Thee Gardens (Gethsemane, Eden, and Golgotha) 2005 -2010 and 2018. are three 15 minute independent but related films projected onto a loose sheet. The films explore images and sounds associated with anxiety, paradise and personal loss
.These three states of mind, if not concepts, are based on the three biblical gardens of Gethsemane, Eden and an un-named garden below Golgotha that occur just prior to the Easter events and refer to situations that Jesus and his followers were involved with while in those places..
These works then focus on the Christian calendar of Holy Week and Passiontide but nevertheless also relate to ordinary times that occur in our own lives where we may see no religious connection at all. There is then, no drama in these works, so for example, in Gethsemane there is no arrest, no discovery, no kiss of betrayal, only the anxiety of what is pending. While in Golgotha there is only the search for the loved one as if they were not really dead or can no longer be lived with, there is no preparation of the body, no act of burial, no farewell. Again something that many of us can or will experience.
These works are the spaces between the dramatic life events and as such are the spaces we inhabit in our lives today.
The structural concept for these three videos comes from the medieval use found in triptych paintings that are closed and opened according to a calendar and therefore reveal and hide different images for various durations. Today these triptychs abide not in the space they were intended for but in museums and galleries and in a number of cases their reverse panels are permanently hidden from site.
It is also significant that these three works are not only shown in a relatively dark space of a medieval church’s Nave, but the location of the screen is the liminal threshold between the secular and the Holy (Nave and Chancel). In addition the screen can also be seen to relate to the curtain that hung in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem prior to Jesus death as well as the curtain that Peter saw in a vision concerning the clean and theunclean. Both are then a veiling of a future. The work is both a visual image but there is also space for words between each film as a form of story telling so that the engagement is not simply passive.
