England’s Creative Coast, an organisation led by Turner Contemporary and Visit Kent and supported by the South East Local Enterprise Partnership (SELEP), is set to launch its new Waterfronts projects, which connects seven new outdoor artworks by leading contemporary artists across the South East coast.
The commissioned series will launch on the 16th April and run until the 8th November 2020. The project will highlight the vast stretch of coast across the SELEP patch, as well as connecting arts organisations and galleries in the South East, namely Margate’s Turner Contemporary, Creative Folkestone, Cement Fields in North Kent, Towner Eastbourne, Hastings Contemporary, Metal in Southend-on-Sea and De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea.
Waterfronts will launch at Turner Contemporary with the first of the commissions, a piece by Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz called ‘April is the cruellest month’ which links the Kent town with the Iraqi port of Basra. The project will launch on Turner Contemporary’s ninth anniversary, marking the day the gallery opened in 2011.
The SELEP area has the largest stretch of coastline of any LEP in the country. The Waterfronts project spans 1,400km of shoreline from the South Downs to the Thames Estuary, and is designed to encourage visitors to these seaside towns and highlight the creative and cultural hubs that are thriving along the South East coast.
The partnership will also see the launch of the world’s first art GeoTour, which uses geocaching to create a GPS-enabled ‘treasure hunt’ for visitors to search for hidden containers in the seven locations.
SELEP Chair Christian Brodie said:
“The South East is truly unique, in its landscape, its places and its people. This is a really exciting project which showcases and contributes to this unique corner of the country. The creative and cultural industries are a critical part of the South East economy.
“This has been acknowledged by SELEP in all our work, in our Economic Strategy Statement and in the development of our Local Industrial Strategy which we will launch later this year. We expect to play our part in creating the right conditions for this sector to thrive, to that end, we are delighted to support this programme and look forward to seeing its successes.”