25 Sep 2024
After years of learning and studying photography in tertiary institutions, Rowan Panther felt she had run out of things to photograph. She took a class in lace making, thinking it would be a fun hobby that might help reignite her love for photography. Before long, lacemaking replaced photography as her preferred art form and gave her a way to explore her identity as a person with Pacific and European heritage.
Some 15 years later, Rowan’s muka lace work has been exhibited in Aotearoa, Australia, the UK and Europe and pieces have been purchased by the British Museum and several museums here. (muka is the fine fibre within flax). In 2024, she was selected for SCHMUCK, the prestigious jewellery exhibition held annually in Munich, Germany.
Rowan is a maker, like her mother, and her mother’s father.
“I've always been into craft. I was brought up around sewing machines and I learnt how to sew early on, so making things was part of my childhood and part of life. My mum was a clothing manufacturer, and her dad was a clothing manufacturer,” Rowan says.
That grandfather was born in Samoa. He learnt his skills during military service and turned them into a career in civilian life.
Unsurprisingly, fashion was Rowan’s first choice for tertiary study, but a last-minute change of mind took her to photography. And then came the lace making class. She chose lacemaking because it was a textile craft she knew nothing about.
“I thought that might be fun, I’ll go and do a little lacemaking class and maybe that will spark something off in my mind that will get me back into my photography. But then it actually did the complete opposite because I got so drawn in to lace making that I wanted to photograph even less.”
Rowan can see some similarities between the two forms. In both photography and lacemaking, there are rules, with things being either right or wrong.
“There’s room for a little bit of experimentation but the rules are quite rigid, that’s why I think photography makes sense to me and so does lacemaking,” she says.
The transition from cotton to muka came quickly. Rowan attributes that step to her fine arts background.
“Although I was making something quite traditional, I really wanted it to resonate with where I was living and for it to have more of an impact. You can make cotton lace pretty much anywhere in the world but the only place you can really make muka lace is here. And that was a huge part of me trying to work out where I was in the world and what I was trying to say,” she says.
Rowan continues to explore difficult ideas through the delicate work.
“My first pieces were probably quite naive when I was looking at that idea of colonization. Years later, I feel I’ve gained the knowledge to have more of a point of view on it. It’s not a romanticised notion. It’s a really tricky space.”
“Making gives me that space where I can be completely vulnerable, and I can explore ideas about identity negotiation and belief systems and values and those unsettling problematic histories embedded in how Aotearoa was settled and became New Zealand.”
This artistic exploration has mostly happened while Rowan worked full-time in paid employment.
“It’s only been this past year that I haven’t worked a full-time job. The past 15 years I’ve worked in film, which is hugely demanding because it’s 50 hours a week. I've had to fit my own work in around that. And having a full-time job gives you the freedom to be able make whatever you want to make but it doesn’t give you the time to make the work. […] I’ve managed to do way more this year than I ever have in the past.”
Rowan is currently a research associate at Auckland Museum, where the chance to look at objects, use the library and talk to curators has helped her take big strides in her artwork.
She’s also been able to get close to the works she has known since she was child. The Pacific Masterpieces Gallery was one of her favourite places, and the pieces there set a benchmark she aspires to in her own work.
“Going into those spaces and spending time with pieces that a lot of love and energy have gone into – it’s almost like you can connect with those makers. I tend to work more with pieces that are older, rather than contemporary pieces. That’s where I get my inspiration from.”
Rowan received Creative New Zealand support in 2022 to make three new chest pieces out of muka fibre using lacemaking methods. The images in this story are those works.
In September 2025, Rowan will take up the three-month residency at the Colin McCahon House in Titirangi.
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