Creative Folkstone Triennal announces its fifth edition’s artists

“The Plot” presents around 20 newly commissioned site-specific artworks by international artists. The artworks are sited along three routes, with the aim to invite viewers to question the gap between the tales and the urbanism of the town. These routes used as a point of departure are historically part of Folkstone’s narratives: St Eanswythe’s watercourse; the physician William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood; and Folkestone’s industrial road “The Milky Way”. The common thread is therefore the passages of movement, the movement of water, blood, goods but also of viewers, since the exhibition is presented in public spaces across the town.

‘‘Although set in Folkestone, the exhibition’s theme is a universal one, prompting us to consider the relation between stories and material realities everywhere in the world. Everyone becomes aware at some point of the gap between our lived experience and what is narrated about it. Sometimes this gap is so extreme that we assume it is the result of malice – it’s a plot. With conspiracy theories becoming ever more popular, it’s never been more urgent to think about the gap between the talk and the action, between our stories and our realities…” says Lewis Biggs, Curator of Creative Folkestone Triennial

The title “The Plot” suggests multiple meanings, both metaphorical and from a material point of view, and the Triennal aims at raising questions around the universal need to distinguish reality from myth. By questioning the gap between fact and fiction, the purpose is to identify and consider the voids left behind by “fake news” and “post truths”

“The gap between narrative and reality, promise and execution, will often attract our attention (whether amazement, hilarity, criticism or anger). But it’s this same gap that enables art to change people, and so also change the world. It’s the promise of the symbolic world that brings people together and motivates us to act. The artist’s imagination enables us to look at the material world, to imagine how it could be, and realise that it does not have to be the way it is. Great art can lead us to work together to change our surroundings.” continues the Curator.