Profile °11 – VIVIENNE ROCHE

essay by Ciarán Benson; intro and interview by Aidan Dunne

ISBN 978 0946846 238      48 pages (paperback)    22.5x22.5cm     39 illus

Vivienne Roche is a sculptor whose focus is on themes of place, space and time. Living on the south coast of Ireland, she has derived enormous inspriation from the sea, producing beautifully fluid and evocative pieces in a variety of media. Shifts and changes take place in her work as she delves deep into her imagination and explores the potential of materials.

EXTRACTS

"Vivienne Roche has a way of confounding whatever preconceptions we might bring to her work. Just when we had her down as a maker of formalist, geometric abstracts, she introduced elements of unmistakably representational imagery. When we had learned to accommodate the expanded metaphorical language this allowed her, she turned to making disconcertingly faithful studies of plants. Yet these dazzling changes of angle and idiom have occurred, by and large, within the parameters of a conventional sculptural vocabulary. That is to say, Roche is a fabricator of objects and images. She uses traditional media, albeit mildly stretching the definition to encompass functional and industrial materials such as glass, sailcloth or steel rope, as well as such mainstream fine art media as bronze. She has, incidentally, a personal preference for steel, which has a foot planted firmly in both camps."

— from the introduction by Aidan Dunne

"Throughout her career, Vivienne Roche has been an artist of place and passage. It has been a Janus-faced career, transforming the inward, transmuting the outward. This requires exacting skills. Built places cannot be positively developed by sculpture, cannot be moved on towards actualising latent possibilities, without the artist understanding the nature of buildings, their making, placing and powers, or lack of them, to effect (in the sense of ‘shape’) experience. The dynamics of occupied and empty architectural spaces – inside and outside, above and below, left and right, in front and behind, largeness and smallness,roughness and smoothness – are extensions of the dynamics of the human body. Buildings are corporeal artefacts with a range of states which resonate with the wishes of those who make them and with some of those who dwell in and around them. If ideas are scripts for action, then this particular idea ensures a productive dialogue of drawing, sculpture, architecture, perception and distinctively personal insight. All Roche’s work, but notably the work of recent years, exudes a confidence that this grasp of the connections between material, space, perception and idea is now fluent and at the service of an increasingly subtle journey."

— from the essay by Ciarán Benson

"You have to remember the kind of work I do. It needs space. Living in the country was just a matter of location at first. For a decade or so after I moved to Garretts­town, my concerns remained urban. The role of architecture in shaping the urban experience, and a formalist approach to my work, generally meant that during that period my work was almost placeless. Gradually, however, the natural environment became a conscious focus. My surroundings became an imaginative as well as a literal ground. I also started to make work for specific sites, and that made me think more about a sense of place. The interaction between formalist concerns and the natural environment has been a central motor of my work in recent years. Practically and artistically, the coastal context has been crucial in shaping a personal and aesthetic perspective."

— Vivienne Roche in conversation with Aidan Dunne