Q&A with artist Fiona Pardington

Fiona Pardington on Baylys Beach. Photo / Kelly Ana Morey.

Fiona Ralph speaks to award-winning photographer Fiona Pardington at her sandswept Northland studio.

Squawking birds, ravenous dogs, beckoning sandstorms. A veritable circus flies down the phone line from the Dargaville coast, where former Waiheke resident Fiona Pardington composes her acclaimed still lifes in a bach-cum-studio atop a Baylys Beach sand dune.

One of New Zealand's most celebrated photographers, Pardington's bold, evocative images have earned her such titles as the Frances Hodgkins Fellow and an Arts Foundation Laureate, and she received the highest price in New Zealand for a photographic work at auction - good news for the Jassy Dean Trust, which is auctioning off Fiona's still life called Rabbit Money Box, Candle and Shotgun Casings, this weekend at the Waiheke Bayleys Art in the Garden art auction as part of the Waiheke Island Garden Safari.

She has work currently in Paris for the Photoquai Biennale at the Musee du quai Branly, a show at Auckland's Two Hands Gallery opening next week and several books and projects in the pipeline.

We spoke to Pardington about her daily still life discipline.

How long have you been living at Baylys Beach?

About a year. I'm renting an amazing tiny little bach that sits right on the sand dunes over the sea. The only thing is there's a lot of sand so you have to vacuum your computer keypad. Apart from that it's just fantastic. It's really beautiful here, just like Piha, except rougher and really wild. The beach is a road and is the fastest way to get to a number of places if you own a 4WD.

Fiona Pardington's Baylys Beach bach. Photo / Kelly Ana Morey.