How Lies the Land? Folkestone Triennial 2025 opens to the public

Folkestone Triennial 2025 opens this weekend, and sees 18 artists from 15 countries create ambitious new commissions that will transform Folkestone’s urban and coastal landscapes. Organised by Creative Folkestone and runs until Sun 19 Oct, Folkestone Triennial holds a very special place in the international family of biennials and triennials and leads the way as one of very few around the world to focus on inviting artists to develop new work for public space. The 2025 edition, the only event of its kind in the UK, will continue to focus on ambitious new commissions, and to open up new venues and geographies across the town.

Curated for the first time by Sorcha Carey, the 2025 edition, titled How Lies the Land?, will explore the layers of history embedded in Folkestone’s geography, its deep past, shifting borders, and evolving landscape.  For three months, the focus will be on Folkestone as an open-air gallery, inspiring visitors to experience contemporary art in one of the world’s most exciting and creative coastal destinations.  

This year’s commissions will take over some of Folkestone’s most striking and unusual locations, including a church built for the fishing community, a former customs house, a Martello Tower, a lookout point across the Channel, and a disused railway bridge. From large-scale installations to immersive soundscapes, collaborations with local communities, through to computer simulations, designs for a new playground, amulet filled towers, a Ministry of Sewers and creatures appearing including a five metre long worm and three headed bird, artists will respond to the town’s geological, social and political history, to reflect on some of the most urgent issues of our time.

Folkestone Triennial 2025 will feature work by Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape, Céline Condorelli, Monster Chetwynd, Dorothy Cross, john gerrard, J Maizlish Mole, Rubiane Maia, Emeka Ogboh, Prabhakar Pachpute, Katie Paterson, Laure Prouvost, Cooking Sections, Emilija Škarnulytė, Rae-Yen Song 宋瑞渊, Jennifer Tee, Sara Trillo, Hanna Tuulikki and Sarah Wood.  

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With previous editions establishing Folkestone as leading the conversation around public art, the 2025 Triennial continues its legacy of bringing world-class contemporary artists to this historic seaside town. Whether discovering artworks hidden in unexpected places or exploring the town’s thriving independent cultural scene, visitors are invited to experience Folkestone in a new light.  

Sorcha Carey, explains more on the theme for 2025: “Embedded in the phrase ‘getting the lie of the land’ is the understanding that the layers and contours of the land have not only influenced where we find ourselves now, but can also suggest which direction we should take next. The artists in How Lies the Land? find in the ground and landscapes of Folkestone an imaginative space to explore urgent contemporary questions: from climate change to migration, how we build communities, the interdependency of species and the human impact on the landscape. All the artworks in How Lies the Land? are created and presented in response to the specific context and landscape of Folkestone. But the questions they explore are universal.”

Alastair Upton, Chief Executive of Creative Folkestone, adds: “Over the last two decades, the Folkestone Triennial has been instrumental in reimagining the town as a hub for artistic innovation. This year’s edition continues that tradition, welcoming world-class artists to create ambitious works that will leave a lasting mark on Folkestone’s public spaces and cultural life. As well as drawing visitors to the town, the Triennial plays a vital role in supporting the local economy and inspiring new generations of creatives. We are delighted to see the town transformed with these 18 very special works and to share them for the first time with the public this weekend. Thank you to the artists, Sorcha and the team for bringing such exciting works to life across our town, that speak to our times and leading us towards one of the most exciting events in the cultural calendar this summer.”

Commission details

Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape is known for her use of soil and other organic material as a base for multisensory, multidimensional work that connects deeply with the earth. Working with soil and clay has offered the artist a way to connect to ancestral stories and to draw attention to memories residing in the land.  For Folkestone Triennial, Bopape is developing a three-metre-high sculpture, bringing together layers of chalk, seaweed and other organic materials to mimic the strata of the earth.

