Matt’s Gallery presents Do Faster Win More, a new film by artist Jordan Baseman that explores ambition, success and failure through the lens of Paralympic cyclist Lora Fachie OBE.

Do Faster Win More has been produced as part of a partnership between Arts & Heritage and the National Paralympic Heritage Trust, which was established in July 2015 to protect and share British Paralympic heritage. The video is being shown in parallel here and on The NPHT website.

Jordan Baseman explains: “Lora’s relationship with her sport is not simple and it’s not straightforward and through this film we hear Lora talk about her experiences of training, succeeding and failing.

“I wanted to explore questions around why we, as human beings, try to do things we’re not sure we can achieve. What’s the point in trying? Why do we push ourselves to do things which we can hate and love at the same time?”

Lora Fachie started competing for the Great Britain Cycling Team in 2009. She was selected for the London 2012 Paralympics and went on to win two medals – gold and bronze – at the 2016 Rio Paralympics. Most recently, Lora won gold and silver medals at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

Do Faster Win More is one of six commissions made by artists responding to heritage in the national Meeting Point programme, developed by Arts & Heritage. Inspired by the history of the National Paralympic Heritage Trust, it reveals the timelessness and universality of certain human qualities and ideas and creates new ways for people to connect with Paralympic heritage.

Jordan Baseman’s 11-minute film builds on interviews with Lora and will be added to the collection of the National Paralympic Heritage Trust.

Amy Coleman, Administrator at the National Paralympic Heritage Trust, said: “We hope that by using a contemporary artwork like this, we can help people see sport in a different light: as something which is accessible to everyone, and which has parallels with our own experiences of success, failure, and picking ourselves back up again.”

Fiona Darling-Glinski, Learning Officer at the National Paralympic Heritage Trust, added: “It’s also about getting people talking and getting people’s lived experiences heard. There is still a lot to do in terms of addressing the negative responses to disability that still exist in society and, right from the start, Jordan has had a total commitment to this endeavour, and has created an enduring piece of art that strives to make access a key part of the creative energy in the work.”

An online panel discussion will take place on Thursday 27 October 2022 between 7pm and 8.30pm, with Jordan Baseman and chaired by internationally acclaimed curator, Linda Rocco. Free tickets can be booked here.

The project is part of the Meeting Point programme, managed by contemporary arts agency Arts & Heritage. Meeting Point presents artworks in unexpected places and supports small and medium scale museums to commission artists, forging new relationships between the contemporary arts and heritage sectors. For this round of the programme, leading artists have been partnered with six museums to produce new artworks inspired by the museums and their collections.