Dropping a sheep’s carcass from an aeroplane into the Waitemata harbour; sewing a sheep’s kidney onto your own back; yelling “get the f**k out” till the audience leaves, many razor cuts. The early, confrontational ‘70s performance work of the late Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland artist Peter Roche is the stuff of legend.
You might ask: why on earth would you do that? Well, think of an art that treats the body as its material; that tests the boundary between art and life to consider the disturbing psychology of some of our actions as a society.
Yet, as Night Piece, a new documentary by filmmaker Bridget Sutherland shows, Peter Roche’s artistic career also had many different lives.
Performance 1980 by Linda Buis and Peter Roche Photo: Gregory Burke
From working solo, Roche moved into performance works with then life partner Linda Buis, testing the boundaries of their relationship.
Peter Roche's Coral (2000), a major commission for Auckland's Vero building Photo: supplied
From there, his focus shifted into large, often ominous kinetic and neon sculptures. They often spoke, says Sutherland, to the psychological impact of technology and the industrial-military complex.
Roche also created some impressive public lightwork commissions, notably the blue ‘Coral’ work on the Auckland CBD’s Vero building.
In the 1990s Roche took over an old cinema in Point Chevalier, The Ambassador, as a dark magical studio playspace and bar. It remains a venue to this day.
Peter Roche with light works at The Ambassador Photo: supplied
Comparing the body to the machine, Peter Roche’s work never stopped feeling dangerous. By the 1990s there was a new generation of performance artists and sculptors there to witness him shooting out the lights in an artist-run space, or spectacularly swing a chainsaw through a circle made of lit fluorescent tubes.
Roche died during the Covid lockdown period of 2020, aged 63 from cancer. His partner Natasha Francois aptly described him at the time as “a punk Len Lye”.
From Peter Roche's archives regarding an early performance work Photo: supplied
Sutherland’s film brings together the contributions of many. There are the documenters of Roche’s work back in the ‘70s, including senior art figures Wystan Curnow and Tony Green and curators Gregory Burke and Christina Barton who collaborated on a major exhibition of work by Roche and Linda Buis at the Adam Art Gallery in 2023 (In Relation: Performance Works 1979–1985).
Sutherland credits cinematographer Stuart Page for bringing together a complex collage of moving image work, while musician David Kilgour has responded to Roche’s work with a terrific soundtrack for the film.
As director Bridget Sutherland tells Culture 101, Peter Roche was still making and performing to the end, willing the film to be made.
Night Piece premieres at the Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival.
