Story: South Pacific peoples

Robin White and her family lived on the Kiribati atoll of Tarawa in the early 1980s and 1990s. When a fire destroyed her studio in 1996, her artistic direction changed. With few materials left, she collaborated with the Teitoiningaina Catholic Women’s Training Centre on Tarawa to design and weave a series of mats using pandanus leaves. This mat, with its simple image of a cup of tea, comes from that series. Robin White returned to New Zealand in 1999, after 17 years in Kiribati.