Peter Roche - Interviews
25 June – 12 July 2014
Beacon, 1985 – 2014, b+w photograph, freestanding metal stand and animated light, cabling
An interview is a process designed to elicit information. It may be expansive conversation. It may be interrogation. In
titling his exhibition in the plural, Peter Roche is opening up the myriad of possibilities inherent in the viewer’s
engagement with art. What is the nature of this engagement? What does the viewed object or act give? Is the viewer
voyeur? How do we interrogate for meaning? Are the participants equal? Does power lie in the hands of the interrogator
as the pejorative connotations of the word suggest?
Interviews brings together three works drawn and reconfigured from a practice spanning 30 years. First produced in the
late 1970s and mid-1980s the works resurface in new conversations with the world and with each other. Comprising image,
objects, lights and sound, they present a sense of seeing and being seen. Interviews suggests broad-ranging ideas around
the role of the state, propaganda, public private boundaries, and very contemporary concerns about surveillance.
Having first come to attention in the late 1970s as a performance artist, Peter Roche’s object works have embodied a
performative aspect. After completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of
Auckland, Peter exhibited widely throughout the 1980s and 1990s — with major exhibitions at Auckland Art Gallery, City
Gallery Wellington, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth and internationally in the 1st Asia Pacific Triennial of
Contemporary Art, Brisbane and the 1st Korean Bienniale of Contemporary Art. He has recently re-emerged with significant
new bodies of work. In 2011 a major large-scale neon light work Saddleblaze was installed at the Gibbs Farm sculpture
park on the Kaipara Harbour. His work is held in many public and private collections including Te Papa Tongarewa,
Auckland Art Gallery, the Chartwell, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery amongst others.
ends