Cooking Sections have been inspired by the creation of a (short-lived) Ministry for Drought in the 1970s and will open the Ministry of Sewers on Folkestone’s Harbour Arm to raise awareness of pollution on the coasts of the country.  The original sewers— first developed on Romney Marsh — were built to move or drain water to or from an area, as a form of marsh-reclamation. For the duration of the Triennial, working in collaboration with local activists from across Kent and South East England, the Ministry of Sewers will offer an active platform to share stories and gather new evidence to support and advocate for change.

Céline Condorelli’s new work consists of a series of flag sculptures which unfold and invite a journey to and from the sea, a celebration of Folkestone’s rich and multi-faceted relationship to the sea - as a place of work, as a space for recreation, of danger, of fun, of contemplation, a source of relaxation, of anxiety, of reminiscence and of life.  The work will be accompanied by a special podcast, bringing the artist into conversation with a range of different sea workers. This work forms part of the Folkestone: A Brighter Future project.  

Monster Chetwynd is designing a salamander themed playground as part of the redevelopment of Folkestone’s Bouverie Square as part of the Folkestone: A Brighter Future project, which will transform the former bus station into a new public park for Folkestone.  Chetwynd is fascinated by salamanders, ancient creatures with amazing powers to self-regenerate.  She will work with local schools to develop a performance to open the Triennial – a salamander sculpture will be installed in Payers Park, advance herald of the playground which will sit at the centre of the transformed Bouverie Square.  

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Dorothy Cross’ Red Erratic will be shown at the water’s edge, on a loading bay on Folkestone Harbour Arm. Erratic is a geological term used to describe a rock which has been moved by a glacier over time and deposited in a new landscape.  In Dorothy Cross’ Red Erratic, human feet emerge from a 7-tonne block of ‘Damascus rose’ marble, perilously positioned one on top of each other as if to gain a foothold.  Red Erratic speaks to the present-day realities of forced evacuation and migrations, as well as of a timeless deep connection to the earth, as if exposing fossilised human traces on the surface of a rock.  

John Gerrard’s Ghost Feed is installed on a disused railway bridge, part of a long-abandoned railway line which brought trains directly to the harbour arm.  On a large-scale LED screen, a white cheeked spider monkey sits hunched over a smart phone within a smouldering virtual Brazilian forest landscape, occasionally glancing up at us, the viewers. The phone shows an actual video feed of the character's face. Made entirely within the Unreal game engine and slowly moving from day to night, this simulated world poses questions about consumption, technology, immobility, and ecology.

Rubiane Maia, is a Brazilian-born, Folkestone-based artist working in performance, video, installation and writing, to explore memories held in the body and the landscape, and the relationships of interdependence and care between human and non-human beings, including plants and minerals.  For the Triennial, she presents a film installation and live performance, building an imagined dialogue between the remains of an Anglo-Saxon woman unearthed at Dover Hill and the fossilised bones of an rhinoceros and a hippopotamus excavated in The Bayle area. These relic presences – both human and more-than-human – are the starting point for a visual essay, documenting both the research process and the preparations for the live performance, which will take place on the closing weekend of the Triennial.

J Maizlish Mole’s Folkestone in Ruins appears as a series of large and small-scale enamel maps across the town, including Folkestone Central Station and the former Harbour Station.  Sketched over 31 days walking the length and breadth of the town, this playful new map of Folkestone layers historic references and personal observations over the contemporary street layout, performing an upside-down archaeology, in which the visible world is effectively buried under the invisible, reflecting the deep transformation of Folkestone’s landscape through time.  

Emeka Ogboh’s Ode to the Channel is sited on Coronation Parade. Ogboh’s sound installation takes inspiration from Sanjeev Gupta’s theory that the English Channel was created by a ‘megaflood’, a catastrophic climactic event taking place around 450,000 years ago which breached the land bridge connecting Britain to Europe, to create the island landmass we now know as Britain. The artist has worked with locally based songwriter Rachel Gerrard, and 6 local singers (The Sirens) to develop and record his composition, which will interweave a cappella female voices to sing out, siren-like, from Coronation Parade.  Bringing other senses into play, Ogboh is collaborating with local beer and icecream producers to develop special Triennial editions for audiences to enjoy while listening to the work. Ogboh’s composition was played to the fermenting hops, to create Doggaland – a new beer, in homage to another extinct landscape, doggerland.Coastal Drift icecream is made with nearby icecream shops to evoke the salty tang of the sea. A limited edition vinyl of the work will also be made. The work will also play on the Eurotunnel, as travellers journey under the channel; and the Sirens will make a special performance in France during the Triennial run.

