CT20 - Diverse Cultures from The Margins

As CT20 director , I'm on my way to the Garden Party hosted for UK's Creative Industries at the Buckingham Palace. What an honour! Thanks so much for the invitation 🪻🌷✨🎉🍰💖

Topiary Social Club #9

Paulina Martínez Marín - 30th July 2022, ‘Beach Bingo’

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‘We gathered on Sunny Sands Beach again for Beach Bingo.

This time with the tombola that Thierry lent to the Topiary Social Club, after telling him one night in The Old Buoy bar what I was doing in Folkestone. It was the first use of the tombola since Thierry found it on amazon. It gave us a real upgrade, we no longer had to carry the bag of little papers with numbers that get wet. Thanks Thierry.

After a long haul with John, carrying a supermarket trolley with broken wheels, we found ourselves on an empty beach. Fortunately Jess, my landlady, arrived with a bunch of friends bringing their bingo prizes. An aloe plant, a soap, a windmill and a beer were the most prized.

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The bingo singer was the surprise of the evening.

Daron, who just happened to be strolling along the beach, joined the game with the pink wireless microphone suggested by Enrico. Daron challenged us all with math challenges to figure out what number he was calling. Sometimes called backwards, sometimes with rhymes he made up at the moment.

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It was a good afternoon.

Next time we need to find out more about the football calendar. At least we could hear in the distance the goals of the English women's team that won the Euro final.’

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Visit https://paulinamartinez.cl/Social-Club-1 to read the full field notes from Paulina’s residency.

Images & Text: Paulina Martínez Marín

Topiary Social Club #8

Paulina Martínez Marín - 29th July 2022, ‘Outsiders Arrive At The Club’

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‘I begin to recognise the familiarity of the club.

Each table is used by the same groups of family and friends.

When I approached to sit at the table that had started inviting me, I chose a different seat from last week. It was explained to me that someone else sits there, and I discovered that each chair also has a name.

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They let me sit there while they arrived. I didn't last long, as with gestures and a smirking call for attention - as well as a firmness that announced that they would not be twisted - I was quickly moved when they arrived. I didn't want to accept the offered seat. It was a bad seat, facing the wall as if I was grounded and couldn't look at anything in the room. I then decided to sit next to a gentleman friend, opening a new seat at the same table.

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The game begins, and there is little room for gossip and conversation. The game plunges us into a collective concentration for two hours.

Between rounds, I noticed the group of outsiders sitting at the table that is usually left empty. I comment on it at my table. One lady claims they are not members, a little disgruntled. I tell her I'm not either, but she says, "You are a bit of a member now". I stay happy with her approval.’

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Visit https://paulinamartinez.cl/Social-Club-1 to read the full field notes from Paulina’s residency.

Images & Text: Paulina Martínez Marín

Topiary Social Club #7

Paulina Martínez Marín - 30th July 2022, ‘Club Tourist’

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‘Now that I share my exploration of clubs, everyone has started inviting me to their clubs.

They show me around their spaces and tell me about the many clubs in Folkestone.

- The community centre club
- The church-goers club
- The football supporters club
- The fishermen's club
- The craft club
- The youth club at the skate centre
- The working men's club
- The artists' club

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The latter I am told is exclusive and has caused some tension in Folkestone. I ask an artist, and he says he knows of no such club. I tell him he belongs to the club, similar to how I belong to it, that it's about those who occupy Tontine Street and are part of Folkestone's Creative Quarter.

We talk about the feeling of exclusivity, exclusion and openness in a club.

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He says that the artists' club is open and that others can approach it. He exemplifies this with me; how I have walked into the working men's club - which at first glance seems closed - and been welcomed.

We imagine the possibility of bridging clubs and how the Topiary Social Club might be able to do this, bouncing between clubs and crossing the magnetic barriers of membership.’

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Visit https://paulinamartinez.cl/Social-Club-1 to read the full field notes from Paulina’s residency.

Images & Text: Paulina Martínez Marín

Topiary Social Club #6

Paulina Martínez Marín - 24th July 2022, ‘Private Club Event’

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‘This weekend the Topiary Social Club held a private birthday party.

