Lander was first introduced to muka (flax fibre) by noted weaver
Diggeress Te Kanawa in 1984, when she went to stay several times with the senior artist at Ohaki Maori village, near
Waitomo and learned the basics of preparing materials and techniques such as whatu (finger twining). Her end of year installation at Elam, titled
Te Kohanga Harakeke ('The Flax Nest') included a structure covered in milled flax in the shape of a massive inverted nest, which sheltered a young
harakeke (flax) plant. Pitts gives Lander's 1994 work
This is not a kete, made for the exhibition
Art Now at the former Museum of New Zealand (now the
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) as an example of the way her work combines traditional Māori crafts and Western sculptural or installation practices. For the exhibition Lander reworked two previous commissions,
This is not a kete and pieces from ''Mrs Cook's kete
, a 2002 collaboration with Christine Hellyar at the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University. Lander also made new pieces, including the site-specific installations Airy-Theory Artefacts
(woven objects suspended in front of a screened window) and Tane Raises His Eyebrows
(a crescent-shaped weaving placed over a decorative wooden door lintel). Her piece Hariata’s War Garb'' is inspired by Joseph Merrett's 1846 watercolour
The Warrior Chieftains of New Zealand. The portrait depicts
Hone Heke, the chief
Kawiti, and Heke's wife Hariata. Hariata is shown wearing a woven sash unlike anything Lander had seen before. Researching her own family history, Lander found descriptions of Hariata written by her great-great grandfather James Johnston Fergusson. One document describes Hariata leading 700 men; another as being ‘young, tall, and rather goodlooking’, wearing ‘a tartan dress with red sash slung around her shoulders like a shepherd’s plaid’. Lander recreated the sash for the exhibition, along with a number of other pieces. In a review of the exhibition art historian
Jill Trevelyan noted that Lander drew on her own experience learning weaving under Diggeress Te Kanawa to produce the works ''Rongo's samplers'', a reimagining of the first works produced by a new practitioner. In 2017 Lander began a tuakana/teina (mentor/mentee) relationship with
Mata Aho Collective, a group of four wahine Māori (Māori women) artists. In 2021 their collaborative work
Atapō was awarded the biennal Walters Art Prize. In 2023 Maureen Lander, in collaboration with artist Denise Batchelor and composer Stìobhan Lothian, created the online artwork
Hukatai ~ Sea Foam as part of the international art project World Weather Network. Lander and Batchelor came together to monitor the hukatai (sea foams) through walks on the shoreline of Te Hokianga Nui a Kupe, the Hokianga Harbour, in north-west New Zealand. These walks were documented through a series of lens-based observations which became a fibre installation as part of the 2023
Te Tuhi exhibition
Huarere: Weather Eye, Weather Ear curated by Janine Randerson. ==Selected exhibitions==