Education
Kipa is a graduate of the Maraeroa Carving School in Porirua (1986), and completed a Bachelor of Social Sciences at Waikato University in 1994 and a Masters of Māori Visual Arts at Massey University in 2006.
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Rangi Kipa
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Kipa is keen to break boundaries and challenge the notion of tradition within Māori culture. Through his moko work, he is able to articulate contemporary Māori concerns about cultural and tribal identity and membership. His work demonstrates the potency of Māori art and its continual adaptation and response to new ideas from within and outside the culture.
Kipa"s moko work is just one aspect of his art practice that reflects an artist drawing on his cultural heritage in new and exciting ways, demonstrating how tradition and innovation are, in fact, one and the same.
In 2004 Kipa was a Te Waka Toi Inaugural Artist in Residence in the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Nouméa. In 2006 he received the Creative New Zealand Craft/Object Art Fellowship.
He used the award to work in Thailand on a modern whare whakairo (carved meeting house) for inclusion in Star Power: Museum as Body Electric at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in 2007. Kipa was one of seven artists representing seven countries chosen for the museum’s opening exhibition.
In 2014 Kipa was featured on Maori Television’s series about tā moko in Aotearoa New Zealand, Moko Aotearoa.
