Folkestone Triennial 2014 Audio Guide
Introduction
The lookout is integral to Folkestone's history as a port. A lookout is a
structure from which to keep watch - for invasion, for weather, for fish, fortune
or friends coming home. A lookout is also the person keeping watch, who can
tell us what's coming over the horizon.
Either way, a lookout is focused on the future. And in this exhibition, the figure
of the lookout stands for the artist – because the artist's act of imagination
always involves change, and proposes change.
The dynamo of Folkestone's economy in the past has always been the
movement of people, whether travellers, or armies going to war or tourists
seeking pleasure. Boats, trains and hovercraft have been replaced by the
Channel Tunnel (a kind of Folkestone bypass – 2014 will be its 20th
anniversary). What comes next?
LOOKOUT is an exhibition (outdoors - in the urban environment) that invites
you to visit some key points in high places, mainly around the old town of
Folkestone, to join artists in questioning what is going on, and see whether
you can share a long view on the future.
The word 'LOOKOUT' is functional but it's also symbolic. It has a certain
psychic weight - it's about expectation: hope and fear. Its warning edge is the
point of balance between what we hope we might get, and what we fear might
be landed on us. It engages the future of economics, demography and
migration, environmentalism and climate change, technology and
communication, urban design for social engineering, food security etc
Kurt Vonnegut said, “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without
going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from
the center.” Folkestone’s position at the edge of Britain closest to Eurasia
offers unique viewpoints on what's going on in the world today. It's an ideal
place to present global issues in a local context. LOOKOUT makes the town
the perfect host to these concepts, debates and explorations.
Folkestone Triennial 2014 is an invitation to join artists in imagining futures
whileexperiencing the present – head in the clouds (or the Cloud), feet on the
ground. I would like to encourage all our visitors to immerse themselves in the
urban fabric and 'read' it through the eyes of the artists. In a globalised world,
these readings will inevitably conjure up all our futures. I hope you find lots to
enjoy in the experience.
Yoko Ono SKYLADDER and Earth Peace
Yoko Ono’s thought-provoking work challenges people’s understanding of art
and the world around them. From the beginning of her career, she was a
'conceptualist' whose work encompassed performance, instructions, film,
music, and writing.
Born in Tokyo in 1933, Ono then moved to New York in 1953, following her
studies in philosophy in Japan. By the late 1950s, she was contributing to the
cityʼs vibrant contemporary art activities. In 1960 she opened her Chambers
Street loft, where she hosted a series of radical performances and exhibited
realizations of some of her early conceptual works.
By the mid 1960s, her work had become associated with the artistic
movement called Fluxus, and in the summer of 1966 she was invited to take
part in the Destruction in Art Symposium in London. During this period, she
also performed a number of concerts throughout England, which included one
at the Metropole Art Centre in Folkestone. In 1969, together with John
Lennon, she realized Bed-In, and the worldwide campaign for peace called
War Is Over! (if you want it).
For Folkestone Triennial 2014, she has contributed two specially composed
artworks, SKYLADDER and Earth Peace.
SKYLADDER 2014 is an 'instruction' – an invitation to viewers to complete an
artwork initiated by the artist. (Her first exhibition of 'instruction paintings' took
place in New York in 1961). Sometimes these works are written like a musical
score, with the artist taking the place of the composer and the viewer
interpreting the score in the way that a musician plays a composition.
SKYLADDER 2014 has been written on the wall for everyone to read and
enjoy in two of Folkestone's buildings that are generally accessible to the
public, the Public Library on Grace Hill and the Quarterhouse in Tontine
Street. It doesn't matter who writes it on the wall – like a poem, it's the thought
that counts, not the writing.
Step ladders have appeared frequently in Ono's work since the mid 1960s as
an image of aspiration (climbing higher) and of imagination (taking us nearer
the sky, a wonderful open space onto which we can project our desires and
dreams). The image of the ladder or stepladder is particularly appropriate for
the present exhibition, Lookout, which invites the public to take up different
positions around the town in order to imagine the future in different
perspectives.
Ono's campaign for peace is very important to her as an artist and activist. In
2007, she created a permanent monument to peace, the IMAGINE PEACE
TOWER on Viðey Island, Iceland. And In 2011 she was honoured with the
prestigious 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her dedication to peace activism.
Her second contribution to Folkestone Triennial 2014 is Earth Peace. This
appears on billboards in prominent locations: on a stone slab on the Leas
near the Metropole (where she performed in 1966), and is transmitted in
Morse Code in a light beam over the Channel towards France. The text is also
available as a poster for people to put in their windows to show their support
for peace. If you allow your mind to engage with the phrase, it's hard to
imagine two tiny words brought together in this way having a greater impact.
At the time of the 2008 financial crisis (18 October), Yoko Ono wrote: "If you
want to know what your thought processes were like in the past, just examine
your body now. And if you want to know what your body will look like in the
future, examine your thought processes now. Your body is the scar of your
mind." The urban environment of every town is a description of how the
people of that town thought and imagined in the past.
Strange Cargo The Luckiest Place on Earth
Strange Cargo was established in Folkestone in 1995 and operates as a
company limited by guarantee and registered charity. Initially focusing on
celebratory outdoor arts projects and carnivals, Strange Cargo has developed
a reputation for its portfolio of imaginative public and visual arts projects,
special celebratory events and programmes with large groups of people.
Glance up as you walk under Folkestone Central Railway Bridge and you
might be intrigued to see four colourful figures looking down at you. These
watchful ‘lookouts’ are Strange Cargo’s idea for Folkestone’s icons of good
fortune.
Positioned vigilantly on the imposing edifice of the bridge, high above passing
pedestrians, each figure is a digitally scanned likeness of a lucky
Folkestonian, their luckiness captured in a 3D printed sculpture. Each figure
is representative of their age group, stood atop their stone plinth, a
fundamental part of The Luckiest Place on Earth.
