The programme takes on the human-made natural environment

MARGATE NOW announces details for Sunken Ecologies, the festival programme for 2021.

Curated by independent curator, educator and researcher Anna Colin, the festival will include permanent commissions by Nicolas Deshayes, Lindsey Mendick and Olu Ogunnaike, and commissions by headline artists Ama Josephine Budge, Adam Chodzko,Kim Conway, Sonia Overall, Christina Peake, Shamica Ruddock, Holly Slingsby, Francesca Ter-Berg and Sara Trillo.

Launching as Sunken Ecologies, Colin’s programme takes on the human-made natural environment, centering on the Sunken Garden, a public park in the Westbrook area of Margate, designed and landscaped in the 1930’s.

Comprising nearly 30 exhibitions, installations, performances, walks, talks and other events by over 20 artists, musicians and writers at the Sunken Garden, Nayland Rock Hotel, CRATE, Limbo, Cliftonville Cultural Centre (formerly Margate Synagogue), galleries and project spaces, public places around the town and online, the 2021 festival showcases Margate as a centre for the production and presentation of new contemporary art.

Highlights of the 2021 programme:

Permanent commissions

· New permanent commissions by Nicolas Deshayes, Lindsey Mendick and Olu Ogunnaike for Margate’s Sunken Garden. Made from sustainable materials and responding to the practical needs of the Garden and of the community group that cares for it, the three functional artworks include: a gate for the Garden’s cave to store gardening tools, a compost bin and a bench.

Headline artists’ commissions

· Ama Josephine Budge engages speculative fiction and ethno-botany in her short story about the Sunken Garden.

· Cellist Francesca Ter-Berg’s multi-channel sound installation activates the Sunken Garden at dawn and dusk.

· Adam Chodzko’s video work mapping the movements of play, draws on the network of pathways used by children between the bushes and trees on the worn periphery of the Sunken Garden.

· Sara Trillo’s installation in the basement of Nayland Rock Hotel operates as a laboratory for researching the science and archaeology of the Sunken Garden.

· Shamica Ruddock’s soundtrack for the Garden, reverberates online and across the airwaves.

· Writer Sonia Overall’s ‘misguided’ walks and labels telling the story of the absent plants of the Sunken Garden, through real and imagined pasts and futures.

· Comparing the Sunken Garden to the bottom of the ocean, Christina Peake’s sculpture researches bio-resins, plant starch and living matter to grow a coral.

· Holly Slingsby’s film considers gardens as spaces of isolation, contemplation and re-generation, imagining Homer’s Penelope, anchoress Julian of Norwich, abbess Hildegard of Bingen and the Virgin Mary as lockdown gardening, in hortus conclusus of the Sunken Garden.

· Exposing plant matter onto photographic film, Kim Conway presents a camera-less ‘reality cinema’ of the micro ecology of the Sunken Garden, accompanied by a live improv concert led by Jemma Cullen, The Potatoe Band (Rosie Carr and Holly Hunter) and members of GOLD (Getting On with Learning Difficulties), and public participants.

Partner commissions

· In the Sunken Garden, Cliftonville Cultural Space together with local artists, horticulturalists and others collectively create a Jewish Sukkah, or temporary shelter, made from reclaimed materials and foraged plants, to celebrate Sukkot, a Jewish festival of the Diaspora marking harvest gathering, nature and environment. The Sukkah will be used to present a programme of acoustic music from artists including Falle Nioke, Polish, Roma and Klezmer musicians from the local area and beyond.

· Artists and storytellers Simon Cole, Dominic Rose and Jon Spencer of Transit Collective present Global Westbrook, a walk that recreates the novelty and curiosity of a foreign holiday without leaving the area. From Margate Station to the Sunken Garden, walkers are guided through international influences on local architecture, urbanism and botany.

· Rebekah Ubuntu, Jules Varnedoe and Jerome White showcase new works exploring marine ecology at Pie Factory.

· Elspeth Billie Penfold of Margate Bookie creates Arcade to Arcadia, a performative walk inspired by Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, starting at the amusement arcade opposite MargateSands and concluding at the Sunken Garden.

· In the Sunken Garden, Limbo artist Sadie Hennessey’s large-scale sculptural ‘lump’ of Fool's Gold alludes to space, deep time and over consumption.

· Open School East’s Associates co-curate a talks and workshops programme, and the Young Associates produce a collaborative work overseen by Adam Chodzko.

Outdoor and online talks and intimate events will take place during the three weekends of the festival: 25-26 September, 2-3 October and 9-10 October 2021.

The festival presents a commissioned programme and exhibitions in collaboration with partners and venues, selected from proposals by creative practitioners who live and work in Margate and across south-east England.

Further details of the programme to be announced at the beginning of September.

Curator Anna Colin said, “If many of the artists involved have a direct relationship with nature and the outdoor and are connected to the urgency of the climate crisis, others have been invited for their poetic and speculative approaches, and response-ability. Sunken Ecologies’ subtext includes engagement with the themes of cooperation, collective experience, colonial legacies, reflections on the Capital-ocene, and the precariousness of land.”

Dan Chilcott, Jo Murray and Claire Orme, Co-Directors of Margate NOW said, "We are thrilled to be announcing our headline artists and partnership commissions for Margate NOW 2021. This year promises to be an exciting development for our festival, as Anna Colin consolidates the Sunken Ecologies programme with a line-up of artists that demonstrate quality and creativity."

Margate NOW began in 2014 as Margate Festival, and has grown into an annual festival producing contemporary culture for diverse audiences in site-specific locations around Margate. Previous guest curators include People Dem Collective (PDC) (2020); Russell Tovey (2019); and Sacha Craddock (2018).

Margate NOW 2021 is only made possible thanks to public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Kent County Council, and support from Interreg Experience and Visit Kent.