The month in craft - July seaside special ☀️
Making a splash with Folkestone Triennial, exhibitions, books, and artist interviews...
From 19 July to 19 October 2025, the Folkestone Triennial returns for its sixth edition: How Lies the Land? With 18 artists from more than 15 countries, there are many artworks to explore, all of which take the ground beneath our feet as inspiration, from deep histories to the futures it holds. So, this month, we’re rounding up some crafty contributions to the UK coastline… any excuse for sightseeing!
How Lies the Land? 6th Folkestone Triennial
This year’s Triennial, curated by Sorcha Carey, brings together artists who respond to these layers and contours of Folkestone’s geological landscape. Artists explore themes of temporality, migration and climate change, community and interdependence, ancestral memory, and future possibilities that are embedded within the land. Scales vary from giant, fantastical sculptures to handheld amulets, through public sculpture and Land Art. We pick out some artists using interesting materials, craft techniques, and decorative flourishes below:
We’re huge fans of Rae-Yen Song 宋瑞渊 – and if you head to St Peter's Church (CT19 6AL) you will find a gorgeously soft, sprawling installation. Hanging from the ceiling is a flowing creature – part pet fish, part ancient sea worm – almost clashing with the reverent arches of the church. When not hanging from the ceiling, this piece is also a costume made to be worn by multiple people. From sea worms to salamanders, another creaturely craft piece comes from Monster Chetwynd, known for handmade costumes, sets, and props. The Salamander Playground is a playful intervention into public sculpture.
Sara Trillo has created an ‘Urn Field‘ at East Cliff, featuring 10 chalk cob sculptures inspired by Iron Age cremation urns discovered in Folkestone. You can also attend Trillo’s hands-on clay workshop (9 Aug) and donate your creation to be part of the interior of the artwork. On more grassy cliffs (Wear Bay Road), you will find another intervention into the landscape by Jennifer Tee, who has placed hand-formed bricks into flowing patterns to mimic the waves and kelp. Look closely and some bricks are printed with fossil-like sea creatures, and others embedded with sea glass.
Also by Wear Bay Road, you will find another piece honing in on site-specific materiality: Dineo Seshee Bopape’s ‘Ka Pheko ye (curse dissolved)’, which uses chalk, coal, seaweed, and mud. This house-like structure layers these materials to create a sacred, reflective monument. A quieter intervention comes in the form of Katie Paterson’s ‘Afterlife’, which sees the artist recreate nearly 200 amulets from museums all over the world using materials from landscapes under threat.
With 18 artists intervening into the landscape, this triennial asks you to look closely around you, to follow a trail that has materiality of the landscape at its core.
Beyond Folkestone…
There are plenty of other seaside spots in the UK to take in some arts and crafts this summer:
De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill – In 1935, a modernist ‘People’s Palace’ was erected on the East Sussex shore. A gleaming beacon of concrete, steel, glass, and terrazzo floors, the next few months you can catch textiles by Claudia Alarcón & the Silät collective: vibrant, hand-spun chaguar fibre textiles created through ancestral techniques like yica and antique stitc.
mostyn, Llandudno – Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream? (until 27 September) highlights newly commissioned works by Welsh artists alongside works by Jeremy Deller. Contemporary works – from ceremonial wicker sculptures by Lewis Prosser, to a tactile installation by Sadia Pineda Hameed – sit beside artefacts from Welsh musuem collections – like slate carving, recycled cloth, and photographs. There’s also Tonnau a Tir (until 13 September) a retail showcase of craft, design, and prints to explore.
Quench Gallery, Margate – Decadently Ordinary by Leily Moghtader Mojdehi & Meitao Qu is a duo exhibition that invites viewers to explore the intriguing interplay between the extravagant and the everyday. What seems mundane gets a decorative flourish, drawing our attention to how embellishment can tell stories of desire, memory, and emotion.
For landlocked Londoners – The Design Museum’s Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style (until 17 August) might whet your appetite for a dip. Curated by Amber Butchart, there are 200 objects on display relating to the pool, lido, and nature.
Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth – May Morris: Art & Advocacy features original embroidery and wallpapers for Morris & Co and documents Morris’ work establishing Women’s Guild of Arts.
Revisit our interview:
Making waves: Read, watch, listen…
Read Eileen Agar (Eiderdown Books, 2021) by Laura Smith, which uncovers the assemblage practice of a Surrealist by the sea. For Eiderdown Books – a gorgeously collectable series on women artists – Smith delves into Agar’s oceanic imagination. Agar saw the natural world in fresh new ways; speaking about her photographs of the remarkable rock formations at Ploumanac’h in Brittany, she described them as: “enormous prehistoric monsters sleeping on the turf above the sea”.
Modernism on Sea: Art and Culture at the British Seaside (Peter Lang, 2009) by Lara Feigel and Alexandra Harris is collection of essays on twentieth-century attitudes to the beach. The essays explore everything from Paul Nash’s surrealist benches on the promenade in Swanage to bawdy humour of Kiss Me Quick booths and postcard censorship. Kitsch meets modernist experiment in a series of fruitful encounters. Another edited collection, Oceans: Documents of Contemporary Art (Whitechapel, 2023), collates short essays and fragments ‘to address the ocean not only as a theme but as a major agent of artistic and curatorial methods’.
For a fictional foray, Pleasure Beach by Helen Palmer (Prototype, 2023) is a queer love story set in Blackpool over a single day: 16 June 1999. Mirroring the structure and themes of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the novel takes on multiple voices that move from the hedonistic to the fragile (and places inbetween).
Watch how Mella Shaw uses clay to make thought-provoking objects and site-specific installations addressing the climate crisis. In ‘Sounding Lines’ (on view at The McManus, Dundee until 18 January 2026), Shaw reflects on marine sound and sonar pollution on whale species through ceramics, ropes, and vibration.
In a short film for Turner Contemporary, Jasleen Kaur talks about the public sculpture 'The first thing I did was to kiss the ground' (2021), which responds to Gravesend’s complex history of migration. Kaur worked with the Sikh community, many of whom migrated to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, making Gravesend home to Guru Nanak Darbar – the largest Gurdwara in Europe. An audio piece, developed with the Saheli Women’s Group, wove personal sound biographies with the rhythms of the Thames.
In this Tate Short, John Akomfrah talks about making his work ‘Vertigo Sea’ (2015), a 48-minute immersive three-channel video installation that uses associative collage and montage techniques. He reflects on the “philosophy of montage”, his interest in archive and documentary and the importance of history.
Listen to the National Galleries of Scotland’s podcast series on Joan Eardley – a Scottish artist who often used oil and boat paint mixed with newspaper, sand and grasses. The first episode explores how Eardley approached the sea as a subject and the importance of the village of Catterline in the artist's life.
At the other end of the country, the final episode of The Quilt, which records living memories of queer Britain & Northern Ireland, explore the creative energy of the Cornish seaside.
Revisit our roundup, featuring Scottish Women Artists like Eardley:
Opportunities
Prize: Continuing the seaside theme, the Royal Society of Marine Artists is inviting artists to submit work for its Annual Exhibition 2025 at Mall Galleries; the exhibition offers several prizes and awards, worth over £5,000. Textiles, mixed media, and sculpture are all welcome, alongside paintings, drawings, and prints. More info on how to submit here.
Jobs: Craft Scotland is expanding its team, with three roles currently open - Creative Director, Learning Manager, and Marketing Co-Ordinator. If you’re based in Scotland and passionate about championing contemporary craft and makers, find out more here.
Commission: The Point in Eastleigh is looking for a textile artist to work with them on their ‘Flags For Freedom’ project, as part of the national project, 'Our Freedom: Then and Now'. If you have experience of working on community-engaged arts projects, apply by 28 July.
Opportunity: The Crinan Residency offers newly graduated artists the chance to spend time working in Crinan, an artist's haven on the west coast of Scotland, this September. Accommodation, materials, and a stipend of £500 are included, plus the chance to exhibit work created at London’s Kiosk gallery. Apply for free by 1 August.