Swathed in symbolic lucky colours; the icons present to onlookers their golden
objects of good fortune. Everyone has their own idea of what luck is, it is a
universal concept. Strange Cargo invites visitors to pass through this special
place and consider what luck means to them. Is it possible that through our
own thoughts and actions we can unlock our own luck reserves? Just think
what life would be like if we all believed ourselves to be the master of our own
good fortune.
The symbols held by the statues were suggested hundreds of times over by
local people as the most recognisable lucky objects, and they are there to
remind us that luck is a universal language. It is these symbols of the
horseshoe, wishbone, cat, crossed fingers, four leaf clover, touch wood and
lucky mascot that have emerged here as the most identifiable ways to signify
good luck. Even the flying seagull, whose random lucky deposits are known
to shower down on many a blessed walker, is understood to be a popular
seaside bringer of good fortune.
By visiting The Luckiest Place on Earth, Strange Cargo suggests it is possible
to learn to be lucky. Folkestone is in the throes of being regenerated, but it is
its people that have the capacity to make the greatest impact. If we all take
the time to spot new opportunities, meet new people and seek out the silver
lining, these simple actions can make a big difference to how lucky life
appears to be, affecting not just how lucky we feel, but the luck of our town.
Take a moment to contemplate what luck means to you, and carry that lucky
thought with you throughout your day. Before you leave The Luckiest Place
on Earth, don’t miss the opportunity to place a penny in the world’s first
Recycling Point for luck and wishes found on the bridge wall. Your wish will
mix with the thousands of others, adding to the lucky aura of this place. But
the best bit is, that as well as making a wish, you can remove and recycle
someone else’s lucky penny. This means you can carry a bit of shared good
fortune with you as you go on your way; a reminder that you have visited
Folkestone and spent some time at The Luckiest Place on Earth.
Diane Dever & Jonathan Wright Pent Houses
Dever was born in 1974 in County Mayo, Ireland. Wright was born in 1961 in
London, UK. Both live and work in Folkestone.
For Folkestone Triennial 2014 they use 5 sculptural installations to invite
reflection on the global and growing importance of water in the future. Their
work rediscovers the hidden waterways of the Pent Stream, an untapped and
unseen resource that flows from the hills to the harbour that was a foundation
of Folkestone's past prosperity.
Folkestone’s geology is of rift and river valley. The town, in part, owes its
existence to many years ago when the watercourse (now called the Pent
Stream) broke its way through the hills that surround Folkestone.
Bronze Age pottery was found near the banks of the Pent on Folkestone’s golf
course located below Junction 13 of the M20. Archeological finds show that
by late medieval times Folkestone had grown from around the mouth of the
Pent to straddle the banks of the Pent Valley.
Early maps show the watercourse as St Eanswythe’s Water. But, by the
middle of the18th century, it becomes known as the Pent Stream. The
watercourse has been continually re-routed and adjusted over the years to
irrigate fields, crops and nurseries before supplying the domestic needs of the
old town. Its canalisation brought water to the Bayle and may well be the
origin of the myth attributed to St Eanswythe who made water run up hill. It
was the powerhouse of the late 18th and 19th century town, supporting three
Mills, the Gun Brewery, and the Silver Spring Water Company before
supplying the needs of a Tannery in the bottom of the Pent ravine - where
Tontine Street meets Dover Road today. At this point, full of filth, its flow
reduced such that it stagnated in its lower reaches between Tontine Street
and Harbour Street, where again it was filled with waste from houses and inns
before flowing out to sea.
Pent Houses is a series of 5 stations that reveal the route of the Pent Stream
as it travels hidden in concrete tunnels beneath the streets of East
Folkestone. The works are reminiscent of New York water towers. They are
hybrid objects –part tower, part tank and part shelter and are made of
materials not necessarily associated with such structures.
The first Pent house marks the outer limits of the town, the site of a long
forgotten tower and an early 17th Century chalybeate water spring, said to
have health-giving properties. The second marks the tidal reach of the sea
and location of the later Pent Bridge. The third Penthouse is on the route of
the watercourse that enabled boats to come up Tontine Street. The fourth is
nearby an ancient crossing point. And the final, cantilevered structure is
where fresh water continuously meets salt water in the Harbour.
Their works consider a global ‘lookout’ by focusing on water as a commodity;
its scarcity in other lands has caused and will continue to cause friction and
war. Global warming may force us to rethink our waste of our water
resources.
rootoftwo Whithervanes: a Neurotic Early Worrying System
rootoftwo is the name of the partnership between American artists John
Marshall and Cezanne Charles, who describe themselves as 'hybrid
designers'. They combine the skills required for product design with design on
a symbolic level, especially in relation to new technology in which much of the
design addresses cultural rather than more practical issues.
rootoftwo have redesigned weathervanes for the 21st century, and brought
these to Folkestone. These are visible on five rooftops around central
Folkestone. rootoftwo’s Whithervanes are headless-chicken-shaped
weathervanes that are controlled by the climate of fear on the Internet.
The five buildings that host the Whithervanes were selected mainly for their
height and their distribution within the central area of Folkestone. Because
they are also naturally among the more prominent buildings in their
neighbourhoods, to some extent they also 'represent' various actual or
potential 'communities'.
The host buildings are: The Red Cow Public House at the top of Old Foord
Road; The Cube (Adult Education College) at the top of Tontine Street;
Rocksalt restaurant - overlooking the Harbour; the Martello 3 tower, which
looks out over Eastcliff and the Warren; and the Leas Cliff Hall, a music venue
sited on The Leas in Folkestone's West End.
Whithervanes react to bad news from around the world as journalists to
Reuters submit it in real-time. Reuters is an international news agency
headquartered in Canary Wharf, London.
The level of reaction to the newsfeed is determined by the frequency of the
use of keywords. The keywords selected are those that are used for
monitoring purposes by the US Department of Homeland Security, as well as
words suggested by local residents of Folkestone – words describing
conditions that cause concern locally.
