Napier artist, designer and gallery proprietor Richard Boyd-Dunlop and the Kia Tasman in Australia and due for market launch in 2025.
Napier artist, designer and gallery proprietor Richard Boyd-Dunlop and the Kia Tasman in Australia and due for market launch in 2025.
When Korean motor giant Kia was deciding how it would go about starting to launch a new ute to tackle the market in Australia, it was probably apt to call on a Kiwi to complete the picture.
Much to the apparent chagrin on the western side of the water betweenus, and surprising even the man himself, Napier artist and gallery proprietor Richard Boyd-Dunlop was contracted for the artwork for the camo-wrap being used to shield some of the finer design features of the Tasman ahead of its actual launch in 2025.
“The colorful camouflage is distracting, but we can see the mid-size truck’s boxy shape, chunky all-terrain tyres, and Telluride-esque headlights,” observed one commentator, after Kia released an image of the pickup, camo-wrap and all in an outback setting an hour or so out of Brisbane.
Kia’s early release of an image of the Tasman, complete with camo-wrap designed by Napier artist and gallery proprietor Richard Boyd-Dunlop. Photo / Supplied
The commentator, just to not let Kiwis get too carried away, says Boyd-Dunlop is from “Australia and New Zealand”, and the truck’s name is taken from “the Australian island Tasmania”, ignoring any part of the stretch of water that links us, namely the Tasman Sea.
Another commentator, a “YouTuber” but also more of an online Australian car salesman, reckoned the ute’s camo-wrap, or “disguise”, was more like a “clown suit.”
It’s been a fairly swift process for Boyd-Dunlop, who, incidentally, is satisfied enough with his Toyota Wish (a model that went out of production in 2017).
In the space of barely six months he has taken the out-of-the blue call asking if he’d be interested, worked through the busy Christmas period in his studio and gallery upstairs in Hastings St to get it done, been to Queensland to see the colourful and digitally worked-over and folded wrap in effect for a shoot in a sort-of big-ute Aussie habitat in Queensland, and attained a little notoriety in a hit or two from the commentators who wonder why the job hadn’t gone to an Ocker.
But it was simple, and back in Napier, where he runs the gallery with wife Elise and children, Boyd-Dunlop recalls: “I got a call from an agency in Australia. They said we’ve seen your work, we like what you do: Are you interested?”
Originally from Auckland, having worked in Australia a few years, and ridden on the back of the odd ute and truck hitching lifts here and there, and more with a natural gift than a classically-trained art skill-set, he moved to Napier in 2012, and never looked back.
He’s not bothered by the commentators, and even though he has produced work for companies across Australasia and Asia, including pizza boxes in Napier, and caravans, any exposure’s good for business, and he says he could never have done from Auckland what he has done from in Hawke’s Bay.
Napier artist, designer and gallery proprietor Richard Boyd-Dunlop and the Kia Tasman in Australia and due for market launch in 2025. Photo / Supplied.
“I want to wrap a plane next,” he says. “One of Rocket Lab’s rockets would be awesome.”
The birth of the Kia Tasman was being heralded at least as long ago as 13-14 months ago, and, by ute and truck buffs, at least, is being awaited as much as, say, last month’s release of the latest from Taylor Swift.
They’ll have to wait. Even for Boyd-Dunlop it was look but don’t touch before the ute was whisked off back to Asia to be kept under wraps until the official launch next year.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.
