Acclaimed photographic artist Dr Fiona Pardington has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to photography.
Based in South Canterbury for the past six years, Dr Pardington (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha, Ngāti Kahungunu) is an internationally acclaimed photographer active since the 1980s, who was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017 for her services to photography.
Since 2017, Dr Pardington has represented New Zealand at the London Art Fair and Art Basel Hong Kong.
She participated in the 2018 major international exhibition ‘‘Oceania’’ at London’s Royal Academy of the Arts and was the first New Zealander invited to participate in the Sharjah Biennial 16 in the United Arab Emirates in 2024.
She collaborated with the Wellcome Collection Science Museum in London in 2019, resulting in the exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery ‘‘Orphans of Māoriland’’.
She has held four solo exhibitions in New Zealand galleries since 2017 and has been featured in numerous national group exhibitions.
Dr Pardington has donated photographs to the collection of the Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru and Christchurch Art Gallery, as well as for a charity auction to support Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari wildlife reserve in Pukeatua.
She has also donated funds for the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Te Tumu Toi for their Springboard award for emerging artists.
Dr Pardington has sourced historical bird remains, including huia parts, from overseas auctions and donated them to the Canterbury Museum.
She has previously been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (Queen’s Birthday 2017) and Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (France) in 2016.
In June last year, Dr Pardington’s photographic exhibition ‘‘Te taha o te rangi’’ (The Edge of the Heavens) opened at the Aigantighe Art Gallery.
The exhibition resulted from a visit to the South Canterbury Museum in 2023, when she was captivated by the dynamic and lifelike quality of the taxidermied native birds, and began focusing on photographing the birds’ heads, treating them like human portraits.
She said this new approach allowed her to delve deeply into her new local surroundings and community after having only relocated to South Canterbury in 2019.