The degree that the chickens turn away from world news events is determined
by the relative threat these pose and their distance from Folkestone. At night,
the chickens also illuminate different colours indicating the threat level of
events, ranging from low (green), guarded (blue), elevated (yellow), high
(orange) to severe (red).
The public can interact with the Whithervanes via Twitter to increase or
decrease the amount of fear in the system by tweeting using the hashtags:
#keepcalm or #skyfalling.
With wit, eccentricity and humour the project seeks to undermine and draw
attention to the use of fear as an instrument used by the news media on
behalf.
Jyll Bradley Green/Light (for M. R.)
Jyll Bradley was born in Folkestone in 1966, the same year that the Old Gas
Works were decommissioned. Since then, the site has been become closed
to locals and fallen into disrepair. Her installation created for Folkestone
Triennial 2014, Green/Light, is inspired by its story and symbolism as well as
by Bradley’s own personal connection to the town.
Green/Light (for M. R.) is a major new sculptural light installation by Bradley,
which transforms the neglected, historic site of the Old Gas Works in Foord
Road North. It was here, in Victorian times, that the first electric light was
generated for Folkestone and, for almost a hundred years, the place was a
hub of energy and industry.
Bradley’s sculpture, designed to catch and reflect the light, is positioned in a
south-facing amphitheatre created by the embrace of a remnant red-brick wall
of the Gas Works. Her work is positioned precisely on the footprint of one of
the gasometers, its form 'remembering' and proposing a different kind of
energy in its place – the green energy of growing plants.
The sculpture is set out as a hop garden with an inter-connecting field of
poles, wirework and twine drawing upon this important part of Kent's historical
agriculture. Working with structural engineer Ben Godber, Green/Light (for M.
R.) represents a feat of engineering, coupling the centuries’ old technology of
hop gardens with the latest in anchorage systems and LED lighting.
Green/Light (for M. R.) is an immersive ‘drawing to inhabit’ (to borrow the
words of artist Fred Sandback), where visitors are invited to walk through the
work, its myriad uprights catching their own reflections and lifting their eyes to
the sky and the chalk Downs beyond. As night falls, the work becomes a
green beacon for passers by as well as rail commuters travelling home across
the adjacent viaduct.
Bradley’s installation seeks to connect the beauty of both site and tradition:
not as a nostalgic lament, but as a very modern celebration of local industry
and energy. As the Old Gas Works awaits development, Green/Light (for M.
R.) it creates a space to consider its past, present and future – inviting
thoughts about the regeneration of the site for the local community.
Marjetica Potrč and Ooze architects The Wind Lift
The creators of the Wind Lift, Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrč and Dutch
architects, Ooze (Eva Pfannes and Sylvain Hartenberg), have been working
together on on-site projects across Europe since 2008.
Their laboratory of urban practice is both educational and experimental,
inviting residents to participate in creating a new culture of living in public
spaces. They use hi-tech knowledge to build low-tech solutions that inspire
people to envision cities as built ‘from below’ by the local residents
themselves.
Visitors are invited to ride the Wind Lift to the top of the Foord Railway
Viaduct, where you can enjoy a splendid view of Folkestone’s seafront and
the Creative Quarter. The Foord Viaduct, which brought the railway – and
prosperity – to Folkestone a hundred and seventy years ago, is the kind of
monumental infrastructure project typical of the nineteenth century. By
comparison, the Wind Lift is a small enterprise on a human scale. It
transforms one of Folkestone’s viaduct arches into a wind funnel. A turbine
big enough to fill the upper part of the arch harvests wind energy, which
powers the passenger lift. In a sense, we can say it pulls energy from thin air.
People take the lift to reach a lookout 25 metres high, where they have a
splendid view of the seafront. But the real attraction here is the ride itself.
Why? The Wind Lift uses only energy harvested from wind passing through
the viaduct and thus creates a closed loop of harvest and use. When enough
wind energy is collected, the lift can ascend. But if too little energy has been
harvested, the lift will not operate. So the number of rides depends entirely on
the strength and volume of the wind in the viaduct.
On our visits to Folkestone we asked ourselves what kind of infrastructure
project residents would be keen on today. The railway connects Folkestone
with the world, but what if we look at the town itself? What about the local
connection, the energy harvested right here?
When you take the seemingly precarious ride up to enjoy the view out over
Folkestone harbour, you put yourself in a position that is totally dependent on
the wind. You are directly experiencing the give-and-take relationship
between humanity and nature, from a 21st-century lookout on life on earth.
The Wind Lift is a small-scale, personal laboratory, where people can get an
immediate feeling for humanity’s co-existence with nature.
The ‘lookout’ also opens up a view on the new geological age in the earth’s
history – the Anthropocene. This is when human activities are having a
significant global impact on the earth’s ecosystems – leading to the
awareness that we humans are part of nature, not its adversary. When you
ride the Wind Lift, you take part in a performative action: you become not only
an observer but also a performer who is collaborating with nature.
Emma Hart Giving It All That
Emma Hart (b. 1974) lives and works in London. She has presented
exhibitions and performances both in the UK and internationally. Hart believes
that sculpture, most recently ceramics, provides a way to physically corrupt
and 'dirty' images in order to forcefully squeeze more life out of them.
Her installation for Folkestone Triennial 2014 Giving It All That occupies a
two-storey apartment looking out onto Tontine Street. It consists of a series of
sculptural works and videos that aim to undermine the power relationship
between viewer and artwork. Hart’s radical aesthetic upends and disrupts the
viewing process, capturing the confusion, stress and nausea of everyday
experience. Hart reflects on feeling under pressure, and how external social
forces can push around our fragile internal moods.
Set within the domestic interior of a house, the work draws on the hidden
anxiety, which inhabits the gap between our public and private selves. The
way things look, masks the way things really are.
A series of ceramic sculptures requires the viewer to get into various
positions. For example, being served or being monitored manufactures
different emotional states. Hart has discovered that a tray and a clipboard are
essentially the same thing - a small flat surface. However, one is held
vertically acting like a shield to conceal private information, whilst the other is
held horizontally, reaching out to offer something. Hart serves up outlines of
ceramic vessels - empty gestures that have nothing on the inside.
