Hackney Wick ponders its fate. Lauren Romano makes the trek east to investigate.
The Olympics Games 2012. I’m sick of them already. Aside from the fact that I’m about as sporty as a narcoleptic sloth, I can’t make up my mind what I dislike most. Is it the ridiculous, borderline indecipherable logo plastered everywhere? The tenuously spun ‘2012 and the community’ stories on BBC London News? Or the obscene amount of money it’s all costing? Perhaps it’s the fact that the closest most of us Londoners are going to get to any lycra-clad, bulging biceped athletes is roughly the distance between the living room sofa and the TV. And what good will all this fuss come to in the long run I ask you? As I wander around the deserted warehouse-lined streets of Hackney Wick one Thursday evening, I find myself wondering just how much the Games are actually changing things, right here, right now. I’m about to find out.
Over in the vast 6,000 square foot yard at Formans Smokehouse Gallery, engulfed in the shadow of the mighty Olympic stadium Legacy I, an exhibition of 22 site-specific sculptural works has been unveiled. Plotted randomly around a dimly floodlit site, sculptures lurk across the uneven terrain. Nearly all are composed from materials lifted straight from a building site or scrapyard. One of the more eye-catching exhibits – a fully functioning golden portaloo – shimmers in a corner, while discarded glass, timber and reclaimed car enamel feature widely, propped up and arranged in various ways. The pervading emptiness of the space is emphasised by the arrangement of the artwork; recycled materials are sparsely strewn across the derelict backdrop, here and there in neglected heaps. It’s the sort of set up where you have to both take the discarded junk at face value and look beyond it, all the while wondering if you’ve glossed over some important meaning.
The theme of legacy is curiously veiled in the majority of the works on show. Melissa Hinkin’s Faded future, faded past is one particularly effective example. Two white sheets, one dyed blue, the other yellow, are nailed to a brick wall and trail in shallow puddles. As the sheets billow in the breeze they act as a reminder of the dye factory that used to stand on the site. Back in the day the canal skirting the bottom of the yard frequently changed colour depending on what dye was thrown into it. Here in Hinkin’s piece in the drizzle and damp, the dye bleeds out of the sheets and disperses droplets of gleaming pigment through colour-tinged pools of water.
Elsewhere a grid of 66 squares of sediment collected from all over the site blends into the background and since there is nothing to identify the individual sculptures except a vague map I fail to work out what exactly a beautiful concrete Persian rug is called, let alone what it signifies. Yet I suppose that’s part of the uncertainty of the proceedings, the not knowing. Admittedly then, this exhibition might not be to everyone’s taste; the messages and stories bound up in the haphazard collection of fencing panels, pieces of wood, even an old market stall are not always immediately obvious, and while this adds a certain edge and depth, it is a tad frustrating at times.
Over on this side of the canal change is at a standstill. The former buildings that stood on the site were bulldozed to make way for Paralympian accommodation. For the time being then it’s good to see that such a unique space has been put to interesting use and hasn’t been left totally vacant. Whether in the end the yard comes to be ousted or embraced in the clutches of the Olympic stadium, only time will tell.
Legacy I is at Forman's Smokehouse Gallery until 5th December 2010.
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