Prabhakar Pachpute’s A Song for an Assembly is a large-scale sculpture, inspired by recent land movements around the world (including India and Brazil) where farmers and agricultural workers have come together to protest policies which benefit a capitalist system, to the detriment of the individuals who work the land, as well as the landscape itself. Descended from generations of miners, Pachpute is interested to reflect on the tensions inherent in excavating the earth.

Katie Paterson’s Afterlife will be installed at Martello Tower No. 3 overlooking the town. Afterlife recreates a series of ancient amulets carved out of materials gathered from disappearing landscapes and environments under threat. Amulets appear in cultures across the globe - miniature objects designed to be easily carried or worn, they are typically inscribed in stone and offer protection to their bearer.  Afterlife brings together about 100 examples, recast using materials directly drawn from landscapes which are extinct or in danger of extinction – rocks collected from melting glaciers, or islands and other landscapes under threat from rising sea levels and climate change. The work speaks of geology and deep time.

Laure Prouvost has made a new sculpture for the ‘dolphins’, the large concrete plinth-like structures created to support the ramped access to Folkestone’s roll-on roll-off ferries, now left rising from the sea. Visitors will see a striking hybrid bird with three elongated heads, each extending in a different direction. The body is crafted in terrazzo, a composite material made from fragments of stone, marble and earth-bound minerals, grounding the sculpture in the materiality of the land. Its surface speaks to geological time and human construction alike, while the beaks made in glass echo the ever-changing, translucent nature of water. The hybrid bird reaches out to its baby, stranded on the opposite plinth, mirroring a dialogue across the sea with two other monumental works by the artist, located on the Belgian and French coasts, in De Panne and Dunkirk.

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Emilija Škarnulytė’s Burial is a large-scale immersive film installation installed at the Quarterhouse. Lying to the south of Folkestone and formed by the same climactic and geological processes which shaped Folkestone is Dungeness – home to Dungeness nuclear power station, currently in process of being decommissioned. Burial explores deep time and nuclear waste, taking the viewer on an immersive sensorial trip into Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) in Lithuania, created as a sister to Chernobyl at the height of the Cold War, and now undergoing a decommissioning process as a condition of Lithuania’s admission to the EU.  

Rae-Yen Song 宋瑞渊 has created a five-metre-long colourful beast, floating above us, with soft folds and many faces. It is shaped by stories from the past, and one day will come alive when worn by the artist’s family in a future performance. This creature mixes traditional Chinese dragon and lion dance costumes with sea creatures and worms. It floats as a shining shelter, an armour and a refuge. The work will be shown at St Peter’s Church, built in the nineteenth century by Folkestone’s fishing community, and home to the annual Blessing of the Fisheries.  

Jennifer Tee’s Oceans Trees of Life is a large-scale installation made of 5000 bricks on the East Cliff.  Oceans Trees of Life takes inspiration from the early environmentalist Rachael Carson’s seminal book The Edge of the Sea which describes the unique conditions of life in the intertidal zone. Unfolding a seaweed form in the ground of East Cliff directly above Folkestone’s warren, the work is made from handmade bricks in colours that evoke the reds and greens of seaweed, as well the chalky cliffs nearby. The individual bricks are embossed with stamps of seaweed and life forms which inhabit the sea in the present day, as well as those preserved in fossil form.

