To Folkestone, a sea resort on the south coast of England to check out the international visual arts triennial. I went on holiday to Folkestone with my mum and dad sometime in the Polaroid 70s. It hasn’t changed much – at least in my memory. More than once I gasped and told V, my travelling companion, “Oh my God, I remember this...” Folkestone remains an unpretentious, fish-and-chips, bucket-and-spade, stripy-towels-and-deckchairs British seaside town which has always had a bit of an inferiority complex (my personal opinion) about not being as useful or as interesting as its near-neighbour Dover.
Little Folkestone has two parts. Below on the seafront is a harbour area through which runs, incongruously, the railway line that carries the Orient Express on its touristic way to Venice. (It doesn’t stop.) And on the Leas cliffs, above the town, is the refined Edwardian sea resort made popular by Edward VII who visited it with his various mistresses to sip cups of Earl Grey tea and to take in the sea air prior to some discreet Victorian fornication in the Royal Suite of the Grand Hotel.
Alas Folkestone’s days as the louche, sophisticated playground of royalty have gone. The Eurostar and the Channel Tunnel has made its ferry service to France redundant. The EU has decimated its fishing industry. Now it is suffering from some social problems and a declining seasonal economy, so the local municipality have decided, probably as a last desperate option, to go down the “regeneration through the arts” route.
I invariably heave a sigh when I hear the words “arts and regeneration” or “community cultural strategy” “or “creative quarter”. But V and I were completely won over by Folkestone’s choice of art and by the way it sits in the townscape. Like V I’ve been to a host of biennials and triennials. You expect to see the usual suspects – the rather monotonous parade of “names” which the international visual arts consensus believe to be hot, at least for this year. And I’ve seen (and run) plenty of “arts and regeneration” projects. But Folkestone was refreshing.
We really liked the Folkestone Triennial, because, despite its utterly pompous name (another thing about visual-arts-festivals-that-happen-every-two-or-three-years that REALLY irritates me), it was a modest, fun and lively little event where the artists obviously enjoyed themselves working closely with the locals. And it was nice to discover that quite a lot of the work will be permanently left in place.
And calling it “little” is not me being rude – for Folkestone, it was a strength that there were no massive statues or installations screaming MODERN ART! LOVE IT OR GET LOST YOU PLEBIANS! No enormous sculptures. No outdoor exhibitions of psychologically-dark photographic self-portraits. No cheesy “community art programmes”. No video films made by local schoolchildren about their crack habits. And no revolving walls like as in the Liverpool Capital of Culture although Richard Wilson had made a piece in which he managed to rescue all 18 holes of the derelict concrete “Crazy Golf Course” from the demolished Rotunda Amusement Park and re-assembled it as a trio of beach huts. (Here I screamed at V “Oh my God, I played crazy golf on that crazy golf course when I was eight!”)
Instead Folkestone has gone for small, subtle and humorous. In fact one piece, Foreshore by Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski, a recreation of a Folkestone fish market, gets hidden by the rising tide twice a day; turn up at the wrong time and you can’t see it. Another piece by artist Adam Chodzko fakes an official tourist sign apparently showing the position of the fabled Folkestone Pyramids. You can buy a designer kite from a kiosk to fly on the beach by Nils Norman or go and see the really lovely Disco Mechanique by David Batchelor - a hanging mobile of discoballs all made from cheap multicoloured seaside sun glasses. Even Folkestone’s ever-present seagulls get attention – The Mobile Gull Appreciation Unit by Mark Dion attempts to foster understanding about the lives of these disgusting feathered scavengers. Nope, Folkestone, cheerful, vulgar little Folkestone, which is not as useful as Dover, couldn’t do pretentious even if it tried.
A lot of the works have a link to Folkestone’s past, present or future. The English Channel, or La Manche for French readers, is at its narrowest here – barely 22 miles: Britain is at its least insular. You can sometimes “see France” the catalogue tells us. Unless you are a Brit you probably don’t realise what a novelty this can be for us islanders. V and I stared at the horizon several times during the day but were not sure if we can see “Europe” or just a long dark cloud. Hmmm, that’s prophetic, we thought.
Several of the pieces celebrated this intimacy with the continental mainland – not a very rich seam in British art, it has to be said. Langlands and Bell’s documentary film Folkestone: Boulogne celebrates the strong connection between the two towns. The now abolished ferry that linked Boulogne and Folkestone is commemorated in another 50 minute 16 mm film of a boat trip from one side of the channel to the other by Tacita Dean. Folkestone was the departure point for many British soldiers leaving to go to France in the 1914-1918 war and in The Whispers by Christian Boltanski recorded readings of soldiers’ from Folkestone letters to their sweethearts play from fibre glass bollards which you can hear only when you sit on certain park benches. Nearby Mark Wallinger has created a war memorial Folk Stones: a carpet of 19,420 stones, one each for every British soldier who died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Wallinger hand-numbered each stone with white paint from 1 to 19,420 – a task he describes as utterly pointless and as significant as the loss of life. Touching indeed when you remember that Folkestone’s cliffs were the last memories of England for many of those soldiers and on a windy day you could have heard the guns from France. And above on the cliffs stands a memory of an even older war. The Martello Tower, built by the British as a defensive fortress against the threat of Napoleonic invasion, now wears a new “party dress” of designer plastic ivy by Turkish Ayse Erkmen.
And then there was the inevitable Tracey Emin piece – and it was really simple, delightful and poignant. For me, the best thing she has ever done. Called Baby Things she had cast tiny baby items in bronze – shoes, nappies, socks, teddy bears – painted them in their original colours and then scattered them unmarked all over town, under railings, under benches, on the steps to an office building and so on. Emin chose the subject because Folkestone and its district have a higher than average rate of teenage pregnancies – and the UK rate is pretty high already. She grew up locally (up the coast in Margate). So there is nothing discreet about fornication in Folkestone nowadays, whereas Emin’s pieces are remarkably discreet. Only by a careful reading of the brochure can you get an idea of where to look for them and even then you don’t always find them. They blend in perfectly among the junk and litter. You don’t know if you have found a genuine Emin or a piece of rubbish until you poke it – the Emins are hard metal. And while big fat mums with push chairs, bright red sunburnt dads and their skinny kids stroll past licking ice creams, lots of art goers up from London are peering under benches and cooing with delight as they prod what appear to be abandoned nappies. It makes you wonder what the locals think of all this.
Actually we found out. We asked one. He was running the seafood stall. He grew up in the East End of London, he told us. “Did you know the Krays?” V asked cheekily. (The Krays are a notorious family of 60s gangsters forever associated with the East End. I told V later not to ask people that sort of thing just because they come from East London – but I did have to admit that actually my grandmother who was born in Bethnal Green DID know Mrs Kray...) Anyway my point is don’t let’s stereotype a place - except Folkestone of course.
“Have you noticed any increase in visitors?” we asked the seafood man like good arts managers. “Not really.” “What do you think of the art?” “It’s not my cup of tea.” “What about Tracey Emin’s piece?” “Well, SHE’S the artwork really, isn’t she? If I put a nappy under a bench and called it art - would it be?” “Do you have a favourite? What would you recommend we should see?” “I don’t think much of any of it...” – then suddenly he cheered up – “Oh except that van – where is it...?” He pointed across to the other side of the harbour. “There it is. Now, that’s beautiful, that is.”
He’s pointing at a mobile science fiction library built out of wood by Heather and Ivan Morison to resemble a house truck of the Californian New American Gypsy Movement. The New American Gypsies took to the road in the 1970s to escape modern society. This superbly crafted wooden “caravan” drives around Folkestone filled with books and staffed by an enthusiast in honour of science fiction father-figure H.G. Wells, who lived in the town for ten years. The fact it is stocked with science fiction books underlines the escapist theme. And the vehicle itself is actually a converted Green Goddess – one of the British Army’s legendary Military Fire Engines: another link to the Armed Forces....
We go across the harbour and take a look it. A big container lorry is parked next to it on the quayside. The driver calls out to a group of arty-types examining the wooden vehicle – “Oi, I’ve got a truck, too. Do you want to take a look round mine?” A well-dressed elderly lady gives a disdainful laugh. “No, it’s not artistic!” she tells him.
V and I grit our teeth and walk away until the awful triennial-types have left the vicinity and then we go back to take a proper look at the mobile library. It is indeed beautiful...
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