Exhibition/Location

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.

“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.

Istituto Provinciale per I'infanzia Santa Maria della Pieta di Venezia

Riva degli Schiavoni, 3702 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.