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The National
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Are Britain's clean seas a thing of the past?
A few miles along the coast from Dover's white chalk cliffs the English seaside town of Folkestone is holding an art festival, but with a difference. Every three years the 'Folkestone Triennial' commissions art works in which the town is the 'gallery'. As you walk around you will come across 20 or so artworks of different kinds responding to Folkestone's landscape and history. I've been visiting the "Minister of Sewers'. The Triennial guide says it's 'a creative project by the Turner Prize-nominated artists Cooking Sections' created as 'a platform for the public to voice concerns about coastal water pollution and share their experiences with sewage spills and related issues'. The project, in the harbour's old Customs House, begins with a friendly welcome and a display about water pollution and sewage, but behind it is a serious purpose. Folkestone, like much of the English coast, is delightful to live in and visit, but bathing in the sea is nowadays not always a pleasure. It can be a risk, especially after heavy rain. Too many of the beaches in prime swimming areas of England – including lakes and rivers as well as the sea – have seen bathing water quality dip from 'excellent' to 'good' or worse. Heavy rainfall can lead to overflows in the often antiquated sewage systems. When that happens the water quality drops to 'poor'. There is no official 'Minister of Sewers' in England, but the Folkestone arts project encourages visitors to make an appointment for a chat with one of the volunteers. The 'Minister' dressed in an official-looking 'Minister of Sewers' costume sat with me for a chat. She took notes about my own experiences as a sea swimmer on this lovely coast to gather evidence and create a "Log of Grievances" to support collective action and push for better water quality. Too many of the beaches in prime swimming areas of England – including lakes and rivers as well as the sea – have seen bathing water quality dip from 'excellent' to 'good' or worse Art in Action strikes a chord with the British public because sewage, water quality and the cost of drinking water are big news right now across the UK. We think of ourselves as a wet little island, but we have serious water problems and possible future shortages. We have a growing population in the south east, an area which has much lower annual rainfall than rural areas like the Scottish Highlands, and despite significantly increased demand for water we have failed to build any new major reservoirs since 1992. The Starmer government is promising action. They commissioned a review of the water industry in England and Wales by a respected former civil servant, Sir Jon Cunliffe. It was published last week and calls for once in a generation fundamental reforms to address what is being called Britain's 'Great Stink moment'. The Great Stink is a reference to the shocking state of the River Thames at Westminster in Victorian times. In 1858, the river was so polluted with sewage and the smell so bad that Members of Parliament refused to meet. A massive public works programme followed and a world-leading sewage system for London was built. A similar kind of energy and investment is now being promised although the details are as yet unclear. What is clear is that the privatisation of the water industry in England and Wales by Margaret Thatcher in 1989 has been a profound failure. Privatisation extracted private profits for shareholders and paid huge bonuses to some employees while failing to invest in reservoirs, better sewerage and fixing broken pipes and waste. The 464-page Cunliffe review has provided 88 recommendations for change, but re-nationalisation is not being contemplated largely because it would demand a vast amount of public money, which is not available. The Water Services Regulation Authority, or Ofwat, will be scrapped and what follows is billed as 'the biggest overhaul of water since privatisation'. Well, we shall see. But it's worth pointing out that Britain is not alone in having a water problem. Rising demand, growing populations, changes in our climate, and arguments about water quality are nothing new. The South African city of Cape Town came close to running out of water entirely a few years ago with 'Day Zero' – no tap water – a real possibility. The Afghan capital Kabul right now has severe water shortages. India and Pakistan's recent short-lived conflict over the terrorist attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir led to threats that India would abrogate the Indus Waters treaty that has shared waters between these two nuclear armed powers since 1960. In France, pollution of the River Seine caused the French government considerable embarrassment during the 2024 Olympics. They have cleaned things up since then at great cost. And in the first days of the Trump administration in January this year the new President and California Governor Gavin Newsom argued not just about California wildfires but about lack of water to fight them. It's predicted that the world in the 21st century will see water conflicts even water wars over this most precious resource. We can hope not. As for me, I just want my children and other families to be able to swim in our beautiful clean seas without worrying about the possibility that we really need a Ministry of Sewers.
