Poutama by Aka Whiro: a tukutuku panel in a mahogany and rimu frame, black slats over an ochre red board, the kiekie stitches climbing in steps.

Tukutuku · 2025

Poutama

A tukutuku panel, the climb within

No summit, only movement.

Enquire: [email protected] More of the work

The kōrero

Light rises through pattern, step by step. Poutama is the stairway, and it teaches there is no summit, only rhythm: a pulse that lifts, pauses, and lifts again. Each stitch of kiekie holds the trace of a hand and the weight of attention. In its rising and falling, every climb is also a return, a way of coming home through motion, where the journey itself becomes the knowing.

The piece

Poutama by Aka Whiro, hanging on a timber wall between two large carved figures.
On the wall
Poutama by Aka Whiro, standing between two carved figures, which shows its size.
For scale
Poutama by Aka Whiro: the black slats and kiekie stitches seen at a low angle, the ochre red board showing between.
The weave, side on
Poutama by Aka Whiro: close on the crossed kiekie stitches stepping across the black slats.
The detail
Poutama by Aka Whiro, the back: the ochre red board with the kiekie tied off through it.
The back
Poutama by Aka Whiro beside a carved face with a pāua eye.
Beside the whakairo

The record

The piece and its record are one event.

Form
Tukutuku: a framed lattice panel in the poutama pattern
The frame
Fijian mahogany and rimu
The binding
Natural kiekie
The board
Black and ochre red plyboard
Made
2025, Hokianga
Size
345 mm wide × 545 mm high
Care
Indoors, dry, out of direct sun

Enquire

Price on enquiry.

Email where the piece would live, and we go from there.

Enquire: [email protected]