr Fiona Pardington is responsible for some of the most memorable images in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand artmaking. 

For more than three decades, she has crafted a highly respected practice nationally and internationally, operating largely within the tradition of the photographic still life. 

Pardington often works with museum collections, highlighting the vital cultural and spiritual significance of taonga and natural history specimens for Māori. 

Pardington has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the Moët et Chandon Fellowship (1991–2), the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship (1996–7) and the Ngāi Tahu residency at the University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka (2006). 

In 2011 Pardington became a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate, and in 2016 was named a Knight (Chevalier) in the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Prime Minister, the first New Zealand visual artist ever to receive this honour. In 2017, Pardington was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to photography. 

Pardington’s works have been extensively collected by all of Aotearoa New Zealand’s major public galleries, as well as the Musée du Quai Branly (Paris), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, US), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Victoria. 

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