FRIENDS and family of a respected Sydney artist and hard-core adventurer will use one of his own artworks to farewell him in Katoomba today.
FRIENDS and family of a respected Sydney artist and hard-core adventurer will use one of his own artworks to farewell him at a Katoomba funeral service today.
Daniel Kojta was 47 when he died peacefully on January 24, his friend the curator Daniel Mudie Cunningham said.
Kojta was popular and intellectually provocative.
He lived his life vibrantly and fearlessly, and made people forget that he was in a wheelchair and had paraplegia, according to Lizzy Marshall who ran a radio show with him.
Last year Kojta was well into an attempted 2150km cycle from Lake Eyre to Mt Kosciuszko when he was hospitalised with dehydration.
He had to abandon the expedition, in which he was using a modified cycle.
Kojta’s Facebook page contains images of other feats. In one picture, he sits confidently in his wheelchair as he abseils down a breathtakingly sheer cliff in the Blue Mountains.
Kojta lived in the Blue Mountains with his wife Laurice, a high school art teacher.
In 2012 Kojta’s sculpture Letters to the Editor was exhibited as part of the annual Hidden exhibition, where artworks are displayed among the graves at Rookwood cemetery.
Letters to the Editor was a headstone with a slot in which visitors to the exhibition could post a message to a loved one.
At the time, Kojta said the work was “a performance action of remembrance”. Letters to the Editor was subsequently acquired by Rookwood.
Kojta’s family will place Letters to the Editor at St Canice’s Catholic Church in Katoomba for today’s funeral service.
“All guests are encouraged to write a private letter to be placed in the piece which will be burnt in a ceremony at a later time,” the family wrote on Facebook.
Mudie Cunningham said Kojta and his wife had been “out west in some remote area in NSW picking up his bike” when he died.
“He had this great ability to push himself to the edge,” Mudie Cunningham said.
“There were no boundaries for him. He lived somewhat dangerously but also in a calculated way because he knew what he was doing.
“He was a charming, sweet, engaging, funny guy.
“Those endurance feats were research for artworks.”
Last year, commissioned by the Federal Government art collecting agency ArtBank, Kojta made a video work called Walking All Over My Friends. He juxtaposed the legs of artist friends with his own torso to give the impression he was moving around with the aid of their legs.
Artist and curator David Capra was a good friend of Kojta’s, and recalled him talking about his childhood in Penrith and the time he spent living in Bellingen.
Lizzy Marshall said Kojta was a natural educator.
“He had worked as a teacher and participated in artist in schools schemes,” Marshall said.
“I had seen him give his knowledge to children and adults alike. His magnetic charisma made him a natural public speaker.
“He was one of the most intelligently funny people I had ever met.”
Marshall, currently the acting curator at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, was former curator of Sculpture at Scenic World, in KatoFRIENDS and family of a respected Sydney artist and hard-core adventurer will use one of his own artworks to farewell him at a Katoomba funeral service today.
Daniel Kojta was 47 when he died peacefully on January 24, his friend the curator Daniel Mudie Cunningham said.
Kojta was popular and intellectually provocative.
He lived his life vibrantly and fearlessly, and made people forget that he was in a wheelchair and had paraplegia, according to Lizzy Marshall who ran a radio show with him.
Last year Kojta was well into an attempted 2150km cycle from Lake Eyre to Mt Kosciuszko when he was hospitalised with dehydration.
He had to abandon the expedition, in which he was using a modified cycle.
Kojta’s Facebook page contains images of other feats. In one picture, he sits confidently in his wheelchair as he abseils down a breathtakingly sheer cliff in the Blue Mountains.
Kojta lived in the Blue Mountains with his wife Laurice, a high school art teacher.
In 2012 Kojta’s sculpture Letters to the Editor was exhibited as part of the annual Hidden exhibition, where artworks are displayed among the graves at Rookwood cemetery.
Letters to the Editor was a headstone with a slot in which visitors to the exhibition could post a message to a loved one.
At the time, Kojta said the work was “a performance action of remembrance”. Letters to the Editor was subsequently acquired by Rookwood.
Kojta’s family will place Letters to the Editor at St Canice’s Catholic Church in Katoomba for today’s funeral service.
“All guests are encouraged to write a private letter to be placed in the piece which will be burnt in a ceremony at a later time,” the family wrote on Facebook.
Mudie Cunningham said Kojta and his wife had been “out west in some remote area in NSW picking up his bike” when he died.
“He had this great ability to push himself to the edge,” Mudie Cunningham said.
“There were no boundaries for him. He lived somewhat dangerously but also in a calculated way because he knew what he was doing.
“He was a charming, sweet, engaging, funny guy.
“Those endurance feats were research for artworks.”
Last year, commissioned by the Federal Government art collecting agency ArtBank, Kojta made a video work called Walking All Over My Friends. He juxtaposed the legs of artist friends with his own torso to give the impression he was moving around with the aid of their legs.
Artist and curator David Capra was a good friend of Kojta’s, and recalled him talking about his childhood in Penrith and the time he spent living in Bellingen.
Lizzy Marshall said Kojta was a natural educator.
“He had worked as a teacher and participated in artist in schools schemes,” Marshall said.
“I had seen him give his knowledge to children and adults alike. His magnetic charisma made him a natural public speaker.
“He was one of the most intelligently funny people I had ever met.”
Marshall, currently the acting curator at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, was former curator of Sculpture at Scenic World, in Katoomba.
“When I was with Dan his wheelchair simply disappeared. The year he won Sculpture at Scenic World, one of the judges turned to me in surprise saying ‘your never mentioned he was in a wheelchair’. I answered that I had forgotten. It was true, when with Dan I never even thought of what he couldn’t do. Our conversations always centred on what we could do.”
Kojta was a trained soldier, but abandoned a military career to go to art school at Western Sydney University where he eventually won the university medal.
He sustained his injury while working on a construction site just before starting university, Mudie Cunningham said.
Kojta is survived by Laurice, his mother Teresa Kojta, his brother Joe and sister-in-law Kylie and their daughters.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/arts/sydney-artist-daniel-kojta-to-be-remembered-in-katoomba-through-one-of-his-works/news-story/48584eb05a3facef42af937b961a07ac
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