Eurydice Prevails

About

EURYDICE PREVAILS (2019)
by Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva

Dedicated to the memory of Lady Carol Djanogly.
Long-standing friend and philanthropist to the University of Nottingham and Lakeside Arts.
Photography by Alan Fletcher.

Eurydice Prevails is one of a series of inverted tree works Elpida has made over the last ten years. She has a continuing interest in that which is hidden, and has explored this through works including Ambush (New Forest, 2000) where she made a tunnel with glass ceilings for audiences to experience the forest from beneath the ground; Fragility (Fabrica, Brighton, 2015) considering the expérience de mort imminente and Making Beauty (Lakeside Arts, 2016), a project exploring regenerative medicine and the gut with art works crafted from the insides of animals.

To create her new work, Elpida used two dead Elm trees in inverted form, their roots reaching to the sky. The two Elms were originally sustainably sourced from University Park campus and a Gloucestershire estate, having been felled due to poor health. Elpida worked with University students, staff and members of the public to make the work using the ancient Japanese process of Yakisugi, a method of wood preservation achieved through the charring of the surface. The trees were then overlaid with decorative metallic motifs that trace the tunnel-like galleries created by Elm bark beetles, the carriers of Dutch Elm disease that is estimated to have killed and affected 25 million Elm trees since the 1960s. In Eurydice Prevails, Elpida has imagined a rewriting of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In her version of events the heroine, unlike in the ancient Greek legend, successfully escapes Hades despite Orpheus’ backward glance.