Photographic images in the installation, whether moving or still, are
fragmented, reflected, multiplied or concealed. Hart says, “The overwhelming
real we stumble through is split from the way life is captured on camera. Life
looks good in images, or if not good, far away enough for us to manage and
control. Photographs can only provide us with a superficial visual reference:
they cannot tell us how something really felt.“ For Hart, clay provides a way of
working beneath the surface of pictures, and revealing the raw, crude inner
state of things that images screen off.
'Giving it all that' is a phrase used to put someone down who is talking
excessively and exaggerating. Hart’s sculptures deliver excess through
spillages and sweat. Both are physical marks of too much energy bursting
through attempts to appear cool. In public settings, both can be embarrassing.
In order to eliminate embarrassment, we might need to privately rehearse who
we are, and keep ourselves contained. Handily, Hart has provided support;
metal structures create an opening for a laptop from which PowerPoint videos
enable the viewer to rehearse a presentation of the self. The audio might
create a base line of worry, but if we can just keep to the script then we might
actually conceal our rising anxiety and doubt.
Andy Goldsworthy Clay Window, Clay Steps
Born in Cheshire in 1956, Andy Goldsworthy has lived and worked in
southwest Scotland for over twenty years.
Goldsworthy is interested in how nature and buildings share similar states,
and similar fates. He believes that landscapes don’t stop where buildings start
– that the forces of erosion and change that occur in landscapes are also at
work in towns. As nature degenerates, re-cycles and revives, so do buildings
become a part of that powerful moment when things grow out of decay.
For Folkestone Triennial 2014 Goldsworthy has made 2 new works, Clay
Window and Clay Steps. Both are situated in one of the shops in the Creative
Quarter.
Clay Window is first encountered from walking down the Old High Street,
where a shop window might be mistaken as having been whitewashed or
papered over. However, on closer inspection, the surface behind the glass
could be a number of things - Stone? Cement? Clay? Plaster?
Observers are asked to consider possibilities, and imagine whether the
surface might crack in unpredictable ways. Over time, the surface will break
into fine black veins that will increasingly allow darkness to cut through from
inside. The interior of the shop might at first be in total darkness. But here,
the surface will break into piercing white fissures, gradually revealing the light
and life from the street, with passing shadows that become silently present in
the room. The window surface of Clay Window has been coated in white
china clay. This has been chosen for its brilliant translucence and its ability to
transform from dense mass to falling fragments.
A video of this cracking sequence of the clay can be seen in a nearby location
at 64 Tontine Street. This video will record the passing of time, the (economic)
tide and the cycle of urban regeneration and decay.
Clay Steps is situated in the doorway to the right of Clay Window. In contrast
to the clay used in Clay Window, the heavy, grey gault clay of Clay Steps is
solid and strong. The stairs have been covered with gault clay, which was
collected from local beaches by people living or working in Folkestone. It was
refined and mixed by them over several weeks and they assisted in the
sculptures’ installation. This direct connection with the local clay and the local
community ensures that the energy of the story continues, and the ideas are
kept alive.
Gault clay once provided widespread employment for Folkestone brick
makers, and still attracts fossil collectors from around the world. It is as
diverse in its history and rich in its composition as the town of Folkestone
itself.
Goldsworthy’s use of the different clays - refined white clay and raw gault clay
- opens up a further dialogue about the people who have historically inhabited
the town.
The flat above 48 The Old High Street is now inhabited by plant life – nature
taking over. Nature is already invading the derelict building in the Old High
Street and the two installations Clay Window and Clay Steps intentionally
make visitors think about the progress of nature and how it affects the social
nature of the street.
Amina Menia Undélaissé – To Reminisce the Future by sharing Bread and
Stories
Amina Menia was born in 1976 in Algiers, where she still lives and works
today. Her work questions the relation between architecture and places with
historical significance – questioning and challenging beliefs of the
conventional use of spaces through the instrument of the exhibition. Menia is
passionate about the margins of a city, what is left over and unexpressed.
For Folkestone Triennial 2014, she has specifically chosen an empty,
deserted site in the heart of Tontine Street that hides a poignant episode in
Folkestone’s history in the First World War.
During the war, a bomb fell on this site (situated directly next to the Brewery
Tap in Tontine Street), killing and injuring a number of people queuing for
food. All that remains today is a small, commemorative plaque that can easily
be passed by that retells this event: ‘this tablet marks the place where on May
25th 1917 a bomb was dropped from a German aeroplane killing 60 persons
and injuring many others.’ There remains no physical evidence of this fateful
tragedy, only an emptiness of remembrance.
Menia was moved and drawn to the sobriety of this commemoration and
chose to base her artwork on a discreet site-specific intervention aiming to
keep the spirit and essence of this ‘fertile emptiness’ alive.
A number of differing accounts of this historical event exist. The widespread
belief is that the shop was a bakery or grocers called Stokes Brothers. Menia
wanted to tap into this urban myth by weaving in some peoples’ personal
narratives alongside fragments of politics, geography and immigrant bread
recipes.
Menia sees bread as a metaphor for separation and gathering. There is
nothing more communal that the sharing of bread, which also brings back
memories of childhood. Menia spent time meeting and talking to different
immigrant families brought together by Folkestone Migrant Support Group.
This helped her to explore and understand the mosaic composition of the
population of Tontine Street as well as Folkestone’s history.
The sharing of different bread recipes was a form of storytelling, uniting the
different migrant groups, their different routes to Folkestone and their life
stories. It was like opening a family album, revealing symbols and many
memories. The recorded sound installation captures and recounts the
memories provided by the participants as a response to this project.
In addition to acknowledging the centenary commemorations for the First
World War, Menia intends to took towards and celebrate the future by means
of this intervention that has strong resonance with both Folkestone’s past and
present.
