In this episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast, we hear a layered soundscape of voices responding to fire and forest sparked by Tipping Point, a powerful artwork by internationally renowned artist Luke Jerram, presented by Fermynwoods Contemporary Art in September 2025 in Hazel and Thoroughsale Woods — the largest ancient urban woodland in the UK — at the heart of Corby town centre, Northamptonshire.

Originally conceived as a response to the escalating global wildfire crisis, Tipping Point simulated the terrifying realities of forest fires using immersive light, smoke and sound. Set within the woodland itself, the installation transformed a familiar local landscape into an unsettling and moving encounter with environmental breakdown.

Central to the work is a bespoke soundtrack by multi-award-winning composer Dan Jones, incorporating the crackling of burning trees, whirring chainsaws and fleeing animals, alongside ambient, melancholic music and deeply affecting global testimonies from people who have experienced wildfires first-hand. Dan was kind enough to share a selection of these sounds, which have been specially edited into this episode.

Woven through the episode are interviews with Luke Jerram and Fermynwoods Trustee and Climate Psychologist Siobhan Currie, alongside audio reflections recorded with visitors as they experienced the installation. Together, these voices explore how art can engage emotional, psychological and collective responses to the climate crisis, creating space for reflection, connection and action.

Headphones are recommended for the best listening experience.

If you have been moved by Tipping Point and want to take some positive environmental action, please consult the resources here.

In this episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast we hear from a trinity of voices - artist Tobias Zehntner, composer George Turvey, and curate Chad Chadwick - discussing place, community, spirituality and creation in relation to Tobias' Halo installation, shown at the Grade I listed Anglo Saxon, All Saints Church, Earls Barton in April 2025.

Originally commissioned in the Abbaye de la Cambre, Belgium, Halo features a suspended light installation that creates a moving interplay of light and shadow that illuminates the church’s architecture and forms halos above the audience.

Woven into these conversations are 6 new pieces of music composed by George in response to the artwork, portraying the arrival of light, new beginnings, and the recurring circle of notes in the music mimicking the hypnotic swinging of the installation.

These compositions originally accompanied the work for the Halo launch event in All Saints, Earls Barton.

Chad broadens the discussion with fascinating insights into the nature of play as a spiritual discipline.

The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss.

https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-30-halo

This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast presents Ear for the Other - a sonic exploration of the importance of being receptive to, sensing, and feeling for 'the other', by Scottish artist Adrienne Murray.

The other is felt in all things outside of the realms of self: within and around space, in the things which space contains, and in the voice and dreams of others.

Adrienne writes that in opening yourself up to the other by simply being present and embodied within your environment, a more intuitive empathy for the vitality and poetry which surrounds us can be experienced.

Responding to the fragile relationship between immateriality and physical connection in the age of the digital, Adrienne hopes to provide respite from the numb and disconnected states of being brought on by the experience of being repeatedly exposed to vast amounts of information online.

Ear for the Other is followed by an enlightening conversation about her work.

https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-29-adrienne-murray/

Sarah Long's Tread softly because you tread on my dreams performs a fluid girlhood that invites the listener into the confidence of the autofictional character, Mary. She shares her strange visions in an effort to decipher their meanings. The work plays with the notion of the aisling, an Irish poetic genre where the nation appears to the poet in a dream in the form of a woman. Mary’s dreams offer a critique of inherited language and storytelling systems, while highlighting themes and motifs that reverberate throughout Irish culture such as the impact of colonialism, Celtic mythology and an affinity with the land.

https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-28-sarah-long/

This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast features Tread softly because you tread on my dreams, by Irish artist and writer Sarah Long. While the title carries a tongue-in-cheek tone, much like Sarah’s broader body of work, it also captures a quietly sparkling sentiment of love, light, and the intertwining of bygone pasts and potential futures.

https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-28-sarah-long/

This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast features a fragmentary and poetic discussion between Beccy Mccray and Jason Singh, facilitated by Marie-Chantal Hamrock, which melts together into a rich audio tapestry.

Beccy tells us about Intuition Maps – a co-created artwork set in the woodland of Irchester Country Park that leads visitors on a journey through the landscape prompting us to reflect on animal instincts in the context of climate change adaptation.

Jason shares insight into his I Bring my Body to This Place to Observe the Coming and Going of Life – a sound installation in Titchmarsh Nature Reserve during the summer of 2016 which explored themes of home, separation and migration for both people and wildlife.

Through the lens of one another’s work, themes emerge reflecting on nature, movement and our place in the world.

More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-27-beccy-mccray-jason-singh/

The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss.

This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast with David John Scarborough presents a new work, Dead Wood Burning - a musical tapestry grounded in the idea of Ubi Sunt - a rhetorical question asking where are those that have gone before us.

Deftly weaving together samples of music from Pete Seeger's anti-war song 'Where have all the flowers gone?' to moments of David's own music - this is a poetic exploration of ecological breakdown, the long lasting effects of folk tradition, and personal experiences of community, family, and fatherhood.

The episode concludes with an insightful discussion with the artist.

With thanks to Dean Howard and Tilly Robinson.

More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-26-david-john-scarborough

The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss.

The first episode of our Love + Light season of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast presents Of Immeasurable Consequence by Pale Blue Dot Collective.

The final episode of the Xylophobia season presents a radio play written by our podcast guest curators, SUBTERRA: Marie-Chantal Hamrock and Astrid Björklund.

Told through the voice of the Narrator, we are presented with an eccentric cast of characters living and contending with an ever diminished and hostile landscape, made up of old mines, towering blast furnaces, an inexplicable blackness which seems to spread insidiously, and a strange red substance that emanates from the earth.

Among the characters are an unnamed man who searches in desperation for 'that place' using an old ironstone amulet; Niko and Launo are two hardened characters who seem to have strayed from their community and traverse this landscape alone, speaking wistfully of old times; The Withered Arm is a disembodied human arm working as a barmaid in the Inn of Ill Omens with its ever decreasing customers sadly sipping from their worthy pints; The Strange Man seems to know something sinister no one else does and plays cruel tricks on those around him. And finally, the Fermyn is an ethereal character who cannot be described in words and has no discernible form but somehow seems to know more than anyone else about the nature of this dark world.

… All the while the narrator begins to lose her grip on reality and starts to question her very own existence.

Please note: This episode is binaural/atmospheric recording best listened to with headphones.

More at: ⁠⁠https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-24-subterra

The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss

This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast presents a new work, O' God of Weather by Saoirse Horne.

O’ God of Weather combines elements of ambient music, folk song, and field recording, which together paint a vivid and imaginative world, rooted in messages of phantasm and fabrication.

Somehow, through a painterly appreciation of texture, patience and solitude, the artist manages to create a sensitive and ethereal act of balladry – O’ God of Weather considers how deeply weather affects our lives - and how it can impede our access to woodland spaces. The work has a visionary awareness of multiple temporalities, giving the listener glimpses into the lived experience of the artist, while also offering interpolated fictions and folklores that lead to imaginative world building. Painting through wave, tone, harmony and storytelling, Saoirse’s work feels both permanent and ephemeral in its reverence for an invisible, yet powerful deity.

This work might make one feel as though through the simple act of listening they are part of some sacred incantation, invoking the almighty God of Weather.

More at: ⁠https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-23-saoirse-horne

The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss