Creative Folkestone is pleased to announce the Folkestone Triennial 2020, running from 5 September – 8 November 2020 and presenting around 20 newly commissioned artworks by internationally acclaimed artists. Curated for the third time by Lewis Biggs, the 2020 Triennial, entitled The Plot, invites visitors to consider urban myths and their relation to verifiable realities: the gap between the story and the actuality.

The 2020 Folkestone Triennial uses 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’. Referring to passages of movement – the movement of water, blood and goods – the exhibition will present artworks in public spaces across the town, along the various routes associated with these stories. By borrowing from, or lending to, existing narratives, the exhibition, though set in Folkestone, raises questions around the universal need to distinguish reality from myth.

The title 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 expands:

‘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.’

Following the Folkestone Triennale 2020, a selection of the artworks will remain on site in the town as part of Folkestone Artworks, the UK’s largest ongoing urban outdoor exhibition of contemporary art.

Details on the artist list and commissions will be announced in 2020.