Introducing Neville Gabie

I hadn't really thought about what an artist in residence did, but I found out when I went to meet Neville Gabie at the View Tube last Sunday, during the Open Weekend at the Olympic Park.

Neville is the official Artist in Residence at the Olympic Park, and employed for 15 months to record and comment on developments; he finishes in December this year; so it's less about the games than about the people who are building the park and what it takes to build it. He's also trying to make sense of the experience.

Among the projects he's creating are:

- making sense of the Olympic stadium by sitting on every one of the 80,000 seats! And providing the visual evidence.
- making sense of the volume of the main swimming pool, by drinking the equivalent number of litres of water: all 4.3 million of them!

Then there's a video montage of the characters on site, the work they do, their hopes and dreams.

He's also creating an exhibition of work and memories from the 500 artists who inhabited the Carpenters Road studios, left when the Yardleys Perfume Factory closed down. Their rubble is now providing some of the Olympic site foundations.

Previous to this position, Neville was artist in residence in Antarctica; and at Cabot Circle in Bristol.

An interesting take on career!