Weaving magic

Born into a family of artists and designers, Te Rongo Kirkwood is of Te Wai-o-Hua, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, English and Scottish descent. She works across Māori and Western artistic disciplines and traditions, incorporating natural materials and kiln-formed glass into her intricate compositions. Te Rongo’s fused glass pieces are created with fine layers of glass and multiple kiln firings. The delicate components are then often bound together with cord or plant fibres. The resulting patterns echo those formed by traditional Māori weaving practices through which lines of whakapapa and ancestral knowledge are recorded. Influenced by the stories of her forebears, Te Rongo explores the patterned interactions between all things in the natural world; those universal and elemental rhythms that underpin us. Each piece is a dance of interwoven parts. Helen Schamroth