The title is a mix, or mélange, of French and English words. ‘Délaissé’ in
French means ‘derelict’ or ‘deserted’, whereas the English prefix, ‘un’ refers to
‘undoing’ this situation. Therefore, this work aims to create a sharing
community that thinks about a common future where this empty space is no
longer deserted. Menia hopes that visitors to this site will be inspired both to
reminisce about the past but also think about the future though becoming
informed about local immigrants’ shared bread recipes and the stories of
arrival associated with them.
muf architecture/art Payers Park
muf architecture/art is a collaborative practice established in 1995 with the
specific intention to work in the public realm.
The renovation of Payer’s Park creates a ‘Lookout’, an open-air belvedere
with views across to the East Folkestone Downs, and yet conversely
responds to the Lookout theme as taking counsel, to take care, be mindful
and make space for the unknown.
Set on a steep, sloping valley the park is set out as a series of open-ended
invitations - welcoming visitors to occupy and appropriate structures that
allude to what may be real or fictitious relics of the past. Theses relics of the
past include: fields of hemp grown along the banks of the Pent Stream that
used to provide ropes for passing ships, a place where the yards in which
cattle waited in line to be slaughtered and market gardens slowly encroached
on by the workshops of the travelling artisans.
The design process for Payer’s Park was driven by a series of temporary
events with locals in 2013. These included a silent disco, an archaeological
dig, an open-air museum, tattooing, bread baking and rapping. These events
traced, enacted, and revealed past occupations of the Payer’s Park site as
snap shots of the future, and informed the design of a place where more than
one thing can happen. A space for difference, and for play, and for uses that
are yet unknown.
The materials palette and formal language has been developed to point to
these past uses of the site, whilst also providing a robust platform for
appropriation and future uses.
A boardwalk, a plateau, and a number of shortcuts are the main components
inviting a number of uses. The boardwalk envelops the site, and acts as a
loge, a stage, a site for parkour, and open air gallery. The plateau provides a
destination at the centre of the site. The shortcuts connect the boardwalk with
the plateau at the centre, providing meeting points, and opportunities for
adventurous play, and places for rest. Power is provided to allow events to be
held at Payer’s Park, for example by the adjoining Quarterhouse theatre.
Seating both formal and informal is provided throughout.
The biodiversity of Payer’s Park has been increased through shrub and wild
meadow planting. A variety of trees have been planted to complement the
existing Sycamore trees, and call attention and frame the park from its various
entry points.
Roads and parking along the edge of the site have been re-arranged to
expand the park further. Street lighting has been re-located away from the
edge of the park, with pedestrian-friendly and atmospheric lighting introduced
throughout instead.
Something & Son Amusefood
Something & Son is a London based practice founded by British artists
Andrew Merritt and Paul Smyth. Their work is rooted in an inquisitiveness and
experimentation and reflects their varied backgrounds and shared passion for
art, engineering, social systems, and the environment.
Situated on the rooftop of the Glassworks (Folkestone Academy’s sixth form
building in the heart of Folkestone town) artists and inventors Something &
Son have designed Amusefood. This new rooftop installation mixes innovative
green technology with playful, interactive design.
The idea for the installation is a reaction to the decline of the English seaside
as a holiday destination combined with the experiments from the artists'
project FARM:shop in London where food is both grown indoors and then sold
on the premises. The installation investigates both the future of food
production by growing the ingredients for the British national dish of fish and
chips along with the idea of bringing back new kinds of seaside amusements.
This was a prominent feature of Folkestone until 2003 when the famous
seaside Rotunda was demolished.
At first, the structure appears to be a simple polytunnel-style greenhouse. But,
as visitors approach the entrance, the facade begins to recall the town's past
as a major holiday destination, deceptively resembling a traditional seaside
fish and chip shop. However, once inside, there are no deep fat fryers and no
tantalising smell of a fish and chip supper. Instead, visitors are confronted
with an alternative idea for producing that very same meal.
A system of aquaponics fills the polytunnel. This is a closed-loop growth
system for fish, chips and minted mushy peas. The fish live in tanks on the
floor of the greenhouse. Their nitrogen-rich wastewater is pumped through a
series of pipes through vertical hanging columns where the potato, pea and
mint plants are growing. The columns allow for maximum crop yield from
smaller spaces. This offers an alternative to the customary manner of soil
grown plants, which require a great deal of floor space. The plants clean and
naturally recycle the water, which is then pumped back into the fish
tanks. Unlike traditional greenhouses, the system is automated and requires
a minimal amount of effort to look after.
As the nights draw in, the greenhouse illuminates with low-energy LED
lighting providing essential light for the plants and echoing Folkestone's
splendid past as a popular tourist hot spot, glittering with the bright lights of
the funfair and amusement arcades.
The idea is entirely experimental, but if it works it will create a template for
food production that the artists will share freely. So, it can be easily replicated
the world over, and can be used as a way for a community with limited space
and limited means to produce their own food sustainably. During Folkestone
Triennial 2014, the greenhouse will be a focal point for educating people
about sustainable methods of food production, engaging local school pupils,
residents and visitors from far and wide.
Gabriel Lester The Electrified Line (Cross-track Observation-deck)
Gabriel Lester was born in 1972 in Amsterdam where he still lives and works.
He is an artist and film director who works in a range of media. Performance
has always been an important part of his practice, from his youth when he
made hip-hop music to more recent constructed environments utilising film,
which immerse the audience within the installation.
For Folkestone Triennial 2014, Gabriel Lester has constructed a large
bamboo structure over the Harbour Railway viaduct. This is a site at the heart
of Folkestone’s history as a place of embarkation, and a location from which
to look out across the harbour to the open sea. The harbour rail viaduct was
opened in 1844 and the line electrified in 1961; but no train has run on it since
2009, and its future remains uncertain.
Bamboo is widely used as a strong, easily accessible material for scaffolding
in China, where Lester lived and worked for a number of years. Lester’s use
of bamboo to build an elevated lookout, on the site of a former wooden
watchtower, plays with the geometric shapes created by this organic material.
