Art in your swimsuit

Beaufort takes place every three years, and for this third edition it has a new curator in Phillip Van den Bossche, director of the Kunstmuseum aan Zee. He had no desire to change the basic concept, but he has introduced a new element.

"I invited the artists to come over and talk about the history and heritage of the Belgian coast," he explains. "I also talked with them all about the place of art and artists in society, and this translated into a dialogue with the locations. That can be a dialogue with the heritage of a place, but it can also be with a landscape and the place of art within that landscape."

One result is that there are a number of works that span across the visual arts and architecture divide, toying with building forms or presenting variations on the beach pavilion. Another is that almost all of the 30 works are new productions made for Beaufort, rather than being brought in from other contexts as in previous editions.

Also new is the idea of a single indoor exhibition, rather than a series of separate shows along the coast. It is "one large historical exhibition here in the museum, talking about artists, writers, architects and composers who lived and worked along the Belgian coast from 1830 to 1958," explains Van den Bossche. "There again you have this very strong line of history in the inside, which is in a dialogue with the outside."

He thinks these lines of dialogue have worked particularly well in the case of work such as “Le Vent soufle où il veut” (“The Wind Blows Where It Will”) by French artist Daniel Buren, which places a forest of 100 brightly coloured wind socks on the beach at De Haan. Another is “Saqueando nuestra histora” by the Chilean collective Brigada Ramona Parra, bringing the Latin American tradition of mural painting to a tunnel beneath the sand that leads to the sea at De Haan. "It's a very special location, and I think the only tunnel that still exists on the Belgian coast," says Van den Bossche.

Beaufort also includes a strong selection of local work. "I think it's important to give a platform to young Belgian artists," Van den Bossche says. "It’s a chance for them to be in this international project and to make a large-scale work for the first time."

Among these he particularly likes Sven 't Jolle's “Holiday in Melsbroek (127)” at Nieuwpoort. Inspired by the picture of a children's play area at a centre for asylum seekers, he has placed large, brightly coloured plastic toys behind a high security fence, right on the beach. "It’s a work that is artistically but also socially very important," says Van den Bossche.

The same mix of art and politics can be seen in another Belgian work – “Gaalgui” by Philip Aguirre Y Otegui. This large sculpture, also at Nieuwpoort, was designed and constructed in collaboration with craftsmen in a Senegalese coastal village, its form recalling the fishing boats used by migrants to reach the Canary Islands. The work doubles as a pavilion, containing information on the question of migration, with the added twist that you have to cross a small river by boat if you want to reach it from the beach.

Van den Bossche thinks the artistic dialogue that he has introduced into Beaufort will be the beginning of something big. "I see this as a very important step, and we still have further to go," he says, "I think it will help Beaufort reach a higher international level."

One possibility for the future is to develop further the idea of pavilions. "One of my dreams is to have maybe 10 really large pavilions all along the Belgian coast that, in the tradition of the 19th century, are a kind of temporary architecture you can place on the beach, made by an artist or by an artist and an architect," he says. Then his imagination really takes off. "One of my dream-like images is that there would be a pavilion like that and inside, for one day, under high security, you could go and see a painting of James Ensor in your swimsuit."

www.beaufort03.be

A day (or two) at the beach

Our guide to a slice of Beaufort

If you are really dedicated and drive from site to site, you can probably do all of Beaufort in a single day. But it's much more fun to take it easy and allow yourself to be distracted by the other sights along the way.

If you only have a day rather than the whole summer, Blankenberge is a good place start for a flavour of the whole project. Between the station and the boardwalk you can see “The Façade” by Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski, a house in Weststraat that the artist has artificially aged so that it looks like something out of an East European ghost story. He's even given it a Polish address.

Once on the coastline you can turn left and head for Thomas Houseago's “Untitled (Red Man)”, a large sculpture looking out to sea, which can only be reached by crossing a river in a small ferry. If you arrive when the service isn't running, the effect is a bit underwhelming, at which point it is safer to turn right and walk towards the pier.

On the way, you will pass David Cerny's famous “Babies” climbing the front of the casino, one of several works from past editions of Beaufort that have found a permanent home on the coast. The pier now also hosts “Ikarus”, a deceptively simple work by German artist Lothar Hempel in which an image of a dancer in mid-jump appears to float over the sea and sand, even over the bank of apartment blocks that line the sea front. (See photo, page 1) The effect is surprising and very pleasing.

Next, take the coastal tram northeast and step off in Zeebrugge for Guiseppe Gabellone's “Untitled”, a series of photographs tucked away in derelict sheds behind the old town hall. It's a fantastically eerie setting if you are there alone. The nearby port area is also a fitting home for Belgian artist Luc Deleu's “Orbino/Orban Space”, a pavilion made of shipping containers.

If you find this too industrial, press on to Knokke-Heist, where, at one end of town, Peter Rogiers' monstrous sculpture “A Fisherman's Friend” stalks through a sedate group of villas, and at the other, Leonor Atunes has sketched the outline and architectural elements of a long-gone coastal mansion with 15 white beach huts.

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