FOLKESTONE.- The fourth edition of Folkestone Triennial, one of the UK’s most ambitious art exhibitions, opened on Saturday 2 September and run until 5 November 2017. Internationally recognised artists have been commissioned to create 19 new site-specific artworks being exhibited in Folkestone’s public spaces under the title double edge. Some of the works will remain in the town to add to its expanding art collection, Folkestone Artworks.

double edge refers to the two main axes around which Folkestone’s development as a town has taken place historically and geographically: the seashore and the Pent Stream, an ancient watercourse flowing from the North Downs into the sea, dividing East and West Folkestone. double edge makes use of the specifics of the locality to explore universal ‘edge’ issues, including borders and frontiers; margins and the periphery; thresholds, gateways and the liminal. It will also further develop the inquiry into ‘sense of place’ that guided Folkestone Triennial 2014, Lookout.

Lewis Biggs, curator of Folkestone Triennial, said: "We are delighted to have commissioned 19 new site-specific works for Folkestone as part of the 2017 Triennial, titled double edge, the other part being an amazing programme of events. It has been a pleasure to see how these imaginative artists extend their practice to create work outdoors, engaging with the history and fabric of the town, to explore the universal issues that are always their concern. We hope that the artworks will excite and inspire a wide variety of audiences over the next nine weeks and in some cases for many years to come."

New works commissioned for Folkestone Triennial 2017 are as follows:

Rigo 23 presents Through the Glassworks; Earth’s Oldest Satellite. One mural invites students at The Glassworks Sixth Form Centre to make their mark on Folkestone’s cultural landscape by repainting the billboards. The second reminds us that Earth’s closest neighbour may as often be beneath our feet as above our heads. The graphic paper Me and You, Some in the Fewture is available from The Clearing.

Sol Calero’s Casa Anacaona is a co-production with Womad World of Art. This social space has been made in collaboration with Folkestone ‘creatives’ as a gathering place for informal activities. The brightly painted furniture, inspired by the stereotype of ‘Latin American culture’, contributes to the sense of 'place' within which visitors may have a 'cross-cultural' experience.

Michael Craig-Martin’s Folkestone Lightbulb is an image of an everyday object in stylish strong colours, which picks up formally on the curving façade of the building. Located at the junction of The Old High Street and Tontine Street, the gateway to the Creative Quarter, conceptually the lightbulb suggests ideas, inspiration and sustainable energy; the essence of regeneration.

Diane Dever and The Decorators present Customs House: Urban Room Folkestone. The Harbour Station Customs House marked a frontier. Customs are also a community’s behaviour, which is interdependent with the physical environment. Screens create a new public space behind the former façade while the Urban Room inside is dedicated to the history of the town and encouraging debate about its future.

Alex Hartley’s Wall responded to Canterbury Archaeological Trust’s invitation to create a monument to the querns found at this ancient frontier site – querns are Iron Age millstones. The cage-like structure on the cliff edge is reminiscent of the fences used at ‘The Jungle’ in Calais, just across the Channel. The inevitable erosion of the cliff and the precariousness of the present are brought into dialogue.

Lubaina Himid collects ceramic jelly moulds, adding her own painted pattern decorations, as a tribute to the Black community and evoking the connection between slavery and sugar. This full-scale Jelly Mould Pavilion is on the former ‘Rotunda' leisure site, where barley sugar, candy floss and toffee apples fuelled the fun of summer visitors.

The Baptist Burial Ground has been stranded 20 feet above the street for 150 years. From the grave markers, composer Emily Peasgood researched some of the people buried there to weave a narrative into her audio installation Halfway to Heaven: each channel relates to a specific gravestone and is triggered by the presence of a listener.

Decorative constructions of sea shells are made in seaside towns everywhere and often kept as souvenirs. Amalia Pica has made her own shell sculptures called Souvenir – in a different cultural tradition – and loaned them to shops and residents for public exhibition. Some have been cast in bronze for all-weather display.