This is in sharp contrast to the brick viaduct, with the remnants of the rail-line
visible.
Visitors are invited to climb into the installation, to take a new perspective on
the future for the harbour area, and the opportunities presented by the
elevated position, suggestive of a new pedestrianised gateway to the harbour
area. Lester invites the visitor to ‘perform’ within the space, with areas for
seating to while away time with friends and lovers, or reading a book with a
coffee or shell fish from the local kiosks. Or, to spend a quiet, contemplative
time listening to the sea breeze through the bamboo chimes.
Lester explains his thought process when creating installations “when you do
theatre or music or any other stage-related form of art you can feel the
dynamic of the audience you are working with …. Installations function to be
an experience. It's something that has a sense of time or has a sense of
occurrence. You wander through and it transforms itself as you look. You
become aware of something as you engage with it. This is still very much
connected with the idea of performance”.
Sarah Staton Steve
Sarah Staton was born in 1971 in London. She divides her time between
Sheffield and London and is a senior lecturer at the Royal College of Art in
London
Her practice is informed by architecture and design leading to collaborations
with architectural studios including muf, who have designed Payers Park for
this year’s Triennial. Staton’s work has been included in exhibitions at Tate
Modern, The V&A, The Serpentine Gallery and the Crucible Theatre in
Sheffield. THE SCHTIP is her most recent collaborative project representing
‘an artist’s space as artwork’ devised with RCA alumni Giles Round.
For Folkestone Triennial 2014, Staton spent a year working with an
architectural studio and steel fabricators to develop Steve, which she
describes as a ‘monument to a person of the future’. Steve is constructed in
articulated plates of Corten steel, known as ‘weathering steel’. This type of
steel was developed to eliminate the need for painting, and to form a stable
rust-like appearance if exposed to the weather for several years. To the
casual observer it can look suspiciously unfinished. Despite this, it has many
fans in the world of art and architecture and is popularly used in outdoor
sculptures, such as Antony Gormley's 'Angel of the North' near Gateshead. It
is also widely used in marine transportation.
The Stade, where Steve is situated, is still a working area for ships to berth in
the harbour, although there are fewer ships than there used to be, and mostly
The Stade is given over to leisure and tourism. In recent years, it has hosted a
pitch and putt and a bingo hall, both popular leisure activities in traditional
English seaside towns. Local fishermen still use the open public space to lay
out their nets and happily pass the time of day with locals and tourists alike
taking a stroll along the Stade.
Steve, and his associated satellite ‘children’ form a new seating area on The
Stade inviting passers-by to stop, sit and ‘look out’, at the harbour - or
consider their future! Locally grown coastal and edible plants have been
planted alongside Steve to contrast with the hard, industrial steel. It is
expected that local residents and the Rocksalt restaurant will use them as a
food source.
Staton has purposely placed a simple, concrete plinth in the middle of Steve,
an invitation for you, the visitor, to propose your own ‘monument to the future’.
Alex Hartley Vigil
Alex Hartley was born in West Byfleet, Surrey in 1963. He is an internationally
renowned artist who is known for working with photography and architecture,
often incorporating it into both sculpture and installation. Hartley’s work
frequently suggests how we might think differently about our constructed
surroundings, and how we occupy landscape.
Hartley is a keen climber and is interested in looking at alternative ways to
use and interact with the built environment.
As part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, Alex was selected to create a
new work for the South West. His response, Nowhereisland, was a new island
he had discovered after it had been revealed from within the melting ice of a
retreating glacier. Over its year-long status as a new nation, it accrued over
23,000 citizens, travelled 2,500 miles accompanied by its mobile Embassy
and was greeted by thousands in ports and harbours around the south west
coast of England.
For Folkestone Triennial 2014 Hartley has made a new work, Vigil. His
response to the Triennial’s ‘Lookout’ theme is inspired by the prominent and
statuesque architecture of the Grand Burstin Hotel. The hotel echoes that of
an ocean liner and looks across at the site, which from the 1840s until 2000
was a vibrant and active ferry port and which now sits in stasis awaiting
change and development. Standing as it does in the centre of Folkestone and
from its topmost rooms, the hotel provides a unique vantage point from which
to look out over the sea and back over the town.
Five sets of fragile climber’s portaledges are suspended outside the
uppermost rooms of the hotel and are inhabited by a lone onlooker, who
witnesses everything that passes below. Those carrying out the vigil were
drawn from members of the public and the climbing and artistic community.
Hartley will be the first and last occupant.
At the heart of Vigil is a theme of watchfulness that taps into narratives of
removal and isolation, in the main benign but allowing for a darker side, an
edge of menace and threat as to what the lookout is watching for, and for
whom is he doing the watching. These fragile and dangerous structures refer
to the camps of refugees and protestors as well as crow’s nests, lookouts and
the isolated retreats of hermits. Hourly recordings document the unfolding
events as witnessed by the lone onlookers: weather, sea state, the comings
and goings of boats. Human activities will also be considered and noted.
Notebooks are kept and the jottings are posted on-line. At night, lights in the
tents give the sculptural glow you get from campsites at night.
Tim Etchell Is Why the Place
Born in 1962, Tim Etchells is a British artist and performance maker based in
Sheffield and London. For Folkestone Triennial 2014 his two-part neon
sculpture Is Why the Place invites viewers to think about Folkestone’s
historical connection to travel and trade - with the everyday processes of
arrival and departure which, for many years, moved goods and people via
sea, road and railways.
Occupying the two platforms of the abandoned Harbour station Etchells work
refers both to its specific location and also to Folkestone’s origins and
development as a settlement. Etchells work invokes the importance of the
harbour for fishing, trade and travel - celebrating Folkestone’s past role as a
staging post; a point of transit or passing through for tourists, soldiers,
workers, commuters and travellers. The connection is, in short, between place
(stability) and movement.
