Taharaki
Skyside

Fiona Pardington

The New Zealand Arts Council Toi Aotearoa and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū are proud to be working with Fiona Pardington to present Taharaki Skyside at the Aotearoa New Zealand national pavilion for the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

Fiona Pardington
Fiona Pardington. Photography by Meek Zuiderwyk.

Fiona Pardington

Fiona Pardington (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Clan Cameron of Erracht) ONZM is an internationally acclaimed Aotearoa New Zealand photographer whose work engages deeply with museum collections and the environment, culture, and histories of Aotearoa, while also carrying vital resonance and relevance in a global context. Her practice draws together local and international histories, creating connections across time and place. In this presentation, she forges a metaphorical link between Aotearoa and Venice through the idea of a shared horizon, viewed from opposite ends of the world. The work interlaces cultural references including Dante, the Southern Cross and the notion of an intermediary realm between the divine and the mortal to evoke a richly layered imaginative space.

“Birds can symbolise 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 [the Māori world] – as sources of food and materials, and intermediaries between human and divine worlds.”

Fiona Pardington

Taharaki Skyside

Fiona Pardington’s presentation, Taharaki Skyside, continues her long standing exploration of memory, environment, and belonging. Grounded in the histories and ecologies of Aotearoa New Zealand yet resonant on an international stage, this new body of work links Aotearoa and Venice through the metaphor of a shared horizon—two perspectives meeting across a vast distance.

Fiona Pardington, Taharaki Skyside installation (detail). Photography by Neil Pardington.

“Birds can symbolise 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 [the Māori world] – as sources of food and materials, and intermediaries between human and divine worlds.”

Fiona Pardington

Istituto Provinciale per l’Infanzia Santa Maria della Pietà di Venezia

The exhibition space in the Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà (La Pietà) is a close walk to the Giardini della Biennale and Arsenale exhibition halls. Visitors to Taharaki Skyside will have an opportunity to immerse themselves in Fiona Pardington's works in an environment that will offer a spellbinding contrast to the bustle of Biennale Arte.

Other locations within the Pietà complex were the setting for a previous Aotearoa New Zealand national pavilion, Bill Culbert’s Front Door Out Back in 2013.

Calle della Pietà, 3724, 30122 Venezia VE, Italy

9 May - 22 November 2026
Summer opening hours

Monday Closed
Tuesday 11:00am - 7:00pm (CET)
Wednesday 11:00am - 7:00pm (CET)
Thursday 11:00am - 7:00pm (CET)
Friday 11:00am - 7:00pm (CET)
Saturday 11:00am - 7:00pm (CET)
Sunday 11:00am - 7:00pm (CET)

The publication

Taharaki Skyside Book cover

Brimming with impossible beauty and aching loss, Fiona Pardington’s avian portraits resurrect the dignity, charisma and wildness of Aotearoa New Zealand birds preserved as taxidermy specimens in museum collections. Scaled up to deific proportions, her manu are not merely replicated, but reborn.

Published by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Taharaki Skyside is accompanied by a beautiful new publication designed by Neil Pardington and featuring large, high quality images of Fiona Pardington’s work for the Biennale. Texts by Geoffrey Batchen, Maia Nuku, Hana O’Regan, Harry Rickit, Megan Tamati-Quennell and Andrew Paul Wood provide illuminating insights into the artist’s practice.

Purchase Taharaki Skyside publication