The Games

In 2005 London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Optimistic’s story began in Hackney Wick on the edges of what would become this vast regeneration site. ‘The Games’ (2007) was a short film that staged a DIY Olympics amid the sites soon to be erased. It was commissioned by Urbis Manchester for the exhibition Play: Experience the Adventures of Our City and went on to screen widely, winning Audience Award at the East End Film Festival. The film is part of the BFI’s ‘London Calling’ collection.

The Games was the beginning of ten years creating a diverse body of work in response to the London Olympic regeneration project. This involved taking on Space Studio’s Olympic Artist Forum and turning it into the Salon de Refuse Olympique, collating a monthly newsletter of actions and hosting multiple events in response to this changing East London site. This in turn led to the co-editing, with Isaac Marrero-Guillamon, of the publication ‘The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London’s Olympic State’ featuring artists, writers, photographers and activists looking more critically at this site of dramatic transformation.

Optimistic fused food, foraging and film in a long term project exploring the changing edges of the now fenced off Olympic site. ‘Pudding Mill River: Purveyors of Sporting Spirits and Foodstuffs’ took its name from a river running under the planned Olympic Stadium. This ‘company’’s team of scientists foraged the Olympic edge lands gathering fruits of increasing scarcity and special properties to make a range of products that popped up at events with LIFT, Home Live Art, V&A, Artprojx and in collaboration with Public Works Wick Curiosity Shop.

Hilary brought this deep, critical engagement with site together in an AHRC fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts with the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL (2011-2014) making the pop-up book ‘Legend: An A-Z of the Lea Valley.’ The book was made on a public production line that became the prototype for subsequent acts of public print making. It was represented by Kaleid Editions and won the Birgit Skiold Prize for Excellence at London Art Book Fair. The book is in the collections of MoMA NY, V&A National Art Library, Saison Poetry Library, MACBA, Lafayette, Clark Art Institute, the Yale Centre for British Art and the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection.

Articles about the work have featured in Engage, ArtVehicle, Blueprint, a-n, RIBA Journal, London Review of Books, The Guardian, AAJ Press.