Inspired by the 'listening ears' along the coast, Marc Schmitz and Dolgor Ser-Od’s Siren evokes an unfamiliar technology, as if landed from space. This surprising object amplifies distant sound, but also 'speaks back' by becoming a megaphone. It gathers the noise of the waves (like a sea shell) and recalls the Harbour Arm lighthouse fog horn.

Folkestone's economy is in transition from 'seasonal tourism’ to 'creative industries’. David Shrigley invited an artist friend from Edinburgh to visit and memorise (in just 40 seconds) the decorative lamp posts along The Leas. Her creation from memory, Lamp Post (as remembered) now stands among the others. This sculpture wittily takes a piece of 'heritage' and re-presents it as 'creativity'.

Bob and Roberta Smith’s FOLKESTONE IS AN ART SCHOOL is in four parts: a ‘declaration’ in the streets; twelve short pedagogical videos; a ‘directory’ of art teaching facilities and talents; and a teaching programme/exhibition. The artist discovered that everything needed for an art school is already in Folkestone – the resources just need to be recognised differently. The art commission is not an art school, it shows us one.

Sinta Tantra’s 1947 transforms the immobile volume of The Cube using colours found in a poster from 1947 advertising rail travel to Folkestone, and with shapes inspired by the compositions of Ukrainian-born French artist Sonia Delaunay. This eclecticism suits Tontine Street, where migrants from many parts of the world live.

Studio Ben Allen’s installation, The Clearing, customises Folkestone Quarterhouse into the Triennial Visitor Centre. A place for reflection as well as information, for thought and dialogue as well as for buying merchandise. The concept was inspired by a clearing in a forest, the moment of orientation when you stop walking and appreciate where you are.

Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas’ Folke Stone Power Plant is sited outside Folkestone Museum, in the Market Place. The 'stone' contains innovative organic batteries (made from mushrooms) storing electricity to power the adjacent lamp post. The batteries are in development, an important and cutting-edge strand of research into sustainable energy, supported by a network of scientists at universities in several countries.

The Islamic Cultural Centre has operated as a Mosque for 28 years, but many residents in the town are unaware of it. HoyCheong Wong has introduced a temporary façade, Minaret, (which lights up at night) with minarets and arches, characteristics of Islamic architecture, making it more beautiful and more visible.

Cézanne proposed: ‘treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone’. For double edge, Gary Woodley presents Impingement No. 66 ‘Cube Circumscribed by Tetrahedron – Tetrahedron Circumscribed by Cube’, addressing the interaction between ideas and reality, ‘platonic’ forms in dialogue with physical architectural space. No. 66 draws two pairs of figures onto and through Coronation Parade (a cliff-stabilising structure between landscape and architecture).

Richard Woods’ Holiday Home consists of six one-third size ‘homes’ identical except in their colourways and sited in ‘unlikely’ places. These wittily seem to suggest that no site is too small, too unlikely, or too inconvenient for its neighbours, for a second home. They may also draw attention to the ‘housing crisis’ resulting from the tax policy decisions of successive governments.

Bill Woodrow’s The Ledge is sited by the shore. The strong horizontals in this sculpture suggest rising water levels resulting from the disappearing polar ice caps, a dazzling white iceberg melting into a pool of oil. The human figure and its ecological counterpart, the seal, represent an ancient way of life, standing on thin ice.

Jonathan Wright presents Fleet on Foot; gilded replicas (3D printed) celebrating Folkestone’s fishing fleet sit on poles carrying information about each boat and tidal times. Plimsoll markings describe the boats’ volumes in fresh and salt water. Tontine Street runs over the mouth of the Pent River, the tidal inlet where the first fishing boats were established.

Additionally, Antony Gormley presents Another Time XVIII 2013 (Loading Bay) & Another Time XXI 2013 (Coronation Parade) loaned for Folkestone Triennial (with a third installed in Margate by Turner Contemporary), from a series of 100 solid cast-iron figures. Intended to “celebrate the still and silent nature of sculpture… within the flow of lived time”, all three stand within the ebb and flow of the tide.