Assistant Curator Emer McGarry made a trip to Folkstone recently for their Triennial. Here’s her report.
Folkestone is a funny little town – by turns beautiful and charming, but also depressing and threatening. A strong sense of the past seems to linger everywhere, and relics of old societies dotted around it map the intriguing role the town has played in history. From the Roman fort on the East Cliffs to the Napoleonic Martello Towers and the bombsites of the First World War Folkestone is like a living history of England. Once a stylish holiday resort, attracting royalty and aristocrats as well as artists and writers, Folkestone’s fortunes rapidly declined throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. So much so that parts of the town have become some of the most deprived areas in Britain. Now it’s social problems are being addressed and the new Folkestone Triennial, a festival of contemporary art, is part of a long-term regeneration plan that places enormous value on the role of the creative arts in society.
The inaugural triennial saw 22 British and international artists commissioned to create public artworks which were displayed in various locations around the town. The placement of the works – some in everyday locations such as car-parks, along the street and on the seashore, others in more off-beat places like the local Police Station and the Harbour Master’s office challenged viewers to reconsider the places that art can be encountered and to engage with it in new more dynamic ways.
The artworks themselves ranged from the quirky to the more thought provoking to the poignant. Mark Dion’s Mobile Gull Appreciation Unit, which took the form of a giant plastic seagull-shaped kiosk mounted onto wheels and pulled to a new location daily, aimed to teach Folkestone’s human inhabitants a little more about these much maligned members of the town’s avian population. Ironically by the time I visited in August, Folkestone’s real seagulls had left visible traces of their presence all over this work, inadvertently proving why they are so unpopular in the first place.
Up on the cliffs to the west of the town Christian Boltanski’s beautiful and affecting audio piece Whispers was installed under four seats looking out across the water. The work featured actors reading letters written during the First World War, some by servicemen stationed in Folkestone and some by those who had already left for France. The voices, which blow on the wind out to sea, speak of very human emotions like love, loss and longing.
Another work, which was a particular favourite of mine, was a piece entitled Foreshore by a young Polish artist, Robert Kusmirowski. Foreshore involved the construction of a fish market on the seabed at the harbour made from detritus the artist found there. The beauty of this work was that the market was only fully visible at low tide – each day the sea came in and seemed to turn the whole piece into a drowned world, later when the water receded the fish market was again restored to its former glory. To me this piece was a clever commentary on the rise and fall of civilisations and the presence of the past in all our lives, making it a fitting reflection of modern day Folkestone.