The Guardian
18-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Mutant seabirds, sewer secrets and a lick of art ice-cream: Folkestone Triennial review
Folkestone doesn't have a pier. It has an Arm. That's what the harbour's long walkway into the Channel is called. It is a suitably surreal, even grotesque setting for the Folkestone Triennial artworks that infest its salty nooks and crannies – or armpits and elbow crooks. Laure Prouvost has placed a mutant seabird, with three heads and an electric plug on its tail, on the adjacent concrete stump of the defunct ferry terminal. Surprising? Not really if you have just visited The Ministry of Sewers, an installation by Cooking Sections that documents and protests the poisoning of our rivers and seas. There's nothing like an exhibit on the scale of Britain's water pollution to kick off a day at the seaside. It's cloudy when I visit, the cliffs and sea swathed in white mist and the water under the Arm looking like a detergent soup. It all adds to the uncanny mood. And art doesn't come much more uncanny than the sculpture by Dorothy Cross near the far end of the Arm. You have to go down soaking wet, concrete steps to a recess with a precipitous opening to the evil-looking sea. 'Try not to fall in,' says the attendant, who stays up above. Here you find a massive block of blood-coloured marble, as if a giant tuna steak had been stashed here by fish smugglers. The sides are smooth, the top uneven and rough. Out of this earthy hulk Cross has carved several pairs of feet in hyperrealistic detail, nervously walking its beach-like surface. They face out to sea, as if about to make a bold leap into the blue-green water, to find a better life. Cross has made a monument to migrants. The marble she has used is from Syria, the feet pattering over it full of fear and hope. These lifelike appendages and the surface on which they stand echo Magritte's surrealist 1934 painting The Red Model, of disembodied feet on red ground, while her use of massive, raw stone to suggest infinite sorrow - the weight of the world - shows she understands Michelangelo. This is a superb sculpture, brilliantly sited. It would be worth visiting Folkestone just to see it. But there's more – if you fancy a walk. Up above the cliffs, on steep green downs guarded by Martello towers built to fend off invasion during the Napoleonic wars, are a string of thoughtful, often witty artworks. A monolith that looks as if it were made from glue and plastic stands alone on a mowed hill, facing the sea. Approaching, you read the words 'Curse dissolved'. That's heartening. The brochure describes this piece by South African artist Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape as 'meditative' but it made me laugh. What is the curse? Who lifted it? I chew on this as I climb to a white circular tower inside which Katie Paterson also plays with magic. Paterson shows, on curving display tables inside the round room where red-coated soldiers once lived, a collection of mystic charms from different times and places. There are images of ancient Egyptian gods, Buddhist amulets and a tiny figure of the Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu who features in The Exorcist. Each replica is cast in materials that bear witness to planetary crisis, including space debris from satellites and plastic from the Mariana trench. Paterson has a track record of working with scientists to get her hands on such exotic materials. Her installation is a more refined version of the Ministry of Sewers, a sly way to show us that we are turning everything to crap. These amulets are bluntly satirical. They seem to mock the magical thinking of those who would wish away the Earth's crisis. If you head on to the next Martello tower you might be momentarily cheered up by Jennifer Tee's wavy picture of a giant kelp, mapped in the grass in brown bricks which also have sea kelp and other life forms imprinted on their surfaces. It makes you look out to the sea below and imagine the threatened life it holds. There are jollities to be found in this seaside art trail – for the kids, Monster Chetwynd has started building an adventure playground, and down in the harbour you can get Emeka Ogboh's 'artist designed ice-cream'. But then I find huge burial urns littered in the high moorland overlooking the misty Channel. Sara Trillo has modelled these deathly objects on bronze age grave goods. They return you to melancholy: the view from here is as bleak as it is beautiful. Folkestone Triennial opens on 19 July
