DAMIEN ROACH LECTURE

Damien Roach is an artist and lecturer who works under various projects across fine art, design and creative direction, publishing, sound/ music and audio-visual. I was fortunate enough to join one of Roach’s lectures today where I found his words and visuals very inspiring.

It surprised me to see that Roach started his lecture with a picture of a worn ballet shoe. As previously discussed, this is something I have been exploring throughout my FMP, capturing the behind the scenes of the performing arts industry and how it looks so effortless. I aim to show the real story of the industry, Instagram has created platforms where users post their highlight reels and rarely show the real pictures of the lives. Or in other words, social media contributes to comparison culture.

Roach said the worn ballet shoe represents the physical traces of hard work. He says ballet is calculated, graceful movements which juxtaposes the hard work shown through his image of a damaged ballet shoe.

I have decided to include this in my work as I found his reference to process interesting. He was using the imagery to reflect the unseen hard work which goes into everything we do as creatives. Process and highlighting true life struggles is important to me when developing this project and I will carry through Roach’s way of thinking throughout.