Folkestone Triennial – a 'superb' and 'stimulating' exhibition

Once every three years, the seaside town of Folkestone plays host to a large-scale outdoor festival of contemporary art, said Stuart Maisner on BBC News. The triennial this year consists of work by 18 artists from 15 different countries, which is spread out across a bewildering range of "striking and unusual" locations – from a disused bridge to a former customs house, to a pair of Martello towers built to repel a French invasion in the early 19th century, leading the visitor on an unlikely walking tour through the Kent town.

The event was delayed by a year owing to complications arising from the Covid-19 pandemic – and turns out to have been well worth the wait, said Nancy Durrant in The Times: it is "a triumph". Entitled "How Lies the Land?", it investigates "the ground beneath our feet and the legacies that lie within it" via works ranging from J. Maizlish Mole's "fascinating" map of Folkestone's ruins at the harbour railway station, to Jennifer Tee's "huge" sculpture of a branch of kelp, which is made from bricks and sea glass and embedded in a hillside. The exhibits are usually involving and never less than interesting – it is, in short, an example of "exactly how to do an art festival in a specific location".

There is much to discover on this "seaside art trail", said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Some of the pieces are child-friendly – such as Emeka Ogboh's "artist-designed" ice creams, distributed outside a sound installation in a foot tunnel by the harbour; and Monster Chetwynd's giant salamander statue, which is intended as the first part of an adventure playground themed around the creatures.

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Others are solemn and thought-provoking. Beneath the pier, for instance, Dorothy Cross has placed a haunting "monument to migrants", in which disembodied feet appear to sprout from "blood-coloured" Syrian marble. It's "superb", and worth a visit in its own right. By contrast, I was "underwhelmed" by Laure Prouvost's sculpture of "a hybrid, three-headed bird" with – for some reason – "a plug dangling from its rear end", said Veronica Simpson in Studio International. While other works seem urgent and relevant, this one just looks silly.

There is much here, though, that is "stimulating", said John Quin on The Quietus. By the harbour, a building that looks like a government office houses a work by the art collective Cooking Sections, which documents the leaks of raw sewage into Britain's waterways. It's humorous, but also serious.

Similarly, there is Emilija Škarnulyte's "scary" but oddly charming film about the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant in her native Lithuania: nobody, it seems, has figured out what to do with the radioactive waste. The triennial combines "extensive research with a treasure hunt enthusiasm". Ultimately, it's "a lot of fun".

Various locations, Folkestone, Kent. Until 19 October