Michael Sailstorfer Creates Gold Rush On Folkestone Beach For Triennial 2014

Michael Sailstorfer

The Berlin-based artist Michael Sailstorfer revealed his new work for Folkestone Triennial 2014, Folkestone Digs, over the weekend. Commissioned by arts producers, Situations, Sailstorfer has announced that he has buried 30 individual pieces of gold under the sand of the Outer Harbour beach in Folkestone.
 
The beach, which becomes partly covered at high tide, is open to the public. The pieces of gold are dispersed across a wide expanse of beach, which is only revealed during low-tide. So far Three people from Canterbury have found gold on a   beach after German artist buried £10,000 worth of bullion as part of the arts festival.

Mr Wood,28, relived the moment he struck gold: “My legs went from under me and I started shaking.
Couple Kevin Wood and Kirsty Henderson were joined by the latter’s sister, Megan, on the dig and found one of the £500 gold bars following an hour of digging.”I put it quietly in my pocket. We left the beach and half-way home, we pulled over for a drink.”

Sailstorfer’s previous works have included painstakingly collecting fallen autumn leaves, painting and refastening them back onto the tree to simulate a premature spring. Another work enacts a process of ‘cabin cannibalism’, with the artist feeding the rotting wooden walls of a small chalet to the wood-burner within, until nothing remains in the landscape but the burning stove. Sailstorfer is intent on expanding the notion of classical sculpture and Folkestone Digs is a continuation of his aim ‘to make art that comes less from the head and more from the stomach’.
 
Born in 1979, Michael Sailstorfer lives and works in Berlin. Though the artist’s artistic process spans highly elaborate productions to near-imperceptible interventions, a common factor across his work is the disruption of the everyday.
 
This work has been commissioned for the third edition of Folkestone Triennial, one of the UK’s most ambitious public art exhibitions, which opens on Saturday 30 August 2014. Internationally recognised artists, including Yoko Ono, Andy Goldsworthy and Pablo Bronstein, have created new artworks that are being exhibited throughout Folkestone’s public spaces under the title Lookout. A number of these works will become permanent additions to the landscape of the town, adding to Folkestone Artworks, the existing collection of permanent works from the previous two Triennials. Folkestone Triennial runs from 30 August – 2 November 2014 and will be open daily from 10am – 5pm.

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