Nomas* Projects / Art, Dundee

Felling

ARTIST'S ZOOM TALK: Sunday 8 May 2022, 4.00pm - 5.30pm online

Meeting ID: ** 889 1286 8623**

Passcode: Nomas

Statement

Felling

From 2020-21 Newcastle City Council’s parks management company undertook the felling of trees across the city. Some were deemed dangerous, too close to roads or paths and too expensive to manage, others were diseased with great holes in the centres of them.

The argument presented by the management company was that every tree cut down would be replaced. Yet this fails to acknowledge the meaning particular trees hold for local people, and the role they play in local ecosystems.

The prints on display at Nomas* are based on tree rubbings taken from trees that have been felled to make way for new development in Shieldfield, Newcastle. These six cherry and plum trees were cut down just as they were about to blossom in 2021. The prints question what ecological resources are lost through the capture of economic value from land.

Artist's Bio

Julia Heslop is an artist based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. She has a BA in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art, a Master of Fine Art from Newcastle University and a PhD in Human Geography at Durham University. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in Architecture at Newcastle University. She works interdisciplinarily across the boundaries of art and architecture and her work often takes the form of large scale architectural installations, painting and printmaking and video. The potentials for deep participation in re(creating) environments and landscapes are at the centre of her practice and she often works in participatory, slow ways with groups and communities. She uses her work to ask questions about the ecological impacts of development, land and property ownership, housing precarity, urban planning and local democracy.

Artist's Website

• juliaheslop.com