November update – textile stories on air and in print

Lots of recent coverage of textile events and people involved in CTANZ, including our members, our symposium speakers and attendees and subjects, offering up a rabbit warren of links.

For starters, coming up on Choice TV this week (Monday 26 November, 8.30pm) a documentary on Anna Williams’s relationship with the nomadic Qashqai rugmakers of Iran. (More preview articles here and here, Anna, who presented at the September symposium, has also  been interviewed about her work and the documentary by RNZ).

Other symposium presentations included our keynote by Nina Tonga on Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists. The recent Creative New Zealand Arts Pasifika Awards honoured Pacific Sister Rosanna Raymond with the Senior Pacific Artist accolade for her three decades as “curator, artist, performer, guest speaker and workshop leader”. (Rosanna’s work featured on the excellent Māori TV series Artefact.) Also recognised at the Pacific Arts Awards were mother and daughter Sulieti Fieme’a Burrows and Tui Emma Gillies, makers of Tongan tapa and other work inspired by their heritage, like  this beautiful  neckpiece on display in Otago Museum’s est. 1868 exhibition (on until April 2019).

Kahoa heilala necklace, Sulieti Fieme’a Burrows, 2014. F2014.107. Golan Fund. Otago Museum, Dunedin. Image Kane Fleury, used courtesy Otago Museum

There’s more Pacific textile art to view in Auckland: at Objectspace until 3 February 2019, To Weave Again: Fafine Niutao I Aotearoa, the work of this  New Zealand-based female arts collective from Niutao Island, Tuvalu. And of course, it’s now been confirmed that Te Papa’s Pacific Sisters: He Toa Tāera | Fashion Activists will open in Auckland during the 2019 Auckland Arts Festival, with the exhibition on at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki until 14 July.

More CTANZ people  on the radio and in press include Angela Lassig talking to Wallace Chapman about her research on 19th century shopping, and the Loom Room’s Christine Keller as part of a Standing Room Only wool-themed episode that also included an interview with the editors of The Wool Lover. More wool and weaving also featured in North & South’s piece on Sue and Rod McLean.

Last but not least for CTANZ members, Context is on its way to your letterbox very soon, with lots more threads to follow up.