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From left to right The Herring by Johan Creten; located near the Zeebrugge docks, Ivan Morison’s Star of the Sea is made of repurposed concrete
sewage pipes; US architecture practice SO-IL’s Common Thread, ‘an undulating octopus’ of silvery knitted tunnels
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
The art and architecture of the Beaufort and Bruges Triennials dovetails well to convince European neighbours that the Belgian coast and its medieval port city have significant charms of their own. Veronica Simpson reports
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE of the Beaufort Triennale? A public art festival that is now in its eighth iteration, the objectives of the region’s cultural and tourism organisations that fund it include attracting more tourists from surrounding countries to this windswept, dune-fringed coast. On the first night of the official 2024 press tour, attended by French, German, Spanish and Italian journalists in high numbers, a smaller cohort of British press warned the hopeful Belgian representatives at our table that we have enough rainswept beaches of our own, thanks. But that was before we had set foot on the sand the next day, which, thankfully, brought some glorious spring sunshine to win us over – we were also more than a little beguiled by the fact that there is a 67km-long tramline that goes all the way along the coast. It’s been running for 100 years, with 68 stops and it only costs €3 for a day ticket, with unlimited interruptions. Tere’s an incentive for starters, never mind the ease (and sustainability) with which you can travel there by Eurostar.
Tis stretch of coast is hugely popular
with Belgians, but mainly for seasonal breaks. Te mayor of De Panne, the town where we started, informed us that there are 11,000 people living in this municipality, though around 8,000 of them are second-home- owners, occupying the many quirky houses or holiday apartments, boosted by 40,000- 60,000 additional summer visitors. Its main asset, the mayor told us, is proximity to the French border and its natural charms – around 800 hectares of dunes and beaches. So how can 18 new sculptures (and a slew of remnants from previous festivals) add to those charms? We started our tour with Filip Vervaet’s public fountain and pavilion outside a brick church, which is about to be turned into a library. Lit up at night by glowing, blue- green, bauble-like beacons, the matching glass and steel pavilion can be admired from afar or entered, to reveal that the fountain’s level rises and falls in tune with the sea, a few blocks away. Set in new landscaping, this permanent work marks out a new civic space
Left Selva Aparicio’s At Rest – a jigsaw of over 4,000 bronze tiles featuring casts of the lined palms of local elders
for when the church/library opens later this year. So far so good. But the next permanent work, by Johan Creten, is the kind that gives public art a bad name. Here, a huge naked woman, her face and breasts pointing out to sea, dangles a large fish from navel to crotch. It’s a herring apparently, referencing the role that this fish has played in the region’s survival – though why it would be worn as a thong, as it is here, is far from clear.
By and large, the work is mostly
thoughtful, pleasurable or useful – sometimes all three. One of the latter, which spoke of deep immersion with local people and issues, was Selva Aparicio’s bronze, high-backed bench, placed in a newly reclaimed marshy site along a stretch of Nieuwpoort’s waterways, once a World War One frontline. Called At Rest, the back is a jigsaw of over 4,000 bronze tiles featuring casts of the lined palms of local elders with whom Aparicio worked closely. Te warm bronze and tactile quality of these individual palm prints bears witness to loss and age and yet also resilience, with its view over the calm, reed-fringed water. After that moment of quiet, Ivan
Triennale Brugge runs until
1 September 2024
triennalebrugge.be
Beaufort Triennale runs until
3 November 2024
triennalebeaufort.be
Morison’s delightful Star of the Sea structure, made of repurposed concrete sewage pipes (they are rejects from a nearby pipe factory, the artist assures us, and not previously contaminated) brought a blast of fresh ozone. Half buried in the sand near the Zeebrugge docks, you can crawl inside them for a spooky/mysterious experience, and many children were already doing so, as well as running and jumping over their sand strewn surfaces. Set, deliberately, a good walk across the beach at a point that might get your feet wet but won’t submerge you, it looks from afar like a collapsed sandcastle. Tis work is a co-commission with the simultaneously programmed Triennale Brugges (or, as we know it, Bruges), a less established festival that has the complex but rewarding task of animating the exquisite
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