Ngā Kākano Foundation wall mural dazzles Te Puke

(From left): Elisha Ryan, Kingston Ryder, Kalib Wallace, Hinemare Abbot and Zoe Nooroa in front of the new mural. Photo / Stuart Whitaker

A dazzling, eye-catching mural has added a bit of sparkle to Commerce Lane.

But bringing colour to the area was only a secondary aspect of the mural, which has been painted on the side wall of the Ngā Kākano Foundation building.

The mural was designed and created by Tauranga’s Kalib Wallace, with plenty of help from the area’s rangatahi.

Originally conceived three years ago, the idea was to provide a creative outlet for rangatahi who were tagging, as well as those on the foundation’s’s after-school programme. Funding was provided by the Acorn Foundation.

“That’s why the mural came into focus, and that was the ideal wall to do it on,” says Ngā Kākano’s rangatahi team leader, Ripeka Armstrong.

“And they absolutely loved it. They loved being able to get into something that was professional, for starters, and having another viewpoint of art other than tagging, and that was the point we wanted to make.”

Kalib has worked with rangatahi before and says he had 20-30 kids come through and help.

“It was awesome being a part of that with the young ones and everyone who was involved,” he says.

Often those who came along to help were initially reluctant, saying they didn’t want to “muck it up”.

“But after, say, half an hour, we couldn’t get them off the spray cans - they couldn’t get enough of it.

“Creativity is in everyone, and sometimes you need to take a practical approach to bring it out of people.”

The mural depicts the Kaituna River flowing between the Rangiuru and Otawa mountains.

Kalib, who has been a professional artist for 15 years and operates under the name Aerosol World - says creating the mural on the wall required some trial and error.

“There are a lot of downpipes and different things sticking out of the wall, so it was a challenge. I’ve dealt with similar challenges, but not quite as challenging as that, and not as high.”

The initial design was scoped out on the wall and painted with exterior paint, then aerosols were used to fade the foundation colours.

Ripeka says there has been a tremendous response to the mural.

“We’ve had a lot of comments from the Te Puke Community [Facebook] page and lots of comments on Instagram - we’ve had about 8000 likes and comments,” says Ripeka.