Maureen Lander

Maureen Robin Lander (born 1942 in Rawene) is a New Zealand weaver, multimedia installation artist and academic. Lander is of Ngāpuhi (Te Hikutu subtribe) and Pākehā (New Zealand European) descent and is a well-respected and significant artist who since 1986 has exhibited, photographed, written and taught Māori art. She continues to produce and exhibit work as well as attend residencies and symposia both nationally and internationally.

Education Lander began learning weaving with noted Māori weaver Diggeress Te Kanawa in 1984 and spent many years researching fibre arts. In 2002 she was the first person of Māori descent to gain a Doctorate in Fine Arts at a New Zealand university. 1963 Wellington Teachers' College 1987 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Photography) Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland 1989 Bachelor of Arts in Māori Studies, University of Auckland 1993 Masters of Fine Arts (Sculpture), First Class Honours, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland 2002 Doctor of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland

Career as an educator alt=A Māori carved gate way frames a Māori meeting house with two active young people in between on the grass area. Waipapa Marae at Auckland University next to the Māori department and where some Māori studies teaching takes place. Lander worked as a teacher before attending Elam School of Fine Arts. Her end of year installation at Elam, titled Te Kohanga Harakeke ('The Flax Nest') included a structure covered in milled flax in the shape of a massive inverted nest, which sheltered a young harakeke (flax) plant.

Pitts gives Lander's 1994 work This is not a kete, made for the exhibition Art Now at the former Museum of New Zealand (now the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) as an example of the way her work combines traditional Māori crafts and Western sculptural or installation practices. For the exhibition Lander reworked two previous commissions, This is not a kete and pieces from Mrs Cook's kete, a 2002 collaboration with Christine Hellyar at the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University. Lander also made new pieces, including the site-specific installations Airy-Theory Artefacts (woven objects suspended in front of a screened window) and Tane Raises His Eyebrows (a crescent-shaped weaving placed over a decorative wooden door lintel). Her piece Hariata’s War Garb is inspired by Joseph Merrett's 1846 watercolour The Warrior Chieftains of New Zealand. The portrait depicts Hone Heke, the chief Kawiti, and Heke's wife Hariata. Hariata is shown wearing a woven sash unlike anything Lander had seen before. Researching her own family history, Lander found descriptions of Hariata written by her great-great grandfather James Johnston Fergusson. One document describes Hariata leading 700 men; another as being ‘young, tall, and rather goodlooking’, wearing ‘a tartan dress with red sash slung around her shoulders like a shepherd’s plaid’. Lander recreated the sash for the exhibition, along with a number of other pieces. In a review of the exhibition art historian Jill Trevelyan noted that Lander drew on her own experience learning weaving under Diggeress Te Kanawa to produce the works Rongo's samplers, a reimagining of the first works produced by a new practitioner.

In 2017 Lander began a tuakana/teina (mentor/mentee) relationship with Mata Aho Collective, a group of four wahine Māori (Māori women) artists. In 2021 their collaborative work Atapō was awarded the biennal Walters Art Prize.

In 2023 Maureen Lander, in collaboration with artist Denise Batchelor and composer Stìobhan Lothian, created the online artwork Hukatai ~ Sea Foam as part of the international art project World Weather Network. Lander and Batchelor came together to monitor the hukatai (sea foams) through walks on the shoreline of Te Hokianga Nui a Kupe, the Hokianga Harbour, in north-west New Zealand. Having exhibited both nationally and internationally, Lander currently enjoys exhibiting with other artists in the small communities around the Hokianga where her ancestors lived. 2021 Atapō, with Mata Aho Collective, Walters Art Prize, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki 2021-2020 Toi Tu Toi Ora: Contemporary Maori Art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland 2018 Hariata’s War Garb (part of The Ngāpuhi Festival), Northcote College, Auckland 2017 Flat-Pack Whakapapa, The Dowse Art Museum and touring throughout 2018; The Delicate Balance of Wobbling Stars, Corban Estate Arts Centre 2015 Te Wā Tōiri: Fluid Horizons, Auckland Art Gallery: an exhibition from the collections of the gallery including Lander's major installation work Hou Angiangi (2003). The Māori title of the exhibition was suggested by Lander.; Tell tails, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, with Christine Hellyar and Jo Torr 2014 Flag It, The Depot, Devonport and No 1, Parnell St Gallery, Rawene 2013 Towards the Morning Sun Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; 2012 Kahu Ora/Living Cloaks Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 2010 Site specific fibre installation, Arataki Visitor Centre, Waitakere Regional Park, Auckland; Where are we? Lopdell House Gallery, Titirangi Kauwae 09 Mangere Arts Centre, Nathan Homestead, Manurewa and Tairawhiti Museum, Gisborne 2008 POST-Stitch Lopdell House Gallery, Titirangi 2007 Conversations Across Time: Whakawhiti Korero Canterbury Museum, Christchurch 2006–2008 Pasifika Styles Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, UK 2005 Palm Lines in collaboration with Samuel Wagan Watson and Anne Kirker Museum of Brisbane 2004–2005 Shade House in collaboration with Robert Sullivan and Briar Wood, Whangarei Art Museum, Lopdell House Gallery, Titirangi, and Pataka Art + Museum 2004–2007 The Eternal Thread: Te Aho Mutunga Kore Pataka Museum + Art, Porirua, then touring to venues in NZ and United States 2002 Mrs Cook’s Kete Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK, with Christine Hellyar 2001 Purangiaho Auckland City Art Gallery 1998 haze in collaboration with Kaylynn Two Trees and Toi Te Rito Maihi, New Gallery- Auckland Art Gallery 1997 Nga Uri o Rahiri Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth 1995 Korurangi New Gallery, Auckland Art Gallery 1994 Art Now, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 1993 Pū Manawa Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; 1993 Alter / Image, City Gallery Wellington

Selected publications Lander, M.R. Horeke or Kohukohu? Charles Heaphy's "View of the Kahukahu, Hokianga River 1839", Turnbull Library Record, Vol XXII, No 1:33–40, 1989

Lander, M.R. & Wood, B. Glorified Scales Auckland: Maureen Lander, 2001 Lander, M.R., Sullivan, R, & Wood, B. Shade House Whangarei: Whangarei Art Museum, 2004 Lander, M.R. & Maihi, T. He Kete He Korero Auckland: Reed Publishing, 2005 Lander, M. R. 'Te Ao Tawhito/Te Ao Hou. Entwined Threads of Tradition and Innovation' in Whatu Kakahu/Māori Cloaks (ed. Awhina Tamarapa), Wellington: Te Papa Press 2011, pp. 60–73

Honours and awards 2021, Walters Art Prize winner (with Mata Aho Collective) 2020 Appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to Māori art, in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours 2019 Ngā Tohu ā Tā Kingi Ihaka | Sir Kingi Ihaka Awards recognising lifetime contribution, Te Waka Toi Awards 2002 Inaugural Māori Academic Excellence Award (Fine Arts, Music & Performing Arts), ‘Te Tohu Toi Ururangi’ sponsored by Toi Maori. 1992 Graduate Scholarship, University of Auckland 1985 Senior Prize in Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland 1984 Annual Prize in Māori Studies, University of Auckland

Residencies 2013 Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney. 2010 ARC Artist-in-Parks residency, Titirangi. 2010 Artist-in-Residence, Parramatta Artists’ Studios, West Sydney. 2009 Hancock Fellow at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne. 2006 Pasifika Styles at CUMAA. 2006 Kilmartin House Museum in Scotland 2002 Artist in Residence, Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, Nelson. 1996 The Performance Space Centre, Redfern, Sydney.

Personal life

Lander is of Ngāpuhi, Te Hikutu, Irish, Scottish and English (Yorkshire) descent.

Further information

Dr Maureen Lander – Māori weavers making the most of the changing world, video interview by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Elenaor Wenman, Whakapapa and taonga celebrated at double exhibition opening, DominionPost, 18 July 2017 Mata Aho Collective, An Art Matriarch: Why Maureen Lander is a Boss, Pantograph Punch, 7 August 2017 Sonja van Kerkhoff, The Colonial Bonnet as War Garb, EyeContact, 18 July 2018 Interview with Mata Aho Collective and Maureen Lander, Auckland Art Gallery, 2021 Kerry Lander and Maureen Lander, The Maureen Lander Archive, Christchurch Art Gallery Bulletin, 24 November 2023 Moya Lawson, String Games, Christchurch Art Gallery Bulletin, 24 November 2023