Folkestone Triennial returns for 5th Edition
Under the title ‘The Plot’, the Triennial outlines the themes for 2020
Creative Folkestone is pleased to announce that the fifth edition of Folkestone Triennial will be taking place from Saturday 5 September - Sunday 8 November 2020.
Curated for the third time by Lewis Biggs, the Triennial in 2020 will take the title The Plot.
The Plot invites visitors to consider urban myths and their relation to verifiable realities, the gap between the story and the actuality and presents around 20 newly commissioned artworks by internationally acclaimed artists.
It will use three historic Folkestone narratives as a point of departure: 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 Plot refers to passages of movement - the movement of water, blood and goods. The exhibition will present artworks in public spaces across the town and along the various routes associated with these stories. By borrowing from or lending to existing narratives, the exhibition whilst set in Folkestone, raises questions around the universal need to distinguish reality from myth.
The Plot suggests multiple meanings. Conceptually a ‘plot’ can be a narrative or conspiracy. From a material point of view, it can also mean a plot of land, or to plot a course or graph – things that are mathematically verifiable. Observing the gap between personally verified experience and what is otherwise told or narrated, the Triennial urges viewers to consider the voids left behind by ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truths’.
Lewis Biggs says: “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.”