Tatler UK - 09.2019

Tatler September 2019 tatler.com

FOLKESTONE

Kent

This coastal town is alive with art,

from Antony Gormley’s ‘Another

Time’ to Tracey Emin’s poignant

‘Baby Things’ and Turner prize-

winner Lubaina Himid’s beautiful

‘Jelly Mould Pavilion’ on the beach.

Mirroring the High Street’s brightly

painted buildings are Richard Woods’

miniature houses dotted about in

unusual places. There are over 70 works

on the Folkestone art map, including

Cornelia Parker’s fabulous ‘Folkestone

Mermaid’, a life-cast of local resident

Georgina Baker.

creativefolkestone.org.uk

The once London-centric contemporary art

scene is making waves in Britain’s seaside towns

By HELEN ROSSLYN

ST IVES

Cornwall

Tate St Ives is one of the nation’s

great museums, set in the most

spectacular location. Take time out

from the seafront and seek out the

Barbara Hepworth Museum and

Sculpture Garden, which celebrates

one of Britain’s most important

20th-century artists. Hepworth

moved to Cornwall with her husband

Ben Nicholson at the outbreak of

war in 1939 and described finding

Trewyn Studios as ‘a sort of magic

[with] a studio, a yard and garden

where I could work in open air and

space.’ The magic remains today,

providing an insight into her life;

from her working overalls hanging

on the back of her studio door to

her sculptures, seen as she always

wished, not in a museum but in a

garden, bathed in Cornish light.

tate.org.uk

ALDEBURGH

Suffolk

Maggi Hambling’s striking four-

metre-high steel sculpture ‘The

Scallop’ on Aldeburgh Beach is

dedicated to composer Benjamin

Britten, and inscribed with lines

from his opera Peter Grimes: ‘I

hear those voices that will not be

drowned.’ Visitors are encouraged

to sit inside the shell, where the

sound of the waves and the wind

resonate around them, and engage

with the sea, contemplating its

mysterious power.

BOURNEMOUTH

Dorset

Cantilevered across the clifftop,

the Russell-Cotes Museum was

built as an extravagant gift from

the city’s former mayor, Sir Merton

Russell-Cotes, to his wife, Annie,

in 1901. Today, it is filled with an

eclectic collection of cultural treas-

ures and curiosities, but a real high-

light is the unexpected pleasure of

finding ‘Venus Verticordia’ by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (which

returns to the museum this month

from loan in Japan), just a stone’s

throw from the sea.

russellcotes.com

MARGATE

Kent

The architectural wonder of the

Turner Contemporary, designed by

Sir David Chipperfield, stands on

the seafront in Margate on the site

of Mrs Booth’s guesthouse, where

JMW Turner often stayed from the

1820s; he described the area’s skies

as ‘the loveliest in all Europe’. The

permanent collection includes

several Turners, and there’s a rolling

exhibition programme, including

Seaside, Photographed, a historical

snapshot from the 1850s to now

• the gallery’s first photography show.
  turnercontemporary.org

Wilder shores

T R AV E L

C U LT U R E

A MUST SEA

‘The Scallop’ by Maggi

Hambling in Aldeburgh

PHOTOGRAPHS: ALAMY; IAN KINGSNORTH/© BOWNESS/IMAGE © TATE; RICHARD WOODS, HOLIDAY HOME, 2017, PART OF FOLKESTONE ARTWORKS. IMAGE COURTESY OF CREATIVE FOLKESTONE AND THIERRY BAL

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