10 April - 10 May 2014

Faster, Higher was originally commissioned to coincide with the Beijing 2008 Olympics. This five screen work includes montages of Olympic archive material and rarely-seen Chinese documentary footage spanning the last century intercut with filmed sequences shot by the artist in areas around the London 2012 Olympic site. I light of China's voluntary self-exclusion from the Olympics between 1948-1980, and the avowed apoliticak idealism of the latter as a global brand, Faster, Higher seeks to suggest commonalities in visual and cultural rhetoric, and resonances between notions of nation and sport, patriotism and physical endeavour, opening with the rituals and symbols of national ceremony and international unity: flags jostling along a seccession of parades, processions punctuated by the release of doves and balloons. Ultimately the work explores questions of spectacle and its construction, as well as collective identity and the glorification of individual performance,

Citius Altuis, created in 2012, is an extension of this work, condensing it onto a single screen with a new montage of images.

Faster, Higher was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and BFI. Supported by Arts Council England.