Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Dreams & Goals

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Dreams & Goals

by John McGee

Neville Gabie, Nqutu, Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa (Photo: ©Neville Gabie)

People use their phones in the oddest places. In the crowded stands at the 1992 African Nations Cup final, a soccer championship being played in Senegal, photographer Alistair Berg caught a young Congolese man on the telephone—a crusty old desktop model. The man wasn't talking. He was singing into the phone, giving the play-by-play to his ancestors in the spirit world. 

Whether you're a feverish fan or not, this two-person show of photography by Berg and fellow Englishman Neville Gabie at the newly renovated British Council in Iidabashi is an enjoyable blend of photojournalism, pop culture and art. As part of their World Cup-related events, the British Council is also sponsoring a guide to "football English" and the website www.footballculture.net/japan. But curator David Elliott, head of art for the British Council (not to be confused with David Elliott, director of Mori Art Museum), said that, rather than focus only on Britain, he wanted to "organize a show that was international, to reflect the nature of the World Cup." 

To mangle the clichés of soccer reporting passed down by Elliott, this is a well-matched exhibition of two halves; the photographers complement each other. Berg, a photojournalist, profiles the people, looking into the faces of ardent fans in moments of glory and pain. Gabie, an artist-as-anthropologist, shoots the goals, the barest physical evidence of the world's most popular game. (Though no Japanese fans or goal posts are included in the show, both Gabie and Berg are currently traveling in Japan.)

Neville Gabie, Belfast, Northern Ireland (Photo: ©Neville Gabie) 

Berg, 35, started taking photos of fans on assignment to the Italia '90 World Cup. Since then, he has traveled the world chasing the eccentric spirits who follow their national teams. Under the Eiffel Tower, he found a couple of shirtless Scots wearing tartan hats and fake red beards. In Dakar, he spotted an Ivory Coast man who, covered head to toe in white body paint, emblazoned "Cote d'Ivoire National" in green on his chest and "Allez Les Elephants (Go Elephants)" down both legs. 

Neville Gabie, 43, is a sculptor who became interested in goalposts while making art in rural South Africa. FIFA, the World Cup organizing body, says that goals should be two vertical poles placed eight yards apart and joined by a horizontal crossbar eight feet from the ground. Gabie, who appeared in group shows at Ebisu's Museum of Photography in 1999 and 2000, discovered that people in all parts of the world apply ingenuity and creative license to these regulations, adapting them to even the most Spartan conditions. In his Penguin book of photos, "Posts," published in 1999, Gabie said, "I was fascinated by the sheer inventiveness of their construction...and how they mirrored their environment." A rectangle painted onto or scratched into a brick wall becomes a goal in the inner city. Two bare sticks and a clothesline work in the countryside. In the Tunisian desert, one town props up large stones, another uses dented metal buckets. 

Even non-sports enthusiasts can relate to such displays of human spirit and creativity. "This exhibition shows the grass roots and universal appeal of football," Elliott said. And, as Berg found in Senegal, that true fans go to the ultimate lengths to communicate through the game.

Dreams & Goals was held May-June 2002 at the British Council in Kagurazaka, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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