It started on the beach with the most intimate friends and ended at the Firkin Alehouse with a cake, candles and a congratulation card.

Even Randolph, the photographer, came to document such a great event.

It was a lovely birthday. Thanks to its attendees and organisers’

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Visit https://paulinamartinez.cl/Social-Club-1 to read the full field notes from Paulina’s residency.

Images & Text: Paulina Martínez Marín

Topiary Social Club #5

Paulina Martínez Marín - 17th July 2022, ‘Open Club #1’

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‘On Sunday, we met at Sunny Sands Beach for the first open meeting of the club: Beach Bingo!

After chatting with a few curious onlookers, only a few dared to play the game. Bathing breaks, a tied match and a squeeze dolphin prize were some of the afternoon's highlights.’

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Visit https://paulinamartinez.cl/Social-Club-1 to read the full field notes from Paulina’s residency.

Text: Paulina Martínez Marín
Images: Paulina Martínez Marín, Nina Shen-Poblete & Enrico Tarò

Topiary Social Club #4

Paulina Martínez Marín - 15th July 2022, ‘Topiary Social Club’

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‘The club goes in search of its topiary ball members.
Searched in the street, the club is installed momentarily next to them.
The house members of the club do not yet know that they belong to the club.
When we went with Enrico, a lady stopped us from the other side of the street.
- "What is that?" She didn't understand.
- "A planet?"

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She was still curious, so we ended up going to her pavement to show her what it was from a closer perspective.
- "Ah, but the real topiaries are alive".
I told her that there were also fake ones, that I had seen them in the garden centre, but ours was the fakest of them all.
She spent a long time explaining to us how real topiaries looked.
We continued to learn about the real ones - both plant and plastic - by drawing them in the street and talking to others about topiaries.’

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Visit https://paulinamartinez.cl/Social-Club-1 to read the full field notes from Paulina’s residency.

Images & Text: Paulina Martínez Marín

Topiary Social Club #3

Paulina Martínez Marín - 13th July 2022, ‘Bingo!’

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‘Today the one who sings the numbers did not come. His replacement was faster, forcing us to be attentive.

The bingo professionals use colour dabbers. One colour is used per sheet while the rest of the dabbers wait airing without a cover. The hypothesis is that it is to avoid the transfer of the ink to the rest of the sheets, as it happened to Enrico, who later could no longer differentiate the number he had just marked with the marks of the previous game.

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Adrenaline rush when the checkers corroborate that the numbers are correct.

I won a full house for the first time and Enrico didn't dare to shout Bingo! when he won a row.

As I said goodbye I was told: "maybe see you next week".
Slowly I am making friends.’

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Visit https://paulinamartinez.cl/Social-Club-1 to read the full field notes from Paulina’s residency.

Images & Text: Paulina Martínez Marín

Topiary Social Club #2

Paulina Martínez Marín - 8th July 2022, ‘Joining The Club’

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‘Entering the club still feels like an intense experience. Discovering a way in to get around the entrance key. Walking through the lounge, feeling that everyone is looking at me because, in the familiarity of the context, I am a complete stranger. Arriving at the bar and asking if I can play bingo, that I am not a club member - I explain. I say this knowing that they already know, as well as insisting on an uncomfortable fact - I know I don't belong here. Can I come in?

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They say yes that I have to pay a pound. They say it matter-of-factly, not as if they are uncomfortable with my presence. However, I feel a bit alien and invasive. I sit with my beer at the only empty table and wonder what I'll do when I cannot find one. I recognize several people from last time. At the same tables, with similar groups. I feel glad to be recognizing the familiarity of the space. The ones at the next table greet me and give me specific indications throughout the game. Those who helped me last time remember me and point at me from a table on the other side of the room. I smile shyly at them.

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At bingo this time, I didn't have any luck. Though perhaps, luckily, as one lady jokingly shouted to another who won all the prizes, ‘Bloody hell, you beginners that steal all our food!”.’

