Fermynwoods is very excited to introduce you to ‘The Trickster Trailer’. This project is a new collaboration between interdisciplinary artists, Bean and Isabel Pina Ferreiria; a public sculpture, mobile art workshop and ecology laboratory, built using waste materials from major art institutions including Tate, National Portrait Gallery and recalled COP26 installations. A trailer with a rain tank, solar panels and earth roof built in collaboration with the public, to provoke conversation and share strategies for living sustainably, with joy and abundance, in times of ecological and climate crisis. The Trickster Trailer will be a space for radical pedagogy, transforming waste, and connecting to land, community and nature.
With Bean and Isabel beginning the project as artists in residence in Fermyn Woods, students from The CE Academy lent their support to help build the forthcoming mobile lab. Isabel has worked for over 10 years in Art Handling and as Principal Technician for Tate Gallery, whereas Bean is currently enrolled at ‘The Natural School of Building’, continuing practice-led research into sustainable materials and traditional building techniques. After learning about Isabel and Bean’s past work, including building compost loos from Tate gallery’s waste materials and a children’s play space made from sticks, logs, art handling shipping cases and live moss, the students selected materials to clad the trailer framework.
Battling the unpredictable weather between blazing sunshine and heavy blizzards, students prepped the panels, cut them to size using a circular saw and screwed them into place. We even found an old piece of Richard Woods’ Stone Clad Cottages installation from 2008 to repurpose on the trailer. The green roof began with a Fermyn Woods section gathered from the woodland floor.
The finished Trickster Trailer will double as a mobile ecology workshop space that will be able to travel to remote, wild and rural spaces across the UK to host future workshops and talks exploring the intersections of locality, nature and climate crisis to reconnect people to the land through creative community action. Incorporating a rain tank, solar panels and green roof to power a projector for artist film screenings and talks whilst providing water for creative workshops, our students ensured that this exciting project will take a little bit of Fermynwoods with it wherever it goes.