AARON TE WHANATANGI KEREOPA (b.1971) Aaron’s interest in carving and design dates back to his high school days at Wesley College, a boarding school in Auckland that emphasised the importance of culture to its students, many of whom hailed from Pacific backgrounds. Here he developed interests in ta moko (tattoo), kapa haka (performance) and te reo (language), and became a member of a waka taua (war canoe) group, travelling to Canadaand Hawaii as a representative of his school, the Māori Queen and Tainui, his tribe. In 1985, the Greenpeaceship Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland harbour, sparking a new wave of anti-nuclear protest across New Zealand. Aaron was living with on his family land in Raglan at the time when he saw a foam blank carved with fellow surfer Kevin Barker’s message“No Nukes in the Pacific”. Inspired and wishing to express his ‘screaming silent voice’, Aaron took up some old broken surf boards and began to experiment with the koru, or spiral form, initially using a kitchen knife and spoon to carve out the foam. He shortly realised that the same techniques applied to carving wood could be used with the foam if he used different tools, with a cutting rather than chiselling action. Initially hesitant to explore this form of carving, given the respect with which Māori treat whakairo (the art of carving) and the rules that have come to be associated with the art form, Aaron has grown confident over time about
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