Opening on Saturday 19 July and running until Sunday 19 October 2025, this year’s Triennial will see 18 artists from 15 countries create ambitious new commissions that will transform Folkestone’s urban and coastal landscapes.
About
Curated for the first time by Sorcha Carey, the 2025 edition, How Lies the Land? will explore the layers of history embedded in Folkestone’s geography, its deep past, shifting borders, and evolving landscape. The exhibition invites audiences to experience the town in new ways through artworks that engage with its earth, ecosystem and geopolitics.
This year’s commissions will take over some of Folkestone’s most striking and unusual locations, including a disused railway line, a former customs house, and a lookout point across the Channel. From large-scale installations to immersive soundscapes, collaborations with local communities, and new digital worlds, artists will respond to the town’s geological, social and political history, to reflect on some of the most urgent issues of our time.
The 2025 Triennial will feature work by Celine Condorelli, Monster Chetwynd, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Cooking Sections, Dorothy Cross, John Gerrard, J Maizlish Mole, Rubiane Maia, Emeka Ogboh, Prabhakar Pachpute, Katie Paterson, Laure Prouvost, Emilija Škarnulytė, Rae-Yen Song, Jennifer Tee, Sara Trillo, Hanna Tuulikki and Sarah Wood.
For three months, the focus will be on Folkestone as an open-air gallery, inviting visitors to experience thought-provoking contemporary art in one of the UK’s most exciting coastal destinations. From the harbour to the cliffs, How Lies the Land? promises to reframe Folkestone’s landscape through ambitious, site-specific commissions that engage with history, ecology and human movement.
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Folkestone Triennial is one of Creative Folkestone’s core projects and one of the largest exhibitions of newly commissioned work, presented in the UK every three years. Since 2008, Folkestone Triennial has invited world-class and critically acclaimed artists to create new work inspired by the town, landscape, and history.
Previous editions of the festival have included artists such as Antony Gormley, Cornelia Parker, Lubaina Himid, Michael Sailstorfer, Rana Begum, Tracey Emin, and many more. The fifth Folkestone Triennial took place in 2021. Following a delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Triennial welcomed over 220,000 visitors to the town. One of the cornerstones of the town’s recent regeneration, Folkestone Triennial has grown in popularity locally, nationally and internationally. Carey follows curators Lewis Biggs (2014, 2017 & 2021) and Andrea Schlieker (2008 & 2011) in presenting her vision for the festival.
Creative Folkestone is a visionary arts charity and placemaking organisation dedicated to making Folkestone a great place to live, work, play, study and visit. Creative Folkestone believes in the power of art and creativity to encourage positive social change and should be open and accessible to all. Since 2002, Creative Folkestone have been transforming Folkestone through several key projects including Folkestone Artworks, Folkestone Book Festival, Creative Quarter, Folkestone Triennial and Quarterhouse. Through all these projects we enable people to get creative. In 2021, Creative Folkestone also became custodians of Prospect Cottage, the former home of Derek Jarman, following a successful campaign to save the property for the nation in partnership with Art Fund and Tate.
