Light Fantastic
By Alistair Keddie
24 Jun 2009
Peter Roche is a New Zealand performance artist, sculptor and painter I was lucky to meet and photograph in his super cool studio, an old and stripped out cinema he uses to create his often violent and expressive artwork. Given the flamboyance of his art and character, he was surprisingly reticent initially about being photographed, preferring his work to speak for itself. Hence the technique used in many of the shots, pulling the zoom and asking him to move during the exposure to create a ghostly, impermanent effect that allowed him to dissolve into the background. Shooting like this also created some unexpectedly beautiful tracers and trails from the glowing neon colours and light he uses in his work, my favourite being the cover shot here, Neon Bhudda where he appears to levitate on a column of white light. I've also named some of the shots in honour of the rock n' roll life as the stage in the studio is often used by live bands for parties the artist organises, none of which would be complete without a bar, which sits in the main entrance to the building where we relaxed with a few beers after the shoot.
