I bought some rolls of paper tape at one of my favourite shops, Daiso in Queen St, Auckland. It’s a dangerous shop to go to, because the prices don’t seem too expensive and there’s always new things to discover. But then you get to the counter with all your goodies and suddenly you’ve spent too much.
The tape is made so you can split it easily, I split it into four strips and then followed the instructions in The Art of Contemporary Woven Paper Basketry by Dorothy McGuiness to make a four-cornered square-base basket.
It’s a little wonky but quite sturdy. And I have some more rolls to practice with so more baskets are in my future.
I’ve had a busy few weeks starting with travelling to Wellington to attend the Creative Fibre national event ‘Festival of Fibres’ held in Porirua. The accompanying 2023 National Exhibition was at Pātaka Art + Museum, below are photos of a few of the works on show. Photos of the award winners should be going up on the Creative Fibre website soon.
Top: Woven Bowls – Margaret Hill
Middle: Totem Pole – Cathy Priddey, Te Ao Wairua (The Spiritual Realm) – Hanne Vibeke
Bottom: Aureola – Agnes Hauptli
Top: Chaos – Dianne Dudfield, Textural – Jane Clark
Middle: Totem Pole – Cathy Priddey, Te Ao Wairua (The Spiritual Realm) – Hanne Vibeke
While I was in Wellington I took the opportunity to visit Te Papa and the Mataaho Collective: Te Puni Aroaro exhibition. Mataaho Collective are four wāhine Māori artists who have worked together for the last decade. The description of the exhibtion from Te Papa website: These monumental installations evoke the histories of water, light, atua, and wāhine Māori. Industrial materials reflect contemporary Māori experience, and showcase the ever-changing nature of customary textile practices.
The following weekend I was off to Tauranga for a weaving workshop with Melanie Olde, an Australian experimental weaver. Melanie was keynote speaker at the Festival of Fibres and also gave talks on Biomimicry In Weaving and Experimenting With 3D Weaving.
The workshop was titled ‘Thinking Outside the Plane’, and it was wonderful. We worked with a multi-layered warp on 8 shafts and explored different weave structures and techniques, you can see some of my samples below. Further explorations await.
Last but not least, especially if you only come here for kurī (dog) photos, here’s Rufus:
Kate Alberta Weaving 