Art Auction Live on Art + Object

Dr Fiona Pardington

Kākāpō, South Canterbury Museum, 2024

Dr. Fiona Pardington (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu) has a Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Auckland and became the New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2011. She is a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and in 2016 was named a Knight (Chevalier) in the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Prime Minister. Her work is represented in many significant art collections, both in Aotearoa and overseas.

Pardington has worked closely with hapu and iwi advisors, curators and museum professionals over many years, to identify taonga from national and international collections. In her most recent work, Te taha o te rangi, translated as “the edge of the heavens”, she makes the connection with sky and the realm of birds. In this series, the kākāpō are joined by many other rare, endangered and extinct manu of Aotearoa. 

This kākāpō from the past speaks to its living descendants, a call to all to ensure their survival.

Elliot Collins

Coming Home (should last forever), 2024

Elliot Collins is an artist who works across an interdisciplinary range of media. He gained a PhD from AUT University in 2019 and his art practice makes reference to poetry and language, exploring our relationships to history and place. His work has been exhibited extensively in Aotearoa and is included in many public and private collections.

The work Coming Home (should last forever) was made specifically for this event and the Kākāpo project. As ever, Collins has captured the heart of an endeavour with his poetry and joyful painterly style, calling out to the maunga and all who call it home.

Mike Crawford

Kumete Manu, 2018

Mike Crawford (Raukawa) works primarily in cast glass. He completed a Bachelor of Design at the Unitec School of Design in Auckland and, following this, worked as a technician to preeminent glass artist Ann Robinson. His simple, elegant style often incorporates simplified bird forms and his work is represented in many national collections.

Kumete Manu (food bowl bird) speaks directly to the cause of the Kākāpō, with its iridescent colour, elegant and majestic bird shape and reference to sustenance. One of the biggest issues for kākāpō survival is food and, in particular, the rimu berries in a ‘mast’ season associated with breeding.

Brett Graham

Water Dreaming, 2013

Brett Graham (Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Tainui) has a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Doctrate of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Hawaiʻi. He is a prominent figure within contemporary Māori art and is known for his large-scale sculptures and installation works, which explore indigenous histories and politics. Having resenting work at the Sydney Biennale and the Venice Biennale he is currently working toward an exhibition for the Walter Art Award, Graham’s work is also included in significant collections in Aotearoa, Australia and Hawai’i.

Water Dreaming is from a series of 12 works made during Graham’s artist residency in Australia. Making connections with indigenous mark-making, the shield form connects to his series of targets that reference sites of indigenous conflict across Australia and Aotearoa. The work has significance here, for a bird which was once a target and is now in dire need of protection.

Jaimie Jenkins 

Ten Bells for Kākāpō, 2024

Jaimie Jenkins hand-builds stoneware pieces that push the definitions of clay, taking on structural, organic and intricate forms. Chains and bells are frequent subjects in her practice and her experience of nature and natural forms a core source of inspiration. Jenkins has a Diploma of Visual Art, Toi Ohomai, Tauranga, and has been a recipient of the Dame Doreen’s Gift from the Blumhardt Foundation. Her work held in Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, and a growing number of national collections.

The Ten Bells for Kākāpō were made specifically for this project and each honours one of the 10 pioneering manu that have been part of the effort to find a safe, predator-free habitat where kākāpō can thrive on mainland Aotearoa. 

Elizabeth Thomson

Five coloured moths, 2024

Elizabeth Thomson graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland. She has worked primarily in the mediums of sculpture and installation for over 30 years, developing a remarkable range of works through which she explores the complex visual interplay between art and science. Thomson has exhibited widely and her work is held in major national and international collections, including Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Thomson has a longstanding interest in ecology and conservation and is drawn to the visual abstractions of macro and micro landscapes and cellular matter. Her ongoing bronze moth series has recently expanded to include both real and imagined native moths in colour from New Zealand and around the world. This open-ended series can represent community, fragility and the need for protection and care.