Exhibition of the week Folkestone Triennial
Various locations across Folkestone, Kent (01303-760740, www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk). Until 5 November
The “faded bucket-and-spade resort” of Folkestone has seen better days, said Skye Sherwin in The Guardian. It was once a prosperous holiday town, but its economy collapsed with the decline of the local tourist industry in the 1970s, and has never really recovered. Ever since, it has been blighted by “unemployment”, “empty shops” and “social tensions”. Recently, however, there have been signs of a revival, the most obvious manifestation of which is its triennial art festival. This autumn sees the fourth instalment of the event, an exhibition in which work by major international artists is displayed in venues across Folkestone’s “dramatic landscape” with the aim of fostering regeneration through culture. There are many “unexpected delights”, from a pavilion created in the shape of a “vintage jelly mould” by Turner Prize contender Lubaina Himid, to a number of Antony Gormley’s signature “iron men”. In a town which can often feel like a “petri dish of Split Britain’s problems”, the impulse behind the triennial seems “necessary” and “laudable”.
At best, this year’s Folkestone Triennial makes for a “pleasantly quirky trail through this interesting town’s nooks and crannies”, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. What a shame, then, that the art itself isn’t up to much. Gormley’s contribution – three metal casts of his own body positioned beneath the pier – consists of “works that are already overexposed in all senses”; while six “brightly coloured house-shaped boxes” by Richard Woods, located in various places around the town, are little more than “a mildly amusing comment on the housing crisis”. The “nadir” is David Shrigley’s effort, for which he asked a friend to recreate one of Folkestone’s Edwardian lamp posts after studying the originals for just 40 seconds. It “seems to embody a contempt for the intellectual level of the general viewer”.
Nevertheless, there is much to admire, said Nancy Durrant in The Times. Hoycheong Wong has bolted a temporary facade onto Folkestone’s Islamic Cultural Centre, making it look like a “shimmering” Muslim monument; while a usually inaccessible Baptist burial ground hosts a “magical” choral work by composer Emily Peasgood that is activated by a visitor’s presence. Besides, “there’s nothing wrong with filling the streets of a rather tired town with art in the hope that someone will come and look at it”. When I visited, it was raining heavily – and it is “a tribute to the charm of this peculiar art festival that, despite becoming half-soaked, I didn’t mind”.