This is an image of the clutter that Ursula Goldfinger argued with her husband, Erno about. Perhaps in the way that Daniel Miller in his essay,
Possessions’ talks about the residents of the modernist flats of the Lark Estate, who use ornamentation to express their individuality in an environment not of their choosing.
In its present state the garden looks abandoned: Manderlay at the beginning of Rebecca, encased in brambles, nettles and roses, it fulfils the romantic requirements of a sham ruin, where the cultivated growth of ivy symbolised authenticity and elevated the status of the ruin. If the garden is a narrative, it is at its haunting end. Or perhaps it is suspended in a sleeping-beauty state, a remembrance of something that no longer exists.
Yet it has always been this, and now it is a museum within a museum. Bodhan died five years ago and he is no longer to be found encased in this labyrinthine shell. The gate is locked and the new voice of the garden is his neighbour, Odette. Like the film, the Go-between’ which is set in 1900, written I 1952 but has the overwhelming look of 1970 when it was made; of the different eras that the garden commemorated, it seems to be set at 2005 the year that Litnianski died.
