Contra-Culture
Contra-Culture
20 - 22 December 2019
Hop Projects
73 Tontine Street, Folkestone, CT20 1JR
Opening event & performance:
Friday 20 December 2019, 6-9pm
Exhibition open: 11am - 5pm
Contra-Culture is an event and exhibition that questions the market and cultural framework that characterises Folkestone’s creative landscape.
The installation will present a new journal, This Week in Folkestone (TWF) and performance by John Paul Grande - a professional hair stylist trained by Vidal Sassoon and local skater. John’s unique story presents an extraordinary insight into an innovative hyper-local social model developed out of a diaspora’s cultural hybrid deeply enrooted in the county’s margins.
A voice that opens up a debate on class, community, longing, and gender within the context of sub-cultures. It explores the value of traditions and resistance underlying Folkestone’s vernacular heritage, and hijacks the status-quo of cultural validation in Folkestone’s art scene: by placing alongside it a more diverse language of cultural production in the public sphere: one that holds the application of human imagination, care and emotional in its rawest form. It will also explore the flourishing of sub-cultures that consider perceived vandalism and trespassing as reclamation and protest. HOP willl produce an exhibition based on the ongoing research carried out in the lead up to the exhibition. Questioning the market and cultural values that structure the creative landscape of Folkestone, and the examination of how this shapes its geographical impact.
It aims to open up a debate on ideas of class, ownership, belonging, and gender within contexts of subcultures. It explores the cultural value of traditions and resistance, expressions of locals etc. that ‘hijack’ the status-quo of cultural validation in Folkestone’s art scene: by placing alongside it more diverse languages of cultural production in the public sphere that hosts the application of human imagination, commentary and emotional power in its rawest form. The flourishing of alternative entrepreneurial models, suggests the consideration of vandalism and trespassing as reclamation and protest.
The exhibition will present printed work, text, installation and performance with open public participation.
20th - 22 December 2019
Exhibition opening times: 11am - 5pm
‘Contra-Culture’ is an event and exhibition that questions the market and cultural framework that characterises Folkestone’s creative landscape.
The installation will present a new journal, This Week in Folkestone (TWF) and performance by John Paul Grande - a professional hair stylist trained by Vidal Sassoon and local skater. John’s unique story presents an extraordinary insight into an innovative hyper-local social model developed out of a diaspora’s cultural hybrid deeply enrooted in the county’s margins.
A voice that opens up a debate on class, community, longing, and gender within the context of sub-cultures. It explores the value of traditions and resistance underlying Folkestone’s vernacular heritage, and hijacks the status-quo of cultural validation in Folkestone’s art scene: by placing alongside it a more diverse language of cultural production in the public sphere: one that holds the application of human imagination, care and emotional in its rawest form. It will also explore the flourishing of sub-cultures that consider perceived vandalism and trespassing as reclamation and protest.
