Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast

Musician and artist Rebecca Lee returns with a new sound work and discussion in the last podcast of our 2021 season. This is the second work Rebecca has made in response to and collaboration with the students from The CE Academy as part of our Alternative Provision programme. Last year, Rebecca's You Can Hear The Wind presented student recordings made during workshops in the previous school year in as pure a form as possible whilst still resulting in a cohesive listening experience. For this new work, Dream Job, she has approached the recordings of her 2021 Zoom workshops the same way she approaches the music she makes as Bredbeddle - elevating the experience of making to art. She discusses these different approaches, her socially engaged practice, and how the medium might still be the message, in a discussion with Assistant Director Jessica Harby later in the episode. More at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-14-rebecca-lee/

In this episode, artist Simon Faithfull is in discussion with curator Yasmin Canvin about his influences, his work, and the dark humour of Sisyphus. Simon's work Going Nowhere 1.5 is part of the group exhibition Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Countryside Park. More at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-13---simon-faithfull/

In this episode, the Fermynwoods Podcast shifts slightly from our current programme theme of how humans influence and affect the landscape around them, to how a history of changing landscapes can shape a human. Sayed Sattar Hasan is a British-born artist based in Oslo, Norway. His work explores the parameters of national identity, heritage and belonging and the faultlines between tradition and change. In this new sound work, made during a mandated travel quarantine between his past and current home, he tells the epic tale of his alter ego Hasansen, digging down into the layers of the places and cultures that have made him. More at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-12---sayed-sattar-hasan/

An enhanced discussion between Fermynwoods Director James Steventon and David Blyth. David Blyth is an artist and Course Leader in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. His work is informed by the craft skills of taxidermy and draws upon narratives of folklore, shamanism and cultural memory. David's work will be in included in our upcoming exhibition The Howse Shal Be Preserved at Rockingham Castle starting 11 July 2021. This episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast is supported by Arts Council England and by a grant from Localgiving and Postcode Places Trust, a grant-giving charity funded by players of People's Postcode Lottery. More about this episode here: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-11---david-blyth/

Artist Lucie McLaughlin mines her everyday for sounds in the three-part audio work Clickety-Clack. In this work, we can hear the sound of seagulls, a printer dancing, music leaked through walls, the quiet rabble of voices outside a pub and the purr of a washing machine. In the form of a triptych of sound works, Clickety-Clack comprises field recording and constructed narrative sequences. Here, the material of listening is loose footed, both aware of its construction and interrupted by words. Perspectives on familiar or often overlooked sound are shifted into condensed spaces to reveal an aural poetics in movement, whilst the words performed ask questions of the spaces we’re in or are hearing. This episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast is supported by Arts Council England and by a grant from Localgiving and Postcode Places Trust, a grant-giving charity funded by players of People’s Postcode Lottery. Clickety-Clack was originally commissioned as part of URGENCIES at CCA Derry~Londonderry, a project supported by Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Derry City & Strabane District Council. More on this episode here: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-10---lucie-mclaughlin/ You can find Lucie McLaughlin at https://www.luciemclaughlin.com/

Artist Marie-Chantal Hamrock presents new audio work The Iron, The Pitchfork & The Sow in this latest episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast. Building on her film There is Something in the Ground, There is Something in the Sky from our online Triple Harvest exhibition, Marie combines real and embellished Northamptonshire histories in this tale of ritual. Thank you to Corby Borough Council Archives and artist Amanda Loomes for sharing material included in this work. Marie-Chantal Hamrock can be found at: https://www.mariehamrock.com/ More on this episode, including images and transcript, at our website: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-9---marie-chantal-hamrock/

The second season of our podcast starts with an original audio work by, and discussion with, Anna Brownsted. Anna works across a wide range of media including sound, installation, and performance. Her work Week Nine was originally released by HOME Manchester during the ninth week of England's first lockdown. It is a cinematic landscape, meant to be listened to via headphones in a dark room. Feeling zapped? Want to get away? We offer deep relaxation at its most unexpected. Join us on a journey for your own good – rethinking productivity, one week at a time… Week Nine is a Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Homemakers commission, with support from Arts Council England and Cambridge Junction Anna Brownsted: https://www.annabrownsted.com/ HOME Manchester Homemakers series: https://homemcr.org/event/homemakers/ Cambridge Junction: https://www.junction.co.uk/ More at our website: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-8---anna-brownsted/

