Corners of the Heart

Date: 

Friday, 29 May 2020 - 12:00am to Sunday, 11 October 2020 - 12:00am

Maungarongo Te Kawa Artist "He kokonga whare, e kitea; He kokonga ngakau, e kore e kitea."

Maungarongo Te Kawa (Ngāti Porou) is a fabric artist who has spent a lifetime crafting stories that challenge, poke fun and amaze with his sewing machine.

After 30 years of designing and sewing for opera, ballet, theatre and private clients, political commentary still flows easily in Te Kawa’s work through a persistent iconography of rivers and horizons to be broached. Each item is a statement of identity stitched solely from cloth and colour, the textiles revealing whakapapa and a lifelong search for peace by self-expression.

Through quilts and clothes bursting with fun and texture, Corners of the Heart of reveals a desire to comfort those who are alone, to shout for those who need to be heard and warm those who are cold with a quilt of ribald storytelling and aroha.

From a first politically motivated exhibition - Bitter and Twisted - in 1990, Te Kawa describes his work as having come full circle. These self-avowedly punk beginnings have led Ron’s fabulous career to winning Best Futuristic Design at the 2006 Canterbury Fashion Awards, being nominated for a Benson and Hedges Fashion award. In 2019 he was named ACE Maori Educator of the Year for his work with rangatahi learning to express themselves with fabric art.