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Visit https://paulinamartinez.cl/Social-Club-1 to read the full field notes from Paulina’s residency.

Images & Text: Paulina Martínez Marín

Topiary Social Club #1

Paulina Martínez Marín - June 2022, ‘The Living Room’

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‘The "Quiz Nights" broadcasted on Facebook during the pandemic were the first encounter I had with one of Folkestone's social clubs.

Sitting at home during the lockdown in Chile, I came across a 70-something-year-old man on a live stream reading different questions about British popular culture while others played from home - an image that captured my attention.

Amazed by the club's ability to respond to the challenges of the pandemic, I was curious to learn more about these places and the particularities that allow them to adapt to time and circumstances and continue to offer a space for their community to meet.

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As a Chilean woman with no experience being a club member of any kind - sadly, not even the one my bigger cousins popped up to on a summer afternoon - I felt mobilized to get closer to the experience of belonging (and not belonging) to a club.

With the collaboration of CT20 and the support of the Ministry of Culture of Chile, I started this residency of arts and social processes, which aims to collectively reflect on Social Clubs with the community of Folkestone, UK.

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Working Men's Clubs are popular in the UK, dating back to the mid-1800s. Originally, they came about as cooperatives led by their members and functioned as an extension of their members' living rooms, incorporating “sociability, entertainment, games and drink” (C & IJ, 1986, in Cherrington, 2012, p. xiii). Nowadays, it is still possible to find them, although the total number of clubs has been reduced, with fewer new and younger memberships. However, in Folkestone - with variations - they are still very alive.

Entering and sitting in the living room of a house is not something that an outsider can do all of a sudden - at least in the British culture - it can be similar in a social club, with their memberships and familiar atmosphere.’

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Visit https://paulinamartinez.cl/Social-Club-1 to read the full field notes from Paulina’s residency.

Images & Text: Paulina Martínez Marín

C& IJ, 1986, in Cherrington, R. (2012). Not just beer and bingo! A social history of Working Men's Clubs. AuthorHouse, Bloomington.

CT20 Projects recently welcomed Chilean artist Paulina Martínez Marín to Folkestone to complete a residency of arts and social processes.

Aiming to collectively reflect on Social Clubs within the local community, she carried out a series of interventions throughout Folkestone during the course of her residency.

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A visual artist and community psychologist from Chile, Paulina’s practice entails arts and social processes, exploring different ways of moving with other spaces, objects and/or beings.

Here, through a series of posts over the coming weeks, Paulina will be documenting the story of her residency in her own words. A complete outsider to Folkestone and its social clubs, from a fascination in a culture, to an immersion in unfamiliar environments with sets of unspoken rules, to the creation of her own social club hosting its first events and finding new members, Paulina captures the journey of creating ‘The Topiary Social Club’.

CT20 Dispatch: ‘CView’ by Jack Cheetham at Celine Gallery, Glasgow

Last Saturday, we were fortunate to catch a one day only site-specific installation at Gallery Celine. The work was restaged after its original implementation during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Only ‘accessible’ through a telescope set-up in the gallery space - which is itself a found ‘living room’ within a third floor tenement apartment in Glasgow - looking through the lens allows one to catch a glimpse of the sculptural installation on the rooftop of McNeill’s Bar and Torrisdale Street Studios.

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In Jack’s words, the work is ‘rooted in contemplations around consumer cultures, labours, and legacies. It incorporates expanded forms of caricature and cartooning, primarily based on Jack himself, and a failed castle and ostentatious structure created by the local historic industrialist ‘Smedley’ family that overlooks his hometown of Matlock in Derbyshire, England’.