Starting as a performance maker, Etchells has developed a practice that is
extremely varied – from theatre works to installations, videos and sound
compositions as well as novels and short stories. In the evocative setting of
the abandoned harbour station, the phrase that makes up his new work is
repeated, running in two parallel directions, as if the text is both entering and
departing the station. Thus, playfully mirroring the arrival and departure of so
many trains, goods and travellers in Folkestone’s past.
Since 2008, Etchells neon pieces have been shown all over the world, both in
galleries and in relation to landscape or particular contexts. Etchells often
uses a line or two of text to colour the way we look, to make a small
intervention in the way that we see or think about a particular location.
Etchells also explores what we might think of as contradictory aspects of
language – relishing the speed, clarity and vividness with which it
communicates narrative, image and ideas. But, at the same time, enjoying its
amazing capacity to create spaces of reflection, ambiguity and uncertainty for
the viewer on encounter, especially in the context of landscape.
Installed on the platforms of the now derelict train station at Folkestone
Harbour – which was a focal point for war-time shipments and logistics connects the playfully doubled phrase of his work to its immediate
surroundings. Thus, his work places it in dialogue with the low-key daily
comings and goings of the present time, evoking previous eras of arrival and
departure as well as encouraging a focus on the future of Folkestone that is
so connected to the processes of human movement and change.
Ian Hamilton Finlay Weather is a Third to Place and Time
Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006) was one of the greatest British artists active
in the second half of the last century. He exercised enormous influence on
other artists of his own and subsequent generations. His work is notable for a
number of recurring themes including a concern with fishing and the sea, and
a continual revisiting of World War II. Both of themes are relate easily to
Folkestone.
Hamilton Finlay published his first work referencing the sea, The Sea Bed and
Other Stories, in 1958. In 1963, Finlay published Rapel, his first collection of
concrete poetry (poetry in which the layout and typography of the words
contributes to its overall effect). It was as a concrete poet that he first gained
wide renown. Much of this work was issued through his own Wild Hawthorn
Press. Eventually, he began to compose poems to be inscribed into stone,
incorporating these sculptures into the natural environment. Most notably, at
his farmhouse Stonypath in the Lanarkshire Hills, also called Little Sparta, and
its five-acre garden that he created with his wife Sue Finlay. Since the artist's
death in 2006, Little Sparta has been maintained by a Trust. Hamilton Finlay’s
work can be seen in many public and private collections around the world.
The functioning lighthouse on Folkestone Pier was built and electrified in 1860
and is of a similar design to the tower on Dover's Prince of Wales Pier. The 9
metre high tower, built into the breakwater, can be seen from several points in
the town and by walking along the pier from a flight of stairs at the end of the
abandoned railway station's platform.
The inscription on its inland façade has been commissioned from the estate of
Hamilton Finlay. It is one of a number of 'detached sentences' written by
Finlay, and has not previously been exhibited. This sentence ‘Weather is a
third to a place and time’ honours the importance of the weather to people at
sea by adding it as a ‘third' coordinate to the usual ones of place and time.
John Harle, Tom Pickard, Luke Menges with the Folkestone Futures
Choir Lookout!
Folkestone Futures Choir invited people to come together to share their
complaints about, and aspirations for, their local town, and to sing them out
loud.
Based on a ‘complaints choir’ concept conceived by Finnish artists, Tellervo
Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen, this project links Folkestone with other
cities around the world that adopted this model through complaints choirs of
their own. These cities include Birmingham, Edinburgh, Helsinki, St.
Petersburg, Hamburg, Chicago, Singapore, Copenhagen and Tokyo. This
project with its global associations, links to the Lookout theme of the Triennial
and encourages the people of Folkestone to look beyond their local
community for inspiration and influence.
Folkestone Futures Choir was managed by, and conducted in association with
the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health, who have been
researching the health and wellbeing impact of singing for older people with
chronic health conditions since 2001. Singers from a number of community
and health choirs in the area submitted their complaints and aspirations on
coloured postcards. These were then sent to the composers, John Harle and
Tom Pickard, to craft a brand new piece. The piece they have written is a
suite of 5 songs entitled ‘Lookout’ that takes listeners on a journey through the
complaints and concerns about the welfare of inhabitants in Folkestone through to an ending that emphasises faith and hope in the future.
The 164 singers were recruited from 10 different choirs and included 30
primary school children and around 40 singers who suffer from Parkinson’s
disease.
Rehearsals took place in May 2014, and a whole day of rehearsals and
performances took place on the 29th May at the Leas Cliff Hall in Folkestone.
This was captured on film by documentary filmmaker Luke Menges, whose
film of the project is on display during Folkestone Triennial 2014.
John Harle lives in East Kent and was once described as ‘serving his
apprenticeship in the late 20th Century context of expanding horizons and a
growing willingness for musicians of all backgrounds to share knowledge’.
But, he is also one of its most innovative contributors and seemed the natural
choice for the role of composer. Tom Pickard’s words capture the essence of
the singer’s observations. But, whilst being necessarily accessible, his
eccentric sense of humour, resentment, hope and glory contributed to the
appeal of taking part for those that did. It is never easy persuading amateur
singers to perform new music, but Harle and Pickard understood that and
have delivered something memorable.
Pablo Bronstein Beach Hut in the Style of Nicholas Hawksmoor
Pablo Bronstein was born in Buenos Aires in 1977 and now works in London.
He experiments with a range of media to pursue his interest in architecture,
such as drawing, sculpture and installation to performance. He is interested in
the ways in which architecture can intervene in personal identity, inform our
movements, behaviours, and social customs.
Standing ten metres tall, Bronstein’s Beach Hut in the Style of Nicholas
Hawksmoor appears like a tall church steeple surrounded by a village of other
brightly coloured beach huts on the Folkestone beachfront. Beach Hut in the
Style of Nicholas Hawksmoor imagines what a lighthouse might have looked
like were it to have been designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, the early 18th
Century Baroque architect, responsible for Spitalfields Church among other
landmarks. Hawksmoor (1661-1736) was a British architect who was famous
for his church and university architecture, such as Westminster Abbey’s west
towers in London.
