Penance Performance
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Location: Toronto & Whitevale, Ontario
Artist & Performer: Gareth Bate
Street Filming: Saglara Kitchikova
Studio & Country Filming: Gareth Bate
Editing: Gareth Bate
Street Stills: Carolyn Dinsmore, Saglara Kitchikova
Studio Stills: Gareth Bate
Country Stills: Gareth Bate, Carolyn Dinsmore
Special Thanks: Georgina Neville, John Brown
Exhibitions:
Penance & Devotion at Glendon Gallery
Hard Twist at The Gladstone Hotel
Common Thread International Fibre Exhibition as part of the World of Threads Festival. at b42 Gallery
Lament" Gallery 260 at 401 Richmond
Status: Prints Available
Artist Statement
An anonymous blog commenter has come the closest to the essence of Penance:
"If he had attempted to cross the street and succeeded it would have given us hope. If he attempted and failed he would have been looked upon as a martyr and inspired others. But to make no attempt at all to cross the street, and to actually retreat displays the reality of contemporary thinking about our environment, ie, it's not worth taking the chance."
The performance video Penance is intended to represent a bizarre act of self-punishment and humiliation for the guilt of environmental destruction. Gareth crawled on his stomach with a reconstructed field of grass on his back along Toronto’s Queen Street West from Soho Street to Spadina Avenue. He then crawled backwards. After two hours he had to give up. It was painful and tiring. The piece captures a sense of helplessness in the face of the overwhelming accumulation of problems facing the world. What can I do? Gareth sees this act as half serious and half ridiculous.
Reconstructing the body piece out of grass gleaned from the countryside was itself a reflective act. Agnès Varda’s beautiful film The Gleaners and I was an inspiration for the gleaning process. The Penance video moves back and forth between the agonizing performance, the bewildered response of onlookers, and contemplative scenes of gleaning grass in the countryside. The public response seemed to be mixed between considerable curiosity, confusion, indifference and hysterical laughter.
This body of work was created while using The 401 Richmond Career-Launcher Prize. Penance is usually exhibited along side the "Lament" painting series.
Reception: Penance has had over 4800 views on YouTube. When it was first uploaded it became the 12th most discussed video for its category in Canada. It has been reviewed in the Toronto Star, Xtra, the climate change magazine Checkerspot, Things of Desire Blog, L’Express , Glendon Campus paper, Globe and Mail, Snap Toronto and Metropolitan among others. It was hotly debated on a prominent Canadian political blog by Garth Turner.Pénitence
J’ai rampé à plat ventre avec, sur le dos, un carré de gazon reconstitué le long de la rue Queen Ouest de Toronto, de la rue Soho à l’avenue Spadina. J’ai ensuite rampé à reculons. Après deux heures, j’ai dû m’arrêter. C’était physiquement épuisant et douloureux. La performance vidéo Penitance (Penance) est censée représenter un étrange acte d’autopunition et d’humiliation pour la culpabilité liée à la destruction de l’environnement. Elle exprime également un sentiment d’inaptitude à agir devant l’accumulation désarmante des problèmes rencontrés par la planète. Que faire? Cet acte est, selon moi, mi-sérieux et mi-grotesque.
La reconstruction d’une partie du corps en gazon « glané » à la campagne était un acte réfléchi. Le merveilleux film d’Agnès Varda Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse a été l’inspiration de ce « glanage ». La performance vidéo Penitence alterne entre l’interprétation déchirante, la réaction ébahie des passants, les images du glanage de gazon, qui inspirent la contemplation, et le travail en silence dans l’atelier. L’expérience d’être dans les champs a quant à elle inspiré les tableaux de la série Lamentation (Lament).
Artiste: Gareth Bate
Tournage rue: Saglara Kitchikova,
Tournage atelier et campagne: Gareth Bate,
montage : Gareth Bate
Images fixes rue: Carolyn Dinsmore, Saglara Kitchikova,
Images fixes atelier: Gareth Bate,
Images fixes campagne: Gareth Bate, Carolyn Dinsmore,
Remerciements: Georgina Neville, John Brown