Folkestone Triennial 2011 puts town on map with classy showcase of contemporary art

Event: Folkestone Triennial 2011, various venues, Folkestone, until September 25 2011

There may be problems with living in Folkestone, but access to high calibre contemporary art is not one of them. Every three years an international festival puts the recession-hit town back on the map.

Some 19 new commissions have been installed around the town by artists with backgrounds as diverse as Algeria, Kosovo, Brazil, Morocco, Israel, Egypt, India, Guyana, and of course Europe. This either befits a small English port with a historic role as a frontier to the rest of the world, or it threatens to diminish Folkestone's real lack of tourism and the closure of its ferry routes in 2000.

The work which appears to most directly tackle one of the region’s difficulties looks at migration. Danish artist Nikolaj B S Larsen has got so close to his displaced subjects in nearby Calais he has even enlisted their help filming sections of his video piece.

The result is a startling insight into life in both the makeshift camps known as the Jungle, and perhaps, too, the tatty apartment blocks used to house asylum seekers opposite the screening site.

So it may all be relative. From the point of view of many outside London and the wealthier parts of the South-East, Folkestone living standards are enviable. Unlike, say, Egypt, Kent has not suffered at the hands of a dictatorship.

For a global-minded artist such as Hala Elkoussy, it is entirely fitting to use a disused shop in a down-at-heel commercial district to stage a show about Britain's colonial past. It is difficult to look at her archive of books, photos and adverts from British-occupied Cairo without feeling implicated in the mindset of imperialism.

And Zineb Sedira suggests that even in tumultuous North Africa there still exist idylls of peace and utopian living. This cosmopolitan artist, born in Paris, has turned an old deck chair store into a black box viewing space for three film pieces about lighthouse keepers in Algeria.

Blue skies and orange light, birdsong and crashing waves characterise a four-channel projection which demonstrates the sheer beauty of these 100-year old settings. In another film an interview with a keeper confirms the poetry of life at, for example, Cap Sigli.

Quite how locals from outside of Folkestone’s Creative Quarter respond to the myriad of agendas in this year’s festival remains to be seen. But there is plenty here which appears to celebrate the town.

American artist Spencer Finch spent time here recording the varying colour tones of the sea. The results can be seen in a giant swatch installed above the Leas Cliff. A wheel of fortune is being used daily to work out the shade of the Channel and corresponding flags put up in the centre of town.

If the sun shines on your visit to Folkestone, chances are the view from this height will be stunning enough without contemporary sculpture. So Finch’s attempts to calibrate and broadcast the impression come to seem like a quaint local custom. It is charming and funny in the same way.

Another piece which has character and colour is the installation by Hew Locke in St Mary and St Eanswythe’s Church. This brings together more than 50 sculpted boats and ships which hang from the ceiling and float in the direction of the nave.

Seen at once, the boats are as playful and abundant as the display in a toyshop. But many bear mysterious signs of vegetation, and as a whole the project has something of such impossible journeys as might be seen in a Werner Herzog movie.

Bringing all these and more than a dozen other major pieces of public art to a small coastal town in Kent is not quite on a par with bringing opera to the Amazon jungle, but the Triennial is ambitious.

There’s no telling in how many ways it will continue to benefit the town, but it will certainly benefit visiting art fans.

• Admission free. See the festival website for maps and more details.

• Visit Mark Sheerin’s contemporary art blog and follow him on Twitter.