46
Auckland
X-Marks: Conversations in Cloth
Northart, 10 June–3 July
BRONWYN LLOYD
Historical record reveals a paucity
of written testimonies by missionary
women in New Zealand prior to
1823, which led textile scholar and
embroiderer Vivien Caughley to
make the startling comment in the
preface to her book New Zealand’s
Historic Samplers (2014) that a sampler
‘may be the only words of a woman
which survive’. Underpinning the
exhibition X-Marks: Conversations in
Cloth, coordinated by Vivien Caughley,
Maureen Lander, Jo Torr and Caitlin
Timmer-Arends, is the resonant idea of
the stitched or ‘marked’ sampler as a
forgotten voice that reaches across time
to speak its story. Originating at Te
Kongahu Museum of Waitangi in 2018,
X-Marks appears in a slightly reduced
form at Northart.
There is a mystery at the heart of
this beautiful and thought-provoking
textile exhibition. A Maori woman,
referred to as ‘Oreo’, who lived in the
household of John King in the Missionsettlement in Rangihoua, and who
was taught needlecraft skills by his
wife Hannah, produced a sampler
that was enclosed in a letter sent to the
Church Missionary Society in London
in 1820. Oreo’s sampler has not been
seen since, but despite its absence
the sampler’s significance is that it
could be seen to represent a fertile and
harmonious exchange of knowledge
between two women of different
cultures and that it might have been
the first marked sampler by a Maori
woman to travel offshore.
To honour this historical moment,
needlecraft practitioners and
enthusiasts from around Aotearoa
were invited to respond to the story of
Oreo’s lost sampler. A diverse selection
from 22 artists forms the largest section
of the seven-part exhibition, ‘Oreo’s
Sampler: X: a new voice’.
A number of the contributors
were concerned with the question
of whether Oreo’s sampler might
have combined Maori visual motifs
and craft techniques with European
needlecraft. The mix of taniko designs
and a traditional cross-stitch alphabet
in Helen Schamroth’s three-piece
series What if... posits that Oreo
enthusiastically absorbed the craft
skills she was taught by her tupuna
wahine, as well as those taught by
her Pakeha employer, Hannah King,
and that she became ‘a creative force
in her own right’. Vita Cochran’s
vibrant Aramoana Sampler (2018) also
incorporates taniko weaving patterns
consisting of 14 different European
stitches, and makes a particular feature
of red wool in the composition to
acknowledge that red was a colour
prized by Maori craftswomen at the
time Oreo’s sampler was made.
Othercontributorsspeculateabout(above) X-Marks: Conversations in Cloth at
Northart, June 2019
(left) X-Marks: Conversations in Cloth at
Northart, June 2019, with tea towels by
Vivien Caughley
(opposite above left) MAUREEN LANDER
Ko wai ra ahau 2018
Muka & cotton, 270 x 230 mm.
(opposite above right) VITA COCHRAN
Aramoana Sampler 2018
Wool on linen, 380 x 280 mm.
(Photograph: Sait Akkirman)
(opposite below left) TERRI TE TAU Kohuia
Calico & embroidery thread, 400 x 400 mm.
(opposite below right)
HELEN SCHAMROTH What if Oreo made
this sampler? Possibility 1— 1820 2019
Linen, silk & perle cotton, 217 x 175 mm.Exhibitions