Sometimes the saddest songs are the most inspiring. Rather than sink into guilt and despair at the state of the world, I try to find beauty in the tragic. As an artist I choose to believe that making art will somehow have an impact. It will make people feel, think and consider. It will motivate and affirm a sense of hope.
In November 2007 I crawled on my stomach with a reconstructed field of grass on my back along Toronto’s Queen Street West from Soho Street to Spadina Avenue. I then crawled backwards. After two hours I had to give up. It was painful and tiring. The performance video Penance is intended to represent a bizarre act of self-punishment and humiliation for the guilt of environmental destruction. It also captures a sense of helplessness in the face of the overwhelming accumulation of problems facing the world. What can I do? I see 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 experience of being in fields inspired the “Lament” painting series.
The “Lament” series is a song of sorrow and loss, an existential contemplation on our place within nature and our effect on the world. It evolved out of a desire to paint the places that are special to me like Grenadier Pond in Toronto’s High Park, and Kings County in Prince Edward Island. However, the paintings became something different. The result was often haunted and lonely. For me, a strange melancholy permeated each painting, a human presence felt but never seen. Despite the darkness, winding pathways continually emerged in a completely unconscious way.
If we value our environment so intensely will we make difficult choices of self-control? Or will we instead cut the tops off mountains while “waiting for the miracle”? I value this world because I believe this is all there will ever be.
Penance Credits
Performer: Gareth Bate, Grass Body Reconstruction: Gareth Bate, Street Filming: Saglara Kitchikova, Studio & Country Filming: Gareth Bate, Editing: Gareth Bate, Street Still Photos: Carolyn Dinsmore, Saglara Kitchikova, Studio Still Photos: Gareth Bate Country Still Photos: Gareth Bate, Carolyn Dinsmore, Special Thanks: Georgina Neville, John Brown