‘Places, Like Property Prices, Go Up and Down’: Site-Specificity, Regeneration, and The Margate Exodus

Abstract

In October 2006, conservative magazine The Spectator published a review of Exodus Day, a day of live events staged in the struggling British seaside resort of Margate, and part of Artangel’s project The Margate Exodus. Opening her review, critic Ruth Guilding (2006) submits to her reader a piece of common sense. ‘Places,’ she writes, ‘like property prices, go up and down. Margate, in the most northerly corner of Kent, is just beginning the uncertain journey upwards again’ (Guilding, 2006). She imagines ‘place’, the project’s organizing concept, as a volatile asset whose value might be represented as such on a line graph; poverty-stricken Margate currently languishes at the bottom of the scale. The imaginary graph’s x axis, ‘time’, spans the 1700s to date: the critic’s introductory sketch of the town name-checks the Regency period, J M W Turner, mass tourism, culture-in-regeneration, and immigration and asylum, topping the list off with the observation that: ‘By southeastern standards, houses are still pretty cheap. Tracey Emin is Margate’s only success story’ (Guilding, 2006). ‘This,’ Guilding (2006) continues, ‘is where that strange, magical organisation Artangel comes in. It aims to make art outside the gallery, matching up artists, contexts and audiences to get something relevant, democratic and unmediated.’