Behind the scenes at the Folkestone Art Triennial
When a major arts festival is commissioned, the interaction between artists, residents and art is a vital element in the town’s enrichment. Veronica Simpson checks out the behind-the-scenes action for the Folkestone Triennial.
On a scorching hot morning in July, a group of friendly drunks has gathered around a new piece of 'art' that just landed on Folkestone's harbourfront. It's called Steve and was made by artist Sarah Staton out of Corten steel, perforated with perfect holes, like slices of Jarlsberg, and placed around a pink concrete 'pouffe'. The name Steve was chosen 'because it's the kind of name you wouldn't normally give to a statue,' says Staton. 'It's like a plinth, so when you are sitting in it, you become part of the statue.'
The town's drinker inhabitants have clearly seized on this aspect, and are taking turns to pose on the pouffe, enthroned within Steve's wonky walls, inviting passers-by to do the same. Around its base are rhomboid rips in the Tarmac, planted with edible seaside vegetation. For Staton, Steve and his planting evoke the grand follies once constructed by the rich and aristocratic for their rolling acres, though here they offer shelter and vistas for a much broader demographic.
Artwork 'Steve' by Sarah Staton lands in Folkestone. Samphire, sea buckthorn, kale and chives are planted around the piece
One passer-by asked if Steve was made from steam-engine parts. Staton approves: 'I like the idea of industrial relics, remnants of high- Victorian design and infrastucture,' she says.
Folkestone itself is something of a relic - once a major port, leisure resort and military embarkation point, its clifftop is lined with grand Victorian and Edwardian town houses and hotels but, away from the sea views, its streets bristle with boarded up shops, betting and amusement parlours and at times seem peopled entirely by the displaced and the dispossessed. But it's now a town in 'transition', says Alastair Upton, managing director of Folkestone's Creative Foundation, which has invested substantially in the town over the past two decades, restoring most of the Old Town to offer high-quality creative studio space at minimal rents, constructing a major arts centre, The Quarterhouse, and since 2008 commissioning and partly funding The Triennial. Now Folkestone is one of few towns in the area to be bucking the unemployment trend, and art has undoubtedly played its part.
The welcome being given to Steve by the locals is going down a treat with Staton and with this Triennial's curator Lewis Biggs - veteran of the Liverpool Biennial and other high-profile arts events. Says Biggs: 'They like it because it speaks of considerable thought. People like that they can have a piece of art and have a narrative around it and it's not complicated.' Given Steve's view out to France and the Continent, Staton adds: 'It's also a symbolic welcoming gateway for people coming from overseas. There is a lot of anxiety about that community, but this is a place where they could be welcomed.'
In the Payers Park project by muf, temporary tattoos link the maritime heritage of Folkestone with the culture of newly arrived Czech Roma
Ports - even decommissioned ones such as Folkestone - have population management issues, but they are also places where new ideas can flourish, says Biggs, speaking from his experience in Liverpool as well as London. 'I'm very happy if people don't recognise that it's art but just respond to it. The best art is something that people can make up their own minds about.'
But no matter how open minded, people respond best when they feel they are being listened to - something that recent public art initiatives have become really rather good at. And for Folkestone's Triennial, with around 20 artworks created by both local and international artists, there were multiple engagement opportunities, the most inventive of which were organised by muf, a London-based practice that straddles both architecture and art.
Muf's project was to transform a chunk of steeply sloping and derelict land fringed with car parks in the Old Town into a connective community park and gathering place. Thanks to Biggs' foresight, the Payers Park project was initiated two years ahead of this year's Triennial, so muf had plenty of time to work with stakeholders and user groups, foremost among a group of local young Goths and some recently arrived Czech Roma teenagers. Says muf architect Mark Lemanski: 'They didn't speak to each other at all. And they were creating friction with the old people who lived nearby.'
To draw out all of these groups, muf organised a silent disco, with multichannel headphones so everyone could tune into their favourite sounds; professional ballroom dancers helped to kick things off. A temporary pizza and bread oven was built and enjoyed, along with an archaeological dig, to which everyone was invited. Says Lemanski: 'This stresses the point that history is not only what happens in the past but what you make of a space in the present.' Muf also commissioned a local tattoo parlour to create temporary tattoos inspired by some of the relics found during the dig. 'A tattoo is a connecting element between the culture of the place as a maritime location and the Czech Roma migrants, who like to have tattoos on their necks,' says Lemanski.
The Quarterhouse, built with its back against the new park, opened up its loading bay as a stage for concerts (Czech Roma rappers for one, country and western for another), with the park acting as auditorium, initiating a new relationship between the site and its neighbours.
As for the new park's spatial assets, muf has created a place that invites communing without colonising. New entrances and pathways emphasise the park's porosity, facilitating journeys across and through the town. Slides and climbing chutes create play options for younger users and teens. A seating area can double up as an open-air cinema. Mature trees have bat and bird boxes in their branches. Ceramic remnants from the dig have been combined with pieces of specially commissioned pottery and displayed among the trees in a wilderness space. It does its job as a piece of civic infrastructure but brings so much more to the party, thanks to the personal and collective Folkestone narratives that inform its evolution.
If art is good at expressing identity and evoking connection, it's because of the spirit in which it is carried out. Although Folkestone's regeneration is the end game, Biggs stresses that economic concerns have to take a back seat in the commissioning and programming. He says: 'Art "works" by faith, just like religion or love. If you do things out of self-interest or in too obviously an instrumentalist way, they tend not to work....' Or, in the words of Jyll Bradley, a Folkestone-born Triennial artist who has created a vibrant light installation on a derelict site: 'Art has to have its own integrity. You can't use it to shore up something else.'
