Denzil Forrester Dance Your Way Home

Located on the Royal Festival Hall Wall (Queen Elizabeth Hall Side)

Over the summer, you can find a series of artworks inside and outside the Southbank Centre’s buildings to get you in the swing of the season, which celebrates all the ways that dance connects us.

Dominated by bright shades of yellow and green, DJ Mix is a characteristic example of Denzil Forrester’s practice. The figures’ distinctive clothing and expressive movements reflect the dub and reggae scene, which continues to inspire the British-Grenadian artist’s work. Revealing his debt to early Cubism, the artist plays with