Rowan shared sketches, tests, research, and finished works developed during her residency, speaking candidly about what it meant to spend sustained time with her practice. For the first time, she found herself able to say, “I’m an artist” not something fitted around other work, but something fully inhabited. That shift carried, in her words, a strong sense of pride.
 
The evening also marked the unveiling of a new work, a salt print of a muka lace work. Drawing on the legacy of William Henry Fox Talbot, who used lace in early photographic experiments, Rowan’s work traces a lineage where lace and image making have long been entangled. Here, that relationship is extended, pūhā leaves rendered in muka lace, then translated again through light into photographic form.
 
Panther’s Foxes (Pūhā, Sow thistle) sits within a series of returns to Titirangi, to lace, to photography. A plant often overlooked becomes central, pūhā, both introduced and naturalised, visible and invisible, valued differently depending on who is looking. A faux native formed from a true native, the work gently holds questions of belonging, migration, and perception.
 
The Gate Gathering offered a chance to share these ideas with patrons and special guests, a moment where process, place, and people came together.
 
Image 1: Lisa Bates, MNZM, Chair McCahon House, Jude Chambers and Rowan Panther
Image 2: Guests gathered as Rowan shared her residency research and process
Image 3: Detail of Rowan’s new work, a salt print of muka lace