Fiona Pardington Portrait of a life cast of Koe (painted), Timor 2010. Courtesy of the Musée de l’Homme (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle), Paris
Fiona Pardington Portrait of a life cast of Takatahara (painted), Aotearoa New Zealand 2010. Courtesy of the Musée de l’Homme (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle), Paris.
Fiona Pardington Portrait of a life cast of Jaksun (painted), Madagascar 2010. Courtesy of the Musée de l’Homme (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle), Paris
Fiona Pardington Portrait of a life cast of Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville 2010. Courtesy of the Musée Flaubert et d’Histoire de la Médecine, Rouen
Fiona Pardington: The Pressure of Sunlight Falling 2011. Installation view Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland
Fiona Pardington
The Pressure of Sunlight Falling
10 September 2011 - 19 February 2012
Fiona Pardington’s The pressure of sunlight fallingis a series of photographs that depict life casts made by medical scientist and phrenologist Pierre-Marie Dumoutier during one of French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville’s South Pacific voyages from 1837-1840.
Fiona Pardington (Ngai Tahu, Ngati Mamoe, Ngati Waewae, Clan Cameron) considers the ways in which photography and the proto-photographic medium of casting register empathy and the presence of former lives. This exhibition explores the meanings, histories and functions of nineteenth-century life casts, bringing together the psychoanalytical, philosophical and metaphysical threads of Pardington’s practice. These images, taken from casts held in French museums half a world away from the South Pacific, sees the artist investigate museum collections as imperfect yet infinitely precious archives of cultural memory.
Curated by Director Rhana Devenport
A Govett Brewster Art Gallery Touring Exhibition
Download / view the exhibition guide - click this link