The exhibition is also accompanied by Vol.1 of ‘Sump’, an artist publication by Jack Cheetham.

www.jcheetham.com

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Celine Gallery is an independent artist-run space by Celine Amendola, Adam Lewis Jacob and Michael White, based in Glasgow, Scotland

www.galleryceline.com

We are delighted to welcome our current Artist in Residence at CT20: Jeffrey Bligh (David Thorp)  

Since 1 September, Bligh has been carrying out a 5-day durational performance at CT20’s project space as part of a research residency undertaken at CT20, where he will be writing out, word by word, and on a continuous reel of paper, Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’. 
For Bligh, Kafka’s short story explores the idea of split identities, resonating with his own duality as both Jeffry Bligh and David Thorp, though not in a fictitious way. ‘Jeffrey Bligh was adopted shortly after birth. From then on, he was known as David Thorp. And Bligh has recently returned as an artist to his birth name, everything Jeffrey does David does too’.

Bligh uses words and poems as part of this exploratory narrative. He creates the texts inwardly, he doesn't speak out loud. The texts arouse memory and become images; the words are the sound of internal speech vibrations made visual, dictating how the final image appears. The cycle of life experience and creation doubles up as much as a referential exchange between Jeffrey and David as with a dialogue with the identity of Folkestone. 

The project builds on his research on Folkestone as a seaside town - the site of collective historic memories with an economy based upon its presence as a coastal resort popular with British holiday makers. It contrasts this collective identity with that of an individual, Jeffrey Bligh, investigating the idea that nothing remains static through time. This record of fleeting encounters and intense moments conveying memories of place and time articulates and attempts to understand the personal narratives that underpin lived experience.  
You can see Jeffrey’s live performance until Tuesday 6 September 2022 | 10am - 5pm (hours may vary slightly)

The residency will result in a site-specific installation extending over the three floors of the CT20 building at a later stage. Watch this space!
Jeffrey’s recent works has recently been shown at Contemporary Space in July 2022, curated by Tomas Poblete.

Text by Nina Shen and David Thorp
Images by Nina Shen

Today at TOPIARY SOCIAL CLUB: Beach Bingo - an intervention by CT20 artist in residence Paulina Martínez Marín.

OPEN CLUB #4:
Sunday 14th August 2022
Eyes down: 5pm
Sunny Sands Beach, Folkestone (you will find the signage on the beach)
Following a period of research into Folkestone’s social clubs, on Sunday 10th July, Chilean artist Paulina Martínez Marín staged her first intervention since her residency began.

Meeting at Sunny Sands Beach for the first open meeting of the Topiary Social Club, she invited residents of Folkestone to join her for a game of beach bingo. Against the backdrop of the ocean, Paulina chatted with curious onlookers before the game started, and after a few bathing breaks a tied match had been decided, with the winner awarded a prize of an inflatable dolphin.
Paulina Martínez Marín is a visual artist and community psychologist from Chile. Her practice entails arts and social processes, exploring different ways of moving with other spaces, objects and/or beings.

Join Paulina THIS SUNDAY for the next meeting of ‘The Topiary Social Club’, where you can join in a game of beach bingo. Eyes down at 5pm! 👀
If you would like to take up a residency or have a project in mind, please get in touch with us: [email protected]

Photographs: Nina Shen
Graphics: Paulina Martinez

THIS FRIDAY: CT20 artist in residence Paulina Martínez Marín premieres her debut radio programme broadcast, alongside The Community Network Cheriton.

Friday 12th August
3pm
Live on The Community Network Cheriton’s page.

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Following a series of interventions at Sunny Sands Beach with the ‘Topiary Social Club’, Chilean artist Paulina Martínez Marín will be presenting her radio programme, ‘The Topiary Room: encounters to talk about Social Clubs in Folkestone’, on Friday 12th August.

Broadcast on the Cheriton Community Network, the programme promises to be an instance in which a group of experts - members of Folkestone's social clubs - talk about their experience participating in clubs. The aim of the conversation is to give advice to the ‘Topiary Social Club’, an amateur social club that seeks to generate membership among the topiary balls of Folkestone.

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Paulina Martínez Marín is a visual artist and community psychologist from Chile. Her practice entails arts and social processes, exploring different ways of moving with other spaces, objects and/or beings.

