TEMPEST
Tempest : Peter Roche and the Nuclear Uncanny
How many artists question technology, especially military technology?
Tempest is named for the nuclear industrial storm imagined inside the concrete silo where the NZ artist Peter Roche staged his final installation ‘Asylum’, a daring collection of works that speak to the nuclear uncanny and the dangers underscoring our new radioactive world.
This invasion of the military into our lives provides the context for much of Peter’s work, spanning his performances from the 1970’s through to his later light and kinetic sculptures.
In ‘Transformation’ of 1979, Peter had raw organs stitched onto the surface of his skin in a cutting-edge performance that suggested the vulnerability of living matter in an era of nuclear fission where radioactive materials form a stamp not only on the planet but the body itself.
Peter’s later exhibition ‘Trophies and Emblems’, 1990, explores this physical but often unconscious embodiment of the nuclear in the form of large kinetic sculptures designed to confront the viewer in an exploration of territories and the psychological spaces of the military industrial complex.
However, it was not until ‘Asylum’, 2016, Peter’s final public installation in an abandoned concrete silo, that he confronted the nuclear threat head on. Commanding works with titles such as Meltdown, Flotilla and Tempest underscore the dangers of nuclear military technology and the vulnerability of a culture so entangled in its manufacture and the global reach of its destructive toxic legacy.
Tempest is dedicated to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Country of Origin: New Zealand
BRIDGET SUTHERLAND, Director
How many artists question technology, especially military technology?
Tempest is named for the nuclear industrial storm imagined inside the concrete silo where the NZ artist Peter Roche staged his final installation ‘Asylum’, a daring collection of works that speak to the nuclear uncanny and the dangers underscoring our new radioactive world.
This invasion of the military into our lives provides the context for much of Peter’s work, spanning his performances from the 1970’s through to his later light and kinetic sculptures.
In ‘Transformation’ of 1979, Peter had raw organs stitched onto the surface of his skin in a cutting-edge performance that suggested the vulnerability of living matter in an era of nuclear fission where radioactive materials form a stamp not only on the planet but the body itself.
Peter’s later exhibition ‘Trophies and Emblems’, 1990, explores this physical but often unconscious embodiment of the nuclear in the form of large kinetic sculptures designed to confront the viewer in an exploration of territories and the psychological spaces of the military industrial complex.
However, it was not until ‘Asylum’, 2016, Peter’s final public installation in an abandoned concrete silo, that he confronted the nuclear threat head on. Commanding works with titles such as Meltdown, Flotilla and Tempest underscore the dangers of nuclear military technology and the vulnerability of a culture so entangled in its manufacture and the global reach of its destructive toxic legacy.
Tempest is dedicated to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Country of Origin: New Zealand
BRIDGET SUTHERLAND, Director
Bridget Sutherland is a writer on art, a painter and filmmaker. She has produced and directed the documentaries Far off Town, on musician David Kilgour, and Infinity on Trial, on the international sculptor Anish Kapoor. She was the co-writer and producer on the documentary Don Driver Magician. She has also written and directed a number of short experimental films including Seeing War, a hand-painted film honouring the horses sent to the First World War. Bridget has a Doctorate in Fine Arts and is currently lecturing in Visual Arts at EIT, New Zealand.
Director Statement:
The threat posed by nuclear war and its industrial arm, the nuclear power plant, creates new forms of fear and psychic anxiety. In making ‘Tempest’, I was concerned to highlight a number of seminal works by the artist Peter Roche that speak to the underlying dangers of the Nuclear age and its psychological impact. Peter is little known outside of New Zealand and yet his vision is universal and reflects on the growing urgency to end the hold of nuclear and military consciousness on the planet.
Director Statement:
The threat posed by nuclear war and its industrial arm, the nuclear power plant, creates new forms of fear and psychic anxiety. In making ‘Tempest’, I was concerned to highlight a number of seminal works by the artist Peter Roche that speak to the underlying dangers of the Nuclear age and its psychological impact. Peter is little known outside of New Zealand and yet his vision is universal and reflects on the growing urgency to end the hold of nuclear and military consciousness on the planet.