Daniel Patrick

Daniel Patrick is a woodworker and artist residing in Te Whanganui-a-Tara-Wellington, Aotearoa-New Zealand. Daniel’s interest in the medium of sculpture has developed organically through a broader woodworking practice, The River, which was established in 2015 as a process-based furniture and object studio, guided by modernist design principles.

Daniel Patrick is a woodworker and artist residing in Te Whanganui-a-Tara-Wellington, Aotearoa-New Zealand. Daniel’s interest in the medium of sculpture has developed organically through a broader woodworking practice, The River, which was established in 2015 as a process-based furniture and object studio, guided by modernist design principles.

In Daniel’s first series of work, 'Bodies without Organs', the language and limits of geometric figures, with the myriad possibilities of their relational composition, informs the creative trajectory of each distinctive object. Through a slow, tactile practice, substantive forms emerge, which express a monolithic quality and evoke a sense of movement in the seemingly inert matter of wood – a sensation of motion that calls both the eye and hand towards a tactile engagement with the perceived object.

For Daniel, these moments of sensation are what makes material objects worthy of careful consideration and reverence. An encounter with an object or sculptural form can often be an opening into the past, acting as a mediator of memory. In this sense, Daniel subjectively experiences his artistic activity as a kind of embodied communion with his ancestors – a lineage of working-class people who have laboured in various trades and crafts, forging raw materials into a multitude of forms.