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Luke Jerram on his incendiary new installation
The light’s fading from dusk to darkness and the line of trees ahead has gone up in flames.
A thicket beyond a lake is ablaze, the water flickering red and orange as smoke plumes across its surface and the sound of crackling timber drifts across on the breeze.
This is Tipping Point, a powerful new installation from Luke Jerram which brings to life the issues of deforestation and forest fires, and points the finger squarely at the banks.
is needed now More than ever
“Something like 15 per cent of all money held in banks goes into deforestation – this is our money, our pensions,” Jerram told Bristol24/7.
“I’m urging people to find out where their money’s invested and move it to banks like Triodos and Viva, that are trying to help make the world a better place.”
For this work – which sees the artist returning to the University of Bristol Botanic Garden following his Impossible Garden installation in 2018 – he’s collaborated with BAFTA-winning composer Dan Jones to create an immersive experience for visitors wandering through the garden at night.
While his art often tends towards the playful and participatory, Jerram said he is increasingly drawn to environment themes:
“I’m interested in science – when you look at the graphs and see temperatures and waters rising, you realise we really need to shift society, make our lives more sustainable and create a circular economy rather than one based on the exploitation of nature,” he explained.
“There’s a responsibility as an artist to think about what we want to communicate. We’re in the middle of a climate crisis and for banks to be investing our money in deforestation, fossil fuels and knackering the planet is exactly the wrong thing.
“And the government is complicit: they’re telling us to stop using cotton ear buds and plastic bags; meanwhile billions of pounds is given to the fossil fuel industry to exploit the planet. We should be doing exactly the opposite.”
Luke Jerram and his team were busy putting the finishing touches to the installation on Thursday night, ready for the opening to the public on Friday
Andrew Winfield and Nick Wray, the Botanic Garden’s senior horticulturalist and curator, explained why they commissioned the artwork.
“The Botanic Garden is a museum, the plants are the exhibits,” said Winfield. “One area looks at the evolution of land plants, and the carboniferous period where there were a lot of intense fires. Ironically, that was where we got coal from, which is contributing to today’s fires.
“Visitors will walk round to the Mediterranean display – where today a lot of regions are suffering really badly from intense fires.”
“We tell stories about plants. There’s a catastrophe going on in many of the world’s ecosystems with these mega fires – even in environments, like the Mediterranean, which have evolved over millions of years to coexist and rejuvenate with fire,” continued Wray.
“With a hotter climate these fires are burning the surface of the soil, killing seed banks and trees. We’re beginning to see fires in unusual environments: in 2023 the carbon emissions from forest fires in North West Canada were equivalent to all that year’s aviation.
“And up to £2 in every £10 of every pension pot is linked to activities which contribute to a hotter climate.”
The installation includes lights, smoke, and a soundscape of forest fires along with personal anecdotes from people that have experienced them
University of Bristol academics Jo House and Natasha Martirosian believe art is invaluable in communicating their research on mega fires and how to mitigate them. They want visitors to leave the installation with a positive message, they said.
“There’s a lot people can do – avoiding investments in companies that cause deforestation, so talking to your pension companies, buying sustainable timber products, talking to supermarkets about products sourcing, making sure food products like soya are sustainable and forest certified,” said House, a professor of environmental science and policy.
“I could give you loads of facts about fires – how globally the forest burning has doubled over the last two decades, how weather conditions in the South East of England are changing to create conditions synonymous with fires – but that doesn’t bring you to the impact of how you might feel if this was your back garden, home, community burning. Artists can really bring it home.”
The connection is a personal one for research associate Martirosian, who experienced forest fires growing up.
“The reason I do what I do is because I felt helpless. In California, fires directly impacted my own and my family’s health,” she said.
“But what we do, what we choose, has a small but exponential impact. If we change our habits and share that with friends and community, they change habits. So to see change on a large scale, it actually starts with you – and you have a lot of power.
“We have to feel something to want to change a behaviour. Art has the power to move us – if we feel love or sadness for something, we’re more likely to act on behalf of it.”
The installation is funded by Make My Money Matter. It runs at the University of Bristol Botanic Garden from Friday to Sunday, October 4-6, with two showings each day at 6pm and 8pm – full details at botanic-garden.bristol.ac.uk/event/tipping-point-luke-jerram-2024
Visit the Jerram Foundation for information on Luke Jerram’s social impact projects.
Main image: Luke Jerram. All others: Ursula Billington
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