Sara Trillo’s Urn Field on the East Cliff is a series of new sculptures inspired by the Cheriton Urn Field finds, and the archaeological drawings produced at the time of their discovery. In 1948 Folkestone workmen discovered dozens of ancient pots buried from an Iron Age burial ground where the charred bones of men, women and children, who had been cremated when they died, had been gathered up and buried in small pots (called cinerary urns).  Working with chalk cob to create large-scale sculptural silhouettes shaped like pieces of broken pottery, Trillo’s sculptures incorporate plants growing on the site, each chosen for their association with ritual as well as active healing powers.

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Hanna Tuulikki’s new sound work Love (Warbler Remix) takes inspiration from the Marsh Warbler, a migrating bird that composes its song by mimicking other birds. The artist imagines a fictional creature, part human and part bird, singing its love song by the sound mirrors of Dungeness. To create the work, Tuulikki collected traditional love songs from 27 countries along the Marsh Warbler’s migration route and remixed these using the bird’s song-structure. Combining her composition with live sounds from the acoustic mirrors, the piece is then broadcast into a listening station in Folkestone - a former WW1 lookout shelter that overlooks the channel. The sound is accompanied by large scale drawings – visual scores - mapping Tuulikki’s composition and the sources from which it is built. In this new love song to migration, Tuulikki takes a bird’s-eye view to celebrate the routes over which humans and animals have long travelled. The work will be broadcast via shortwave radio throughout the triennial to countries situated along the migratory route of the warbler.

Sara Wood’s new film installation overlays archival footage taken by Jarman, as part of his preparations for The Garden,  with a new soundscape woven from contemporary field recordings. Taking the form of an address to Jarman, Prospect imagines the emigrants who set sail at the end of Jarman’s film The Last of England returning to Britain. ‘What kind of welcome would they find, and what would help them survive?’ Wood’s essay film invites us to tune into the warmth of Jarman’s creative process, and looking beyond Jarman himself, to reflect on ‘art’s potential to generate open space for complexity, inclusivity, companionability, vision – and the radical nature of love’.

A free public programme of events also takes place across Folkestone Triennial including performances, critics tours, audio tours and events where visitors can share, walk, and make art work in conjunction with the programme.

The hugely popular art event is a chance to enjoy a summer weekend in the seaside town for those living in the town or visiting for a summer break. Visitors to Folkestone Triennial are invited to experience a range of contemporary art works that offer new perspectives on a town recently voted the Best Place to Live in the Southeast and Time Out’s Best Place to Visit 2025.  

A schools and young people’s programme also coincides where young people in Folkestone can also get involved and make mini beasts, make clay vessels for plants, or even your own map of the town inspired by Folkestone Triennial.  

Peter Heslip, Director Visual Arts, Arts Council England, said: “Folkestone Triennial is a powerful example of how public art can bring communities together, drive visitors to one of our great seaside locations, and through art, transform places. We are proud to support the latest edition of the Triennial, as it evolves. We look forward to seeing how audiences respond to this year's creative exposition in Folkestone.”

A spokesperson from Folkestone & Hythe District Council, said: “Creativity has become part of the fabric of Folkestone in part thanks to the legacy of pieces retained from former Triennials. We are delighted that this interweaving of creativity and place will be further strengthened by pieces from Celia Condorelli and Monster Chetwynd contributing to the Folkestone – A Brighter Future project. This project will regenerate Folkestone and transform the town centre. We’re thrilled to have the input of these highly respected artists and our partners Creative Folkestone ensuring art and the sense of playfulness that embodies Folkestone will be part of the redevelopment of such an important space, central to the lives of many.”  

Saga Group Chief Executive Officer, Mike Hazell, “Saga is delighted to be the Major Sponsor for the Creative Folkestone Triennial, celebrating creativity, culture and community. Arts play a vital role in shaping vibrant and inclusive societies. This festival not only celebrates creativity but deeply connects with the people and landscape of Folkstone, Saga’s spiritual home. We are looking forward to enjoying the vast and varied programme over the coming months”

Folkestone Triennial 2025 runs until Sun 19 Oct 2025.

www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/folkestone-triennial

All works commissioned by Folkestone Triennial 2025 –images by Thierry Bal