A coming together of cultures will be on show at an Ōpōtiki gallery for the next three weeks.

The exhibition, Ngā Taonga a Papatuānuku, at the He Tohu Aroha Gallery will feature some rare examples of harakeke woven on a loom.

The works have been created by Te Wānanga o Aotearoa raranga student Pani Maxwell and are the result of tutor Roka Cameron incorporating traditional raranga material such as harakeke and a western loom.

“I introduced harakeke to the western loom when I did my masters, so for the first time I’ve had the chance to teach a tauira the loom so people can come and see what it produced,” she says.

Roka says the exhibition features works created by tauira (students) from the Level 5 Toi Paematua and Level 3 Kāwai Raupapa programmes.

“We’ve got korowai from our Level 5 tauira, tāruke (crayfish pots) - some of our male tauira wanted to make tāruke from pirita (supplejack) and kanuka - kete from harakeke, kupenga style garments, kākahu from harakeke. Tauira this year have been very busy.”

They had also been working on a community project with NIWA to build cages for mussel spat.

“We are always working with the community, I like to awhi our community,” Roka says.

“They had to get four cages done so that was a lot of work, some are two metres by one metre, all done in pirita. We use muka for spat lines from ti kouka as well as making kete in kupenga style for kuku. We’re trialling resources from our tīpuna. All the big cages are in the moana so they’ve made samples for the exhibition, we call them whare kuku.”

The exhibition, at 99A Church St, Ōpōtiki, runs until December 7.