The first lighthouses we would recognise as being similar to our own were
19th century inventions. In the 18th Century the use of the ‘heroic style’, that
has come to be defined as quintessentially English, was common along the
South East coast because of the defensive nature of the line of ports and
castles from Hastings to Dover. This architecture no longer exists in
Folkestone. Therefore, Bronstein’s work takes the form of a lighthouse, filling
a gap in the town’s history. Beach Hut in the Style of Nicholas Hawksmoor
lays spurious claim to being the ‘first’ lighthouse - re-imagining the history of
the lighthouse from a hundred years earlier.
There is a clear difference between the references used in this ‘monument to
architecture’ and its presence as a beach hut in Folkestone. This is to
deliberately encourage a sense of folly or of the ridiculous and fantastic,
referencing the nature of exotic pleasure architecture in beach towns - the
most fantastic and oriental example in the UK being the Brighton Pavilion.
Krijn de Koning Dwelling, (for Margate / for Folkestone)
Krijn de Koning was born in 1963 in Amsterdam where he still lives and
works. He builds labyrinthine architectural structures that invite a dialogue
with the environment in which they are placed. His site-specific works – part
architecture, part sculpture – challenge the viewer’s understanding, offering
new possibilities to navigate and experience the space that the works inhabit.
Often brightly coloured and typically constructed using simple materials, his
playful structures connect inside and outside spaces and invite direct
interaction on the part of the audience. De Koning’s interventions reference
the traditions of 20th century art, such as geometric abstraction and
Minimalism, but are equally engaged with architecture and 3-dimensional
space.
Although de Koning has often made work for conventional gallery spaces, he
is particularly drawn to ‘ruined’ environments, such as wastelands and
abandoned funfairs.
Dwelling, (for Margate / for Folkestone) is his first public commission in
England, conceived for two locations in Kent: Turner Contemporary in
Margate and the zig-zag pathway in Folkestone as part of Folkestone
Triennial 2014. Described by de Koning as a ‘dwelling’, it combines a
framework of brightly painted wooden beams with a series of voids suggestive
of architectural features such as doors, walls and windows to create a space
to be walked through, into and around.
In Margate, the sculpture is inserted between the external walls of the gallery
and the site boundary walls, an area that is used as a walkway for visitors and
the general public. De Koning’s interest in this particular area is as an ‘in
between’ and somewhat overlooked space on the gallery site where a number
of architectural features conjoin and collide in what he has referred to as a
‘strange encounter’.
In Folkestone, the second version of the structure is inserted into the network
of Victorian caves. It is carved into the zig-zag pathway on the seafront, as
though buried within them and only partially visible as a result.
De Koning is interested in the impossibility of literally making his work the
same in both sites, playing with the notion of repetition and seriality in
conceptual art practice. The different characters and uses of the two sites add
another layer of interpretation to the works. Both sites attempt to provide
some sort of protection or shelter: the fake Victorian caves or grottoes on the
one hand, versus the hard-edged contemporary architecture of Turner
Contemporary on the other. Both sites lend themselves to this notion of a
‘dwelling’, which in turn plays with the traditional idea of seaside pavilions and
beach huts, a common feature of the UK coast.
Will Kwan Apparatus #9 (The China Watchers: Oxford University, MI6,
HSBC)
Will Kwan was born in 1978 in Hong Kong and now lives and works in
Toronto, Canada. With this background, it's not surprising that his work as an
artist is grounded in social and political awareness, with a keen eye for
cultural difference and the power structures encoded in the many forms of
culture.
Kwan’s art questions the visual and material culture of globalisation – the
ironing out of cultural differences by multi-national businesses in favour of a
bland diversity in the name of consumer choice. He examines the sociopolitical and cultural consequences of how the ‘global’ is represented visually,
and how this affects us all, our sense of taste and aesthetic acceptability no
less than our understanding of power structures.
Kwan has worked with video, photography, performance and installation while
regarding his work as fundamentally sculptural.
For Folkestone Triennial 2014, he has created a sculpture for The Vinery. This
is a sitting area with fantastic views over the English Channel, perched on the
edge of the Leas Cliff. Originally, the Vinery's structure was roofed with glass
and it provided shelter for growing grapes, as the name suggests; some vines
still grow here. Kwan's sculpture takes the form of three timber screens, their
materials and design crafted to fit in with the existing wooden structure.
Kwan’s sculpture Apparatus #9 (The China Watchers: Oxford University, MI6,
HSBC) picks up the forms of the latticework in the Vinery. In doing so, it plays
on the style of a (mainly interior) design called ‘chinoiserie’. This popular
Western aesthetic is characterised by motifs and techniques more or less
derived from Chinese sources. This style has been present in English
architecture, and especially buildings designed for leisure, since the midth
17 Century. The Royal Pavilion in Brighton is perhaps the most famous
example.
Kwan's screens frame views over the English Channel, a sea route busy with
Chinese container vessels plying between the United Kingdom and China,
and which still carries a huge volume of traffic. However, the latticework
design of the three screens is not purely decorative. While mimicking the
effects of 'chinoiserie', each screen is in fact based on an organisational
diagram of one of the UK based corporate structures known as 'China
Watchers', represented in Kwan's work by the Hong Kong and Shanghai
Bank, Oxford University and MI6. These bodies continuously monitor any
information that has any bearing on China and its relations with other states
around the world, reflecting not only the current 'positioning' of China, but also
its expected role in the national and international consciousness of the future.
Chinoiserie as a motif flattered the taste of the English leisured classes from
the 17th to the 20th centuries, at a time that the UK was 'the workshop of the
world'. Kwan's sculpture leaves us with the consciousness that in this century,
China has taken over this role. And now there are whole quarters of cities in
China being built 'in the European style' to provide homes for the new leisured
middle classes – estimated to be more numerous than the entire population of
Europe.