‘Nomenclature’, Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield (1996)

In her most recent installation, White Garden 1996 shown for the first time in Nomenclature, Anne Lydiat explores a similar terrain which lies between growth and sterility, the desire for creativity and the compulsion to order. The naming of things returns as a preoccupation, but here the labour of classification, represented by Latin names inscribed on plant labels, has no apparent purpose.  The white ‘roses’ which lie on the gallery floor have no need of identification since their endless repetition reproduces only sameness, not difference.

I am tempted to read in these works a reference to genetic technology, to the cloning of identical genes which has its origins in the gardeners’ desire to reproduce plants without the accidents of nature. Finding an apt metaphor in the garden, Nomenclature reminds us of the intricate borderline between human compulsion fort control (of nature, desire, emotion, the female) and surrender to its sweet disorder.

Rosemary Betterton (1996)

‘White Garden’ 1996, plaster ceiling roses

‘Nomenclature’ 1996, white labels, green ink, copper nails