Go for gold!

Abstract

The long-term photography project Go for Gold! is a series of photographs that depicts how the 2012 Olympic Games are transforming the Lower Lea Valley landscape. The project started in 2006 with images of future sports venues by using the Olympic Park master plan and a street map to locate the exact positions. The images capture the last moments of the Lea Valley landscape before it was razed to make way for the Olympics' international development programme, which will attempt to eliminate all traces of the past and impose an entirely new spatial reality on the area. The project continues to show the massive social and geographical transformations the Lower Lea Valley landscape is undergoing as work proceeds on the 2012 Olympic Games site. The promised legacy of the site will be major regeneration in terms of recreation, housing and small businesses. In the meantime, there is significant disruption of established relationships between residents and their natural and built environment especially through the blue fence that was erected around the construction site in 2007 and replaced by a high-security fence in 2009. Images between late 2007 and 2011 were taken around the perimeter of the site as the blue construction fence prevented anyone from accessing the site. The titles of the images denote the sites' future and evoke discordance. Although the future is invisible in the images, it is at the same time present through the approaching and impending Olympic master plan. Go for Gold! critiques the use of regeneration to bolster London's status as a global economic centre at the expense of local inhabitants’ needs.