Memory Marathon was exhibited as a looped video projection, accompanied by a rolling slideshow of digital portraits of featured participants displayed on a number of plasma screens.

Dray Walk Gallery

Nearest Tube: Liverpool Street

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This project is the second collaboration between Film and Video Umbrella and Pope, following 2007’s ‘The Memorial Walks’.

Pope (born in Exeter, UK, 1966) has exhibited internationally,including Laboral, Gijon, Asturias; Chapter, Cardiff; New Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul.

He represented Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2003. Recent shows include ‘A Common Third’ at Danielle Arnaud, London and ‘Carved from Memory’ at Spacex, Exeter.

With an age-range of 8 to 82, the participants reflected the equally distinctive mix of communities and nationalities that characterise this part of East London. The project was open to all residents of the five host boroughs who had an Olympic or Paralympic memory that they wanted to share.

Participants were enlisted through local advertising and an outreach programme involving community groups.

Starting out just after dawn from Thamesmead in South-East London, and arriving twelve hours later at the entrance to the Olympic Park in Stratford, Pope completed his marathon journey in the company of more than a hundred local residents of Greenwich, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest.

Moving forward in an unbroken relay, in which each participant walked a 400-metre section of the route alongside Pope, each individual was asked to contribute a recollection of what is, for them, a stand-out moment from Olympic history, before passing the ‘baton’ of the microphone to the next person in line. Recruited from the East London boroughs adjoining the Olympic Park site, and reflecting the diverse make-up of those communities and the inclusive, international spirit of the Games themselves, the participants’ collective act of commemoration draws from a huge reservoir of sporting and cultural memory, encompassing both triumph and disaster, and highlighting both the intimate and the everyday.