The Bethnal Green Nature Reserve is excited to announce our latest 2026 billboard commission, It Feels Like Going Back Home by Jessica Ashman.

The artwork explores growing food and flowers as a bridge between landscape, cultural knowledge and the practices of tending land. At a time of rapid climate change, Ashman asks what might happen to the traditions and identities connected to the foods we grow as our growing conditions change.

The title comes from a conversation with a plot holder at Bethnal Green Ecology Garden, the Nature Reserve’s food-growing garden. During her research, Ashman spoke with local growers about their experiences of tending their plots, the plants they grow, the recipes they make and the knowledge passed between generations.

She was particularly interested in the names given to plants in growers’ first languages, and the ways that growing food can create connections between people, places and memories.

Ashman says:

“As an allotment owner myself, I grow produce connected to my Jamaican heritage, so I’m interested in how growing food can create a sense of connection across generations and between places. I was struck by the care and emotion people invest in their plots, and by the knowledge held in the plants they grow and the ways they use them. I also heard how changing weather is beginning to affect these practices, making some crops more difficult to cultivate.”

Jessica Ashman is a Black British interdisciplinary artist working across painting, natural dye, animation, textiles, music, performance and installation.

Rooted in her Jamaican and working-class heritage, her practice explores cultural inheritance, folklore, archives and the ways knowledge is collected, preserved and passed on. She is particularly interested in the space between fact and folklore, archival absence and lived experience.

Ashman is currently exploring histories of colonial botanical extraction in Jamaica and their connections to contemporary diasporic relationships with land and ecology in the Caribbean and UK.

A Royal College of Art graduate, her work has been supported by Animate Projects, 198 Contemporary, Focal Point Gallery, New Art Exchange, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, and Modern Painters New Decorators.

It Feels Like Going Back Home is made using acrylic ink, watercolour, silk dye scans and digital collage.

@jessica_a_ashman

This artwork is part of our ongoing research into climate and adaptation, supported by City Bridge, Wellcome and King’s College London.