John Gerrard has recently been awarded the Legacy Fellowship, a collaboration between Modern Art Oxford, Oxford University Sport and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, which celebrates the London 2012 Games of the XXX Olympiad.

John Gerrard's recent practice brings together the very latest in gaming and motion capture technologies with traditional notions of portraiture and landscape. Recent projects include a unique collaboration with the celebrated choreographer Wayne McGregor for the Royal Ballet called Live Fire Exercise, first performed at the Royal Opera House in London, and his new work Infinite Freedom Exercise (near Abadan, Iran) which was unveiled at the Manchester International Festival over the summer.

Over the coming months, Gerrard will view the training of elite athletes at the University's Iffley Road sports complex as the point of departure for a major new commission. Premiered in Oxford during the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, this research period will allow Gerrard to investigate aspects of sport, spectacle, military exercise and theatre in a compelling new artwork.

John Gerrard was born in Dublin in 1974 and studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Trinity College, Dublin. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2009 and has recently shown at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.

The Legacy Fellowship is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Culture Ireland, John Fell OUP Fund, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Podium and Magdalen College, Oxford, and forms part of RELAY, a region-wide programme of new visual arts commissions and live events across the South East to mark the Olympic year.