Paulina will be announcing more openings of the ‘Topiary Social Club’ soon, with games of beach bingo and more planned throughout the course of her residency. Keep an eye on our socials for more information over the coming weeks! 👀

On now at 73 Tontine St Gallery: ‘Tracing Time’ a new duo-show by Mahal de Man () and Clare Smith ()

Join us for the last day of this exhibition and the closing event tomorrow: 
4-8pm (6-8pm screenings)
73 Tontine St, Folkestone, CT20 1JR
Minimalistic yet deeply thought-provoking, ‘Tracing Time’ has been open for the last week in our project space, bringing together drawings made over the past three years by Dover-based artist Clare Smith and Dutch artist Mahal de Man.
As part of July’s Last Fridays Folkestone event, on Friday 29 July the project space will host a special screening event of short films and video work by both artists - including the UK premiere of ‘3+4’, a filmic collaborative tribute to Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1965), edited by Clare Smith, with drawings by Clare Smith and Joanna Jones and soundtrack by Gabor Stark. 

Head down to 73 Tontine St from 4 to 8pm tomorrow to enjoy the exhibition, where from 6pm the space will be blacked out and ‘3+4’ and ‘Twisting’ will be on view one last time. There will even be light refreshments and homemade vegan brownies!
Clare Smith and Mahal de Man are the latest artists to hire out our gallery / project space. If you are interested in hiring out this space, please DM us or email: [email protected] for more details and rates.

We are excited to announce that Chilean artist Paulina Martínez Marín () is currently completing a residency with CT20 in Folkestone!

Stay tuned for more information on her next intervention… 🏡⁠⁠⁠
Paulina Martínez Marín is a visual artist and community psychologist from Chile. Her practice entails arts and social processes, exploring different ways of moving with other spaces, objects and/or beings. 

Inspired by the boredom that the predictability of the world gives her and the surprise that appears when this predictability fails, Paulina’s interest lies in investigating the possibilities of dislocating norms within public spaces by introducing strangeness and absurdity. Through play and collaboration, she seeks to trigger complicity with others, provoking ways of relating to each other and flirting with new ways of inhabiting. ⁠⁠⁠
Paulina will be carrying out a series of interventions throughout Folkestone during the course of her residency. Keep an eye on our socials for more information over the coming weeks! 👀⁠⁠⁠
Images of Paulina’s previous work: 
1. Community radial program "Melinka para conocer y conversar" (2019-2020), Las Guaitecas, Chile.
2. Performance "La Muerte de Tinky Winky" (2018), Casablanca, Chile. 
3. Performance "Invitation à être une b***e de paille" (2022), Bonn, Switzerland.

Do you have works ready to show but no space to facilitate them?

Our gallery / project space based in the heart of Folkestone’s Creative Quarter is now available for hire!

73 Tontine Street
Folkestone
CT20 1JR

Message us or email: [email protected] for more details and rates.

We are an independent arts platform based in Folkestone’s Creative Quarter, home to a vibrant community of artists and creatives. This year we are programming off-site events, so there is a rare window of opportunity to make the gallery space available for the public to hire on a weekly basis. 🎨

We want to use the money raised to independently fund an ARTIST RESIDENCY / EXHIBITION programme, to be hosted later in the year or early 2023 when we raise sufficient funds.

Watch This Space for future updates.

If you missed Ann Morgan on BBC Radio Kent’s BBC Upload show last night don’t worry!

The show is available to listen back on BBC Sounds.

We loved listening to all the great local talent across the hour-long show, but head to around 32 minutes into the broadcast to hear ‘The World In Folkestone’!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0c3r3nn

Upload on BBC Radio Kent - 16/05/2022 - BBC Sounds Get yourself on BBC Radio Kent. A chance to showcase your talent. With Leo Ulph.

We are very excited to announce that Ann Morgan’s commission for CT20 Projects, ‘The World In Folkestone’, will be featured on this evenings’ BBC Upload show on BBC Radio Kent.

Tune in from 9-10pm this evening to hear a segment from Ann’s podcast series alongside a whole range of incredible local talent!

Thank you to the show’s host, Leo Ulph, for helping to share the untold stories and diverse perspectives of Folkestone residents.