UK Olympics: Art for Art's sake or are they just pricy gimmicks?

Published in jotta Magazine Monday, 11th January

Robert Pacitti, an art director from Suffolk, has just received £500,000 to create an installation. He will conduct a mass research project on the notion of ‘home’. He will do this through a series of public events, such as a dinner of world cuisines set to feed 1000 people, which will be recorded in a feature film.

hauna RRobert Pacitti, Sichardson: East Midlands, Alfie denn and Paula Le Dieu: London, Alex Hartley (Click any image to enlarge it)

Pacitti has received a lot of criticism, particularly for his plans to fly 205 black flags across the coast, later to be replaced by the flags of the 205 countries participating in the Olympics. This is said to promote fickle “gimmicks over legacy”.

Pacitti is one of 12 artists across the UK awarded this grant as part of an Arts Council funded project, Artists Taking the Lead, which has been set for the 2012 Olympics. Critics of Pacitti have raised questions on the artistic value of all 12 pieces, and whether this can outweigh the money that will be spent on their production.

“Will it be any good? And will anybody care?” asks a Guardian journalist at the ATTL launch in March last year. ATTL will be receiving a lot more funding and a lot more coverage than other art projects in line for the Olympics.

It is not a surprise that Artists Taking the Lead, a project which has put £5.4 million into 12 commissions spread across the country, has achieved such scepticism. Cynics are sure to raise their voices when it comes to government expenditure. In this particular case, money is shown to have been attributed to individual artists, and the award of a £500,000 budget may seem a bit like winning the lottery. However these funds will not be feeding the artists themselves but going towards the production of their projects. These are larger than life scale installations that will involve the efforts of many, many practising designers, sculptors, accountants and engineers. In fact these projects are so technically ambitious that a £500,000 budget might not be enough!

Pacitti’s flags and feasts, as a critic called them, may value entertainment over artistic depth, but this is part of a political motive inherent in all the ATTL projects. Each piece does its best to involve the community and to reflect national pride. The Northern Ireland project THE NEST will be a devised musical piece based on objects donated by “the people of Northern Ireland”, which is to be performed in Belfast. Shauna Williams, commissioned in the East Midlands, plans to build three taxidermy style 30 foot high lions across Nottingham to disseminate the values of courage and nobility, commemorating Richard Lionheart, and “celebrate the region”.

The debate between elitist and accessible art, Ezra Pound over Harry Potter, Tarkovsky over Goddard is made prominent. That the commissioned pieces are neither too obscure nor avant-garde, that no one opted for a gothic performance on male/female deconstruction (followed by an after-party in a Glasgow basement) is part of a deliberate and political choice. Rather this is art that is democratic, it aims to be universally understood.

“Much is being prepared for the Olympics, and a lot of it has received Arts Council funding.” Says an artist commissioned by Art at the Edge, a project organising a public display of sport themed art. Here, as opposed to ATTL, established fine artists will be creating exhibition pieces, and their audience is restricted to the gallery space. Aimed at the wider public rather than the artistic elite, ATTL becomes dependant on wider coverage, larger scale pieces and accessible ideas.