FIONA PARDINGTON

When Fiona Pardington found these unusual objects from the London Wellcome Collection, on loan to the city’s Science Museum Group, she was struck by their mystery. Neither taonga, nor mass-produced trinket, they are as difficult to identify as their creators. Acquired from London auction houses, these faux hei-tiki were probably created for the Pākehā or international market—art historian Roger Blackley calls it the ‘curio economy’—that flourished 1880-1910. ‘Maoriland’ was the poetic name for the romantic late colonial fiction they represent. It is impossible to say whether they were carved by entrepreneurial Māori amateurs, Pākehā enthusiasts (or forgers), or German lapidaries for export back to New Zealand for tourist souvenirs—perhaps all of the above. Pardington felt an affinity with their personality, hybridity and in-betweenness. She re-appropriates and breathes life into them with her camera and reparative vision, giving them dignity as the orphans of a complex history of interaction, exchange and exploitation. –Andrew Paul Wood, 2019