insideKENT Magazine Issue 56 - November 2016 | Page 6
Folkestone Triennial 2017:
double edge
The biggest visual arts event of 2017 is coming next September
Creative Foundation has announced the dates
of Folkestone Triennial 2017, which will return
for its fourth edition and will be held over a 9week period from 2nd September – 5th
November 2017. Curated for the second time
by Lewis Biggs, the Triennial in 2017 will take
the title double edge.
Folkestone Triennial is one of the most ambitious
exhibitions of contemporary art outside the gallery
context presented in the UK. The seaside town
of Folkestone has no publicly subsidised art
gallery, so artists are invited to use the town as
their ‘canvas’, utilising public spaces to create
striking new art that reflects issues affecting both
the town and the wider world. Inaugurated in
2008, the Triennial takes place every three years
and is one of the five key projects of the Creative
Foundation. Artists commissioned to take part
in previous Triennials include Cornelia Parker,
Tracey Emin, Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed, Richard
Wilson, Yoko Ono, Pablo Bronstein, Andy
Goldsworthy and Michael Sailstorfer. The 2014
Triennial was visited by over 135,000 people and
a significant public programme included some
18,000 learners, over 70 schools and 50
community groups.
The concept of double edge will further develop
the inquiry into ‘sense of place’ that guided
Folkestone Triennial exhibition, Lookout, in
2014. double edge refers to the two main axes
around which Folkestone’s development as a
town has taken place historically and
geographically: the seashore and the Pent Stream,
an ancient watercourse flowing from the Northern
Downs into the sea, the present edge between
East and West Folkestone. The title draws on
the extensive academic study of ‘edge’ concepts
in recent years: borders; thresholds; margins;
the periphery; the liminal. double edge resonates
with major contemporary cultural, economic and
political realities experienced as part of everyday
lives in Folkestone and across the globe:
migration; border control; wealth inequality;
sustainability; a challenging urban environment;
and climate change, to name a few.
Internationally recognised artists will be
commissioned to make new contemporary
artworks exhibited in public spaces around the
town. Artists will be invited to engage with
Folkestone’s various narratives and material
memories drawn from the town’s social, cultural,
political and economic history. Some artworks
will become permanent additions expanding the
town’s permanent collection, Folkestone
Artworks, built up since the first edition of the
Triennial in 200 8. All artworks that make up
Folkestone Triennial are commissioned with the
ambition of positively affecting the urban
ecology of the town as a place to live, work, visit
and study.
6
Lewis Biggs said: “The title double edge has two
meanings – the first is one of anxiety: the edge
of the world, the edge of the future and the
unknown. The secondary meaning is one of
balance, released through the artist’s imagination
when one tips over the edge and looks back on
the known with a renewed perspective. Great
art makes change and the ambition of this
exhibition is to give artists the opportunity to
make excellent new work that plays with ambiguity
and the several meanings of edge, stimulating
audiences to consider why the world is the way
it is, how it might be, and how it is always possible
to change it.”
Further details, including information about the
artists commissioned for Folkestone Triennial,
will be announced in March 2017. For more
information go to
www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk.