Fiona Pardington
1961 - Ahua: a beautiful hestitation 2010- pigment print on paper
New Zealand artist Fiona Pardington has photographed museum objects since 2001, and continues this practice in her most recent series. The Ahua: A beautiful hesitation series, 2010, comprises photographs of life-casts made by Frenchman Pierre-Marie Alexandre Dumoutier of people living in the Pacific region in the nineteenth century.
Pardington's photographs take these likenesses out of the archive and reposition them as portraits of power and beauty. Her works breathe life into the inanimate head casts, achieving what she describes as 'a radiant point of encounter a puncture or a tear in the real from out of which steps a life revived, reconstituted or transubstantiated'.
Source: Susan van Wyk, Senior Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Victoria (in 2013).
© Fiona Pardington