40 Artists, 40 Days was a special project in support of London’s Olympic and Paralympic Bid to bring the Games to Britain in 2012. On Friday 27 May 2005, we began a 40-day cultural countdown to 5 July, the day the International Olympic Committee will choose a city to host the Games of the XXX Olympiad.
In the final 40 days of the campaign we wanted to raise awareness of this wider Olympic opportunity, and encourage support for London 2012, by creating a countdown calendar that focused attention on Britain’s exceptional creative talent. We asked 40 leading artists to provide a work, either original video, music, text, performance or visual art, which was be showcased here on the Tate website as a message of Olympic support, with a new piece being added each day for 40 days.
The project was a collaboration between the London 2012 Olympic Bid team, Premier Partner and Tate Online’s then sponsor, BT and Tate.