Rowan Panther

About the Works

Fa’afetai, 2023
muka, mother of pearl

Tolu, 2023
muka, mother of pearl

Lua, 2023
muka, mother of pearl

These three adornments are an exploration of relationships. Titled in Samoan, yet offering a distinct European influence, these works explore the diverse combinations of which we are all made – honouring our individual whakapapa (genealogy), past, present and future.

Fa’afetai serves as a thank you to family – those here and those who are gone. It is also a thank you to life – both the joy and the heartbreak. It stands as a symbol for the foundations, support and guidance gifted to us from our ancestors, while demonstrating the weight we all have to carry.

The notion that the older a shell, the more weathering and disease it accumulates, directly relates to what it means to be human. In the hard times we seek protection, forming who we are and who we will become.

Tolu and Lua can be viewed as siblings, the same but different, mirroring each other and contrasting, reverently balancing their strength and fragility.

About Rowan Panther

Rowan Panther makes lace, weaving together diverse European and Oceanic textile traditions. Muka, the pliable natural fibre she works with is derived from native harakeke (flax) of Aotearoa (New Zealand) that she cultivates, harvests and processes.

Centuries before European colonisation, Maori used muka to create woven items from utilitarian nets, food baskets and floormats to treasured and prestigious ceremonial kākahu (cloaks). Rowan responds to the complexities of colonisation and to her mixed Irish, English, German and Samoan ancestry. She is part of the cultural recovery of a European handmade lacemaking tradition nearly destroyed by industrialisation. She is also active in the cultural recovery of Pacific craft practices. These hybrid adornments entangle colonial and craft narratives.

Rowan completed a Diploma in Contemporary Photography from Unitec in 2002 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland in 2008. She has exhibited in Aotearoa, London, and Paris and her work is held in the collection of Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the British Museum. In 2021, she was a recipient of the Blumhardt Foundation Dame Doreen’s Gift.

https://www.fingers.co.nz/exhibitors/rowan_panther.htm

Image top: Rowan Panther, Fa’afetai (detail), 2023. Photo: Courtesy of the Artist