The Museum of British Folklore and Field System are proud to present Fifteen Cycles of the Sun: A Folklore Tapes Retrospective, a major exhibition celebrating fifteen years of Folklore Tapes, one of Britain’s most singular and quietly radical cultural enterprises.
Opening on Friday 5th June with extended hours and a bespoke new concert featuring David Chatton Barker and Ian Humberstone, this landmark gallery show offers the most comprehensive survey ever assembled of the collective's work, inviting visitors on a journey through a decade and a half of sonic archaeology, esoteric publishing, and the art of the uncanny.
Since its founding in 2010, Folklore Tapes has occupied a space entirely its own, part archive, part art collective, part magical act. Born from a fascination with Britain's layered landscape of custom, legend, and living memory, the project has produced an extraordinary body of work: handcrafted cassette releases and vinyl albums, artist publications, field recordings, visual art, film, and ritual performance, all united by a commitment to encountering the old, the strange, and the persistently overlooked. Over fifteen years, Folklore Tapes has become an indispensable lens through which artists, writers, musicians, and curious members of the public have come to see the British Isles afresh — not as a fixed and familiar place, but as a terrain still teeming with mystery.
Fifteen Cycles of the Sun draws together the full arc of this remarkable project: original tape artwork and packaging, archival photography, specially made musical instruments, maps, artist films, and a significant selection of objects gathered or commissioned over the course of the label's life. Visitors will be invited to trace the evolution of Folklore Tapes from its earliest releases — limited editions that circulated quietly among devotees of hauntology, psychogeography, and experimental music — through to its most ambitious collaborative and geographical projects, which have taken the collective deep into fenland, moorland, coastline, and urban edge.
Field System, in collaboration with the Museum of British Folklore, itself a custodian of the material and intangible heritage of British folk life, have put together the exhibition along with David Chatton Barker, founder of Folklore Tapes. The partnership between the two institutions reflects a shared conviction: that folklore is not a relic but a living, breathing mode of understanding the world.
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To mark the opening of Fifteen Cycles of the Sun , David Chatton Barker and Ian Humberstone invite you to a bespoke live performance at historic St Lawrence Chapel in Ashburton.
The original Folklore Tapes duo will perform two unique sets featuring homemade and traditional instruments, interweaving archival compositions with new analogue projections using optical light wizardry. This ritualistic performance serves as an immersive introduction to the project’s fifteen-year exploration of Britain’s esoteric landscapes.
Tickets & Access:
Price: £15–£18 advance | £22 on the door (subject to availability).
Booking: TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE
Accessibility: Field System is fully accessible; please check the ticket listing for specific access details regarding St Lawrence Chapel.