Daniel Worth
17 August - 13 September
Secrets of hidden artworks revealed in new exhibition at Toi Pōneke.
Message to a Stranger, is an ongoing body of work combining ephemeral electronic modern communication with stone cutting, which is traditional, slow and enduring. This work playfully explores how these messages are sent, hiding them in urban and natural environments. Visitors can interact with the work, creating and displaying rubbings.
What would you write in stone to be read 100 years from now?
This is the question that artist Daniel Worth is asking visitors to his interactive exhibition “Message to a stranger” at Toi Poneke from the 17th of August to the 13th of September. At the end of the show Daniel will choose his favorite visitor submission and carve it in marble to hide in an undisclosed location to be discovered sometime in the future.
The idea for this exhibition came from volunteering on an archaeological dig in York, UK in 2018 where the name “William Mont” was discovered carved on a flagstone. Looking at old census records Daniel was able to determine that it was written by a laborer who worked on York's first train station in the 1860’s. Keen to send his own messages through time and having no idea would read them, Daniel started letter carving in stone and documenting the hiding of these works around the world in the natural and manmade environment.
Most stone carving is formal and serious, such as tombstones and memorials, so it is the artist's aim to challenge this convention by conveying emoji and digital text-like messages. Our communication now is electronic and ephemeral so carving silly things in stone is a way of capturing these messages, and this moment, in a permanent way.
The exhibition has photography and video work showing how these works have been “installed,” from throwing a block of marble inscribed with “LOL” into the Thames in London, to burying a stone reading “Beached as” along the Kapiti coast, to other work hidden around New Zealand and the world.
Sculptures are displayed on plinths that are covered in grass, water, sand and stones to show how these works will be installed outdoors after the exhibition. Visitors to the exhibition are encouraged to touch the artworks and make stone rubbings to display on the gallery walls or take home, and to contribute ideas for a new original work to be created and left to posterity. Photos of the installed artworks are free to take until they are all gone, reflecting the transient theme of this body of work.
Create a stone rubbing (& meet the artist)
Saturday 7 September
Come and meet the artist – Daniel Worth in the gallery. Daniel will invite you to make a rubbing of the stone carvings in his exhibition. You can then choose to display these in the gallery or take them home. Daniel is interested in chatting to visitors about what ideas they would write in stone that could be then discovered in one hundred years from now.
