Maureen Lander was born in Rawene and was educated at Kaeo District High School and Te Karaka District High School near Gisborne. She trained as a teacher at Wellington Training College and subsequently taught in Paeroa, Waitakaruru, and Mangere. Maureen completed studies in school certificate Art and Māori language as an adult student at Aorere College. In 1982 she began B.A. papers in Māori Studies which she completed in 1989. In 1983 she enrolled at Elam School of Fine Arts and graduated B.F.A in 1987, M.F.A in 1993, and gained her Doctorate in Fine Arts in 2002. A longstanding interest in researching Māori feather and fibre arts in museum collections is reflected in Maureen’s art practice. Her multi-media installations have been exhibited widely in New Zealand and internationally. Recent exhibitions include "Glorified Scales" in collaboration with poet Briar Wood at Auckland Museum in 2001; "Mrs Cook’s Kete" in collaboration with artist Christine Hellyar at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK in 2002; and "Shade House" at Whangarei Art Museum in 2004 in collaboration with poets Robert Sullivan and Briar Wood.
Biographical sources
- Phone conversation and correspondence from Maureen Lander on 18 and 24 July 1998, and 18 June 2004.
Non-fiction
- "Kohukohu or Horeke? An investigation of Charles Heaphy’s ‘View of the Kahu-Kahu, Hokianga River’ 1839." The Turnbull Library Record 22.1 (1989). Rpt. in Antic 5 (1989): 106-119.
- Lander makes a critique and re-examination of the assumptions of Ruth Ross and Anthony Murray-Oliver concerning the geographical location of the subject matter in Heaphy’s ‘View of the Kahu-Kahu, Hokianga River’. While Ross and Murray-Oliver assert that the site of the painting is Horeke, on the southern bank of the Hokianga River, Lander presents a case for it being at Kohukohu on the northern bank of the Hokianga River.
- "Fibre Fragments from the Raupa site Hauraki Plains." Records of the Auckland Institute and Museum 29 (1992): 7-23.
- Lander writes that this is ‘an analysis of the fibre fragments uncovered in archaeological excavations at Raupa, near Paeroa in 1988. These fragments represent charred remains of raincapes, plaited pieces and possibly a korowai cloak.’
Visual Arts
- Glorified Scales. Maureen Lander, Briar Wood. Auckland, N.Z.: Maureen Lander, 2001.