Technology applied to Maori tradition

A pioneering technique by a Dunedin artist has dramatically reduced the time required to create the traditional Maori cloak, or korowai.

Using harakeke (flax), Rokahurihia Ngarimu-Cameron (59) uses a western loom to create her works of art.

Traditionally, the flax fibres were woven by hand, but Mrs Ngarimu-Cameron has devised a method to thread the fibre through a western loom, cutting the time it takes to make a korowai from several years to several months.

"I still make korowai the traditional way, but using the loom has enabled me to become creative and experiment more," she said.

Mrs Ngarimu-Cameron learnt weaving from her grandmother, who was present when the Pink and White Terraces at Lake Rotomahana, near Rotorua, were destroyed in the eruption of Mt Tarawera in 1886.

Inspired by her late grandmother, she made by hand a korowai which depicted an interpretation of the disaster.

It took more than two years to complete.

A lecturer at the University of Otago School of Maori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, Mrs Ngarimu-Cameron said korowai were undergoing a resurgence, but the knowledge of how to make them was in danger of being lost.

"But where there is interest, there is hope," she said.

And there has been plenty of interest: "People are already asking to buy them".

Fetching tens of thousands of dollars, korowai were treated as works of art and worn only on special occasions.

Family members had also been buried in korowai, "because it was the ultimate honour for them to put them in korowai and send them off to the spirit world".

Essential to making korowai was a knowledge of Te Reo, with prayer offered to the creator at every step of the creative process, she said.

"The process is not just about the construction. It begins when we first collect the material."

Once she retires, Mrs Ngarimu-Cameron plans to set up a business creating korowai using her new technique.

An exhibition of her work, Toku Haerenga (My Journey), which she created for a master of fine arts degree at Otago Polytechnic, is on display at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery until tomorrow.