Thursday, January 11, 2018
OPOTIKI weaver Tangimoe Clay, centre, is leading a horewai (child’s kite) making workhop on January 18. Clay is pictured with fellow artists Matekino Lawless and Christina Wirihana at the Mataraupo exhibition. Photo Louis Klaassen D6421-11
CONTEMPORARY weaver Tangimoe Clay is offering people the opportunity to learn how to make a horewai, or child’s kite.
The workshop on January 18 is an extension of Clay’s latest exhibition, Mataraupo, now on at Te Koputu, Whakatane’s library and exhibition centre.
The horewai workshop, which will run for three to four hours, is limited to 10 participants. Participants must be aged over 14.
Using traditional materials such as raupo, toetoe and harakeke, participants will learn to prepare the materials, and the steps to construct a horewai of their own.
Museum and arts director Eric Holowacz said the kites would initially be hung as a group display in Te Koputu’s front window space until Mataraupo ended on February 4. Participants could then collect them and take them home to enjoy.
Clay, from Opotiki, said weaving had “slowly diminished over the years”, but it was now kept alive through poi and kites.
She keeps the art alive by using fibres that have been used in the past, although her work is focused on the “art form” rather than just the act of weaving.
Mataraupo is a large-scale installation featuring natural materials sculpturally hung throughout the main gallery.
The installation illuminates the journey of raupo – a perennial wetland plant found at the edges of lakes and streams – from its origins as a fundamental material of early Maori life.
Mataraupo brings the viewer into an immersive environment of forms crafted using traditional raranga (weaving) techniques and natural materials such as raupo, hunehune, harakeke, whitau and toetoe.
While raupo whare may have disappeared in the 1800s, raupo can still be seen today on the East Coast, lining the inside of wharekai and wharenui.
To register for the workshop email arts@whakatane.govt.nz or call (07) 306 0505.