Welcome to the summer issue of Bulletin. In it we celebrate the opening of our new exhibition Te Puna Waiora: The Distinguished Weavers of Te Kāhui Whiritoi. This major show is the most significant showcase of Māori weaving to be displayed in Ōtautahi Christchurch since we were privileged to host Toi Māori: The Eternal Thread / Te Aho Mutunga Kore in 2007. For Bulletin, Patricia Te Arapo Wallace, adjunct senior fellow for the Aotahi School of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Canterbury, writes about the process of Māori weaving; its decline during nineteenth-century colonisation and its eventual recovery leading to the creation of the Kāhui Whiritoi in 2005. This group was formed to acknowledge the mana of Aotearoa’s master weavers, and their works are further celebrated in the major new publication the Gallery has produced to accompany the exhibition.

Continued

Summer green as lint / wound about the bone / bandaged in green I lay / quiet all summer long / summer sings a song / of its own.

This is an unpublished poem written by Joanna when she was living at Barrys Bay on Banks Peninsula. She moved there with her husband Jeffrey Harris and their daughter, Magdalena, in 1975. The family had previously been staying at Okains Bay. There’s a languid, sensuous feel to the lines. The summer is beautiful, it’s green and musical and encompassing, and yet a feeling of unsettlement arises. The choice of ‘lint’ and ‘bandaged’ suggest damage and there’s a need to rest up, a need for healing. I wonder if Joanna was pregnant at this time; that would make it 1976 and she would be awaiting the birth of her second daughter, Imogen. The baby was born in the Akaroa hospital in late February, but sadly died after surgery for a heart condition in December of the same year. An exquisite white marble headstone, a hemisphere carved by Jeffrey, marks the grave in the Akaroa cemetery. Joanna herself was buried there in 2003.

Continued