In Greek mythology, Persephone, daughter of Demeter the goddess of harvest, is the herald of spring. Persephone’s beauty was such that she was abducted by Hades and taken underground. Demeter was so grief stricken that she neglected her role as tender of the world’s plants, refusing to allow any plants to grow until Hades released her daughter. Eventually Hades agreed to free Persephone and on doing so gave her a pomegranate which she ate. Because Persephone had eaten ‘the seeds of the earth’ she was bound in perpetuity to the underworld. A deal was struck so that for one part of the year Persephone was compelled to remain underground but for the remainder she was allowed to return to the surface of the earth.

Such myths, which seek to explain the cyclical nature of the seasons are important and complex anthropological phenomena. Humankind, in the absence of scientific ‘fact’ has always sought explanation for the ‘mysterious’ in the natural world. In Natalie Taylor’s recent exhibition – appropriately entitled Earthly Delights – the artist invokes the name of the Greek deity in a construction which she has called Persephone’s Mirror. The work, whose outward form was inspired by a glass-house containing alpine plants at Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden, resembles a cupola or cold-frame. Measuring approximately one-and-a half metres by three metres with an apex of just under a metre, it is no scale model but an actual structure, made by the artist herself. On closer inspection Persephone’s Mirror is more complex than it initially appears. Contained within this internally-lit structure is a shallow bed of water with a fine deposit of red soil; small oxygenating plants dot the water’s surface. On the ridge-piece in gilded, classical lettering are two series of elided words

GERMINATEEMINATEAPPEARDEVELOPEVOLVETHRIVEBUDBLOSSOM
WITHERROTDECOMPOSEFEED

The words themselves are carefully chosen and whereas the first sequence delineates progression and growth the second sequence (carved on the underside of the structure’s ridge-piece and therefore only legible as a reflection in the rust-coloured water) describes decay. The final word - ‘FEED’ - strikes a positive note, however, and reminds us that in nature decay is an essential component of life.

Another closely linked piece, Full Circle, also explores the cyclical processes of nature. In each section of an octagonal wooden structure a growing hyacinth bulb tilts a fulcrum attached to a watering-can which, in turn, moistens the subsequent plant. Taylor comments that the work “refers to a cycle and transfer of energy from one plant to another. In every interaction – whether its human or the wind or indeed any kind of entity – there’s always a transfer of energy between one thing and another and one state and another.”

Part of Taylor’s inspiration for Full Circle was the work of artist Mona Hatoum. Hatoum’s ‘+ and _’ (shown at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 1998) was a rotating device which inscribed and erased a pattern in sand in what Taylor describes as an “endless cycle of creation and obliteration.” But whereas Hatoum’s work was symbolic of natural processes, Taylor’s uses real plants and the energy stored within them to create a kinetic, dynamic, living structure. Although this is not an entirely ‘open’ or ‘closed’ system (Taylor prefers the term ‘organic’) it illustrates and explores the human-plant relationship upon which we all, ultimately, depend.

Part of Taylor’s Earthly Delights project involved a collaboration with the musician and composer Jane Gardiner. In a series of drawings collectively entitled Fjord Mustard Taylor germinated the seeds of brassica alba and traced their growth onto a series of musical score sheets. The result, a form of ‘still-life’ drawing, was interpreted by Gardiner on the pianoas a succession of compositions. This mysterious, complex and random music formed the backdrop to the exhibition and pointed the way, in another ‘language’, to the organic patterning of nature.

Such projects may also have been partially inspired by composers such as John Cage but the music and the accompanying drawings (objects of fascination and beauty in themselves) also remind us of the origins of speech and music as mimicry and interpretation of the sounds of nature. As well as using mustard seeds to illustrate such processes, Taylor also sees the potential contained within each seed as a metaphor for human creativity: “…we’re sophisticated at being creative but so too, in a sense, are seeds – if not more so…there’s a huge amount of potential encapsulated within this tiny seed that we might throw into a curry…but if you throw it onto blotting paper and then into a prepared box you can translate that as something immensely creative. In the genetic make-up of a seed there’s a tremendous amount of potential. I’m trying to find underlying parallels that could be seen in both the human and natural worlds.”

Such thinking illustrates the multi-layered approach which Taylor adopts in her work. The visual, the tangible and the concrete offer in-roads to a deeper, more complex formulation of ideas. In Piano Arrangement Taylor again takes the energy stored within plants as the basis for the work. Here a series of ball-bearings are allowed to fall onto the keys of a piano, impelled via a simple lever by the plants’ inexorable growth. As the bearings strike the keys (over a period of days or weeks) they create a random music. Additionally, the piano notes are recorded visually by means of an ingeniously placed graphite fragment attached to each hammer which, in turn, marks a blank musical score sheet each time a key is struck.

Discussing Piano Arrangement in particular and the entirety of Earthly Delights in general Taylor further develops her ideas linking growth and creativity:

“The idea is a visual transcription of a process I understand within myself…when I have a creative idea, it’s as if there’s a seed in a hidden part of the brain which you are possibly unaware of but which nevertheless is germinating and putting down roots. The seed then puts forth the first shoot, bud or leaf. At that point you may recognise there’s an idea and start playing and working with it. Putting it into a human context – making it into a system or a language. Many of the pieces started from this premise….I am therefore inserting plants into a human creative process in an attempt to illuminate something about how I see the creative process working.”

The largest and, perhaps, most ambitious piece in Taylor’s exhibition Spirit House is again a framed construction which melds elements of the horticultural with the spiritual. A gilded, glazed and roofed octagon has been placed on legs; the viewer interacts with the structure by standing inside, at eye level with an array of hyacinths. The sweet scent is almost over-powering; viewed simultaneously with another person this becomes an intimate and even uncomfortable experience – like being momentarily trapped in a very small lift. But the artist’s purpose is not to create discomfort but rather to steer the solitary viewer into a close and measured consideration of what is before them – in this case powerful olfactory and visual stimuli. Although not uncommon in contemporary art practice, this kind of ‘directed’ experience has a powerful effect, bringing the viewer up-close to a point of undeniable experience of what is before them.

Inside this mystical space Natalie Taylor hands me a piece of gold leaf…. “In Thailand they have a beautiful tradition - when you visit a shrine you are given a piece of gold-leaf whether it’s Animist or Buddhist and you make your mark. There are also 100s of other people’s random placements of gold leaf around…I’ve gilded the exterior and I’m hoping the viewers are going to gild the interior.”

Like a temple or a shrine, this space is suddenly imbued with an intimate warmth, with an atmosphere which seems more than the sum of its flimsy, temporary component parts. We are here to taste and savour the ‘fruits of earth’, to pay homage, to leave an offering, to pray, to hymn and thank. The opacity of the windows creates only a blurred recognition of the outside world. No longer trapped, I am freed to consider what must be considered: the importance of life, our dependence upon each other and on our common home, the earth. Suddenly, I am moved…and humbled.

Giles Sutherland

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