Portrait of a life cast of Matoua Tawai, Aotearoa New Zealand
2010
Medium
inkjet print
Measurements
145 × 108.8 cm (image) 176.2 × 139.8 × 4.5 cm (frame sized)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by the Bowness Family Fund for Contemporary Photography, 2012
© Fiona Pardington
Gallery location
The Ancient World
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
The life cast of the tattooed head of Māori man, Matoua Tawai is now held in a museum collection and is one of many made of Māori peoples in the 1830s by Pierre-Marie Alexandre Dumoutier. Pardington, who is of Māori and Scottish descent, has spoken of her desire to reconsider the complex histories of these casts and find a continuum between past and present to, as she says, ‘find the faces of the living people presenting and manifesting in the object’. Printed at larger-than-life scale, the work creates a powerful physical encounter and invites reflection on the histories of the person, the object and the image.
Artwork Details
Edition
ed. 10/10
Accession Number
2012.261
Department
International Photography
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of the Bowness Family Foundation