For the final episode of our first podcast season, host and Assistant Director at Fermynwoods Jessica Harby talks with artist Geoff Diego Litherland about his new album of music. Since 2016, Geoff's practice developed from painting landscape to cultivating it. He grew a field of flax, harvested and spun the fibres, and then learned to weave his own uniquely textured linen canvases. This year, he turned those weaving patterns into sound loops to produce the basis of music, now available on his album Woven / Ground. Listening to the music, which runs throughout this episode, is listening not only to his paintings, but to the entire journey from cultivated dirt to finished work of art. http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-7---geoff-diego-litherland/

Episode 6 of our podcast features a discussion between artist Tom Baskeyfield and writer Josh Allen. Tom's works on paper, depicting local stones floating on a black plane, are currently on display in our In Steps of Sundew exhibition. As you'll hear in this discussion, stone is both emblem and starting point for much larger issues and ideas. We begin with a pebble in the hand of a rambler and travel through issues of mindfulness, theology, human vs geological time, nationalism, and home. Tom has provided a wealth of supplementary material for this discussion. Visit the link for images, a full bibliography of works sited during this discussion, and a short film, as well as a full transcript of this podcast episode. http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-6--tom-baskeyfield/

For our fifth episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast, we focus on our Alternative Provision programme with students from The CE Academy. Artist and musician Rebecca Lee has created her sound piece You Can Hear The Wind entirely from recordings made by students. Rebecca Lee is a musician and sound practitioner producing performance, sound works, projects and publications with a particular focus on music and narrative and collaboration. She often works long term in relation to specific site and places, draws on written forms and uses improvisation, scores and DIY approaches to combine period and contemporary materials and processes. She moves between public off-site or project-based work, traditional arts venues and DIY music spaces. Rebecca performs as Bredbeddle, makes improvised music with Marie Thompson and is part of Primary Music group. More on this episode at our website here: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-5-rebecca-lee/ Rebecca Lee's website: http://www.rebeccalee.info/ And her SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/rebeccarecordssounds

The fourth instalment of our podcast is an original sound work in response to our Triple Harvest callout by London-based artist, collaborator and researcher Anja Borowicz. Before transitioning to art, Anja studied industrial engineering - an experience which instilled an enduring affinity for industrial landscapes, diagrammatic instructions and thinking across taxonomies. This made her response to our Corby steel industry heritage films particularly insightful. Her work "extracted : crashed : smelted" finds the music and humanity in the sounds of an industry populated by large metal monsters. More from Anja Borowicz on this sound piece at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-4-anja-borowicz/ To watch the seven films made by artists as part of our Triple Harvest project visit http://fermynwoods.org/triple-harvest-films

Artist, writer and researcher Leyla Pillai takes us on a guided tour of a fictionalised truth in episode three of the Fermynwoods Podcast. Building on episode two's exploration of Pleasure Garden, this new audio work is rooted in the imagined space of Deene Park and begins a contemplation and lure into its external grounds. A stream of consciousness style of spoken word, considering the garden as an acoustic sound mirror. An accompanying text and images by Leyla are available at our website here: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-3---leyla-pillai/ You can listen to the archives of Who'sThat Girl w/ Leyla Pillai here: https://www.nts.live/shows/whos-that-girl

This episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast is an audio essay by writer and curator Amy Lay-Pettifer addressing our current state of collective pause. The audio work encapsulates her experience of curating Pleasure Garden, an exhibition meant to open early May 2020 at Deene Park and includes discussion with and contributions by Pleasure Garden artists Alice Channer and Bethan Lloyd Worthington, as well as interjections by artist Harriet Plewis. Images, references and a transcript for this podcast are available at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-2/

Our first podcast episode is a talk between Fermynwoods Assistant Director Jessica Harby and Sarah Gillett, an artist and writer investigating the life of things across space and time, as well as across media. Sarah has been commissioned to produce work over two years and multiple sites as part of our programme In Steps of Sundew. In this talk, she discusses the inspiration provided by the grounds, archives and staff at Rockingham Castle, research on how astronauts dream, the promise of future seances, and the joy of collaboration. This episode features clips from her sound work "Well Well" as well as a presentation of another work in its entirety, the hypnotic "Black Night". For more information on this podcast, including images mentioned in the episode, visit http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-1---sarah-gillett