‘Navigators and friends’: An Interview with Former Olympic Park Artist in Residence Neville Gabie and Curator Sam Wilkinson

Abstract

Neville Gabie was Olympic artist-in-residence between October 2010 and December 2011 at the Olympic Park in London, UK. Gabie was the only artist on-site during the construction phase of the Park and, with curator Sam Wilkinson, he developed Great Lengths, a series of public art pieces about the site and its workers. In an interview with Keren Zaiontz, Gabie and Wilkinson discuss the challenge of creating art on a construction site that also acted as a global stage for the UK in the lead up to and during the 2012 London Summer Games.

Notes

1. The ODA was a product of the 2006 London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act. Post Games, its mandate is to help transition the Olympic Park into the residential community, ‘East Village’, which will make use of the sports venues in a local capacity. See Olympic Delivery Authority, ‘What We Do’ and ‘Priorities’, <https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/olympic-delivery-authority/about> [accessed 26 June 2013].

2. Arts and Culture Strategy published, ‘Art in the Park’ (London: ODA, April 2012), which provides an overview of the installations as well as ‘artist-led community projects in the six Host Boroughs’, <http://www.wickcuriosityshop.net/2013/04/29/art-in-the-park_Neutral.pdf> [accessed 26 June 2013]. See in this issue, Hari Marini, ‘The ArcelorMittal Orbit’s Ambivalent Effect and the London Olympics: Art, Regeneration, Business and Sustainability’, 587–92.

3. See commissioned report for the ODA Art and Culture Strategy Team, Jess Fernie and Rachel Fleming-Mulford Square Pegs and Round Holes: A Report on the ODA Arts and Culture Programme (London: Open City and Art in the Open, 2011). This report includes numerous ‘recommendations for future regeneration programmes’ including project management, procurement, health and safety, accessibility and equality and advice from external curators (p. 5), <http://www.artintheopen.org.uk/pdf/OCAITO%20ODA%20Arts%20and%20Culture%20report.pdf > [accessed 17 August 2013].

4. See ‘Key Facts: Neville Gabie, GreatLengths2012’, <http://greatlengths2012.org.uk/about/key-facts/> [accessed 26 June 2013]. For a full description of the specific projects, visit the ‘Projects’ section of the Great Lengths website which includes links to Freeze Frame, Unearthed, 9.58, Twelve Seventy, Every Seat in the Stadium and A Volume of Water Drunk. See also my article in this special issue which discusses Unearthed and Twelve Seventy: ‘On the Streets/Within the Stadium: Art For and Against the “System” in Oppositional Responses to London 2012’, 502–18.

5. Sarah Weir quoted in Neville Gabie, Great Lengths 2012 (Manchester: Cornerhouse and InSite Arts, 2012), p. 9.

6. Gabie and Wilkinson jumped through a number of political hoops during the making of Twelve Seventy, a documentary about Park bus driver Semra Yusuf swimming the length of her bus route in the Olympic Aquatic pool. It took Gabie and Wilkinson ‘six to eight months to get permission’ to film Yusuf in the Aquatic site due to the considerable politicking surrounding who should be ‘first’ to christen the pool. Author interview with Gabie and Wilkinson, 22 February 2012, London Olympic Park perimeter, Viewtube café.

7. The Greatest Possible Distance was exhibited at the Danielle Arnaud Gallery in London (11 January–10 February 2013) and featured film and photography documenting Gabie’s ‘Greatest Distance’ excursions to Paris as well as audio recordings of the independent panel discussion that selected Martin Lewis’s winning Paris proposal. Documentation of the project is available on Neville Gabie’s Greatest Possible Distance site which gives the following statement on the homepage: <http://thegreatestdistance.wordpress.com/the-greatest-distance/> [accessed 26 June 2013].

8. Email correspondence with Sam Wilkinson, 1 July 2013.

9. Neville Gabie, ‘The Greatest Possible Distance’, <http://thegreatestdistance.wordpress.com/the-greatest-distance/? [accessed 26 June 2013].

10. In the introduction on the website for The Great Possible Distance, Gabie opens with a series of questions (some rhetorical, some speculative) including: ‘“The People’s Park – The People’s Games” are the mantra but do they obscure a more honest assessment?’ ‘Are the Olympics really anything to do with the promotion of sport, health, and wellbeing, or is sport merely the foil for Corporate sponsors, the IOC and media companies to fill their pockets and for national government to spend our money for their edification?’ ‘Inclusivity and participation are much used terms in relation to the Olympics. What exactly is meant by those terms?’. Ibid.

11. In addition to temporary and permanent artworks as well as Great Lengths 2012, Gabie and Wilkinson have collaborated on the long-term residency Cabot Circus (2006–2009, Bristol UK). See ‘Bristol Alliance Artist in Residence’, <http://www.nevillegabie.com/bs11.html> [accessed 26 June 2013] and ‘Cabot Circus’, <http://www.insitearts.com/projects/cabot-circus-bristol1/> [accessed 26 June 2013].

12. See the previous footnote for links to information about Cabot Circus, the Bristol-based residency that involved Gabie collaborating with the onsite workforce. In a linked project spearheaded by Gabie and Wilkinson titled, ‘BS1’, they produced the Project Circus Cantata, composed by David Ogden, and ‘performed by the Bristol City Choir generated by the songs of [2000] workers on site from over 59 different countries’. Visit <http://www.insitearts.com/publications/cabot-circus-cantata/> [accessed 26 June 2013].

13. Sir Robert McAlpine was the UK building and engineering firm that was contracted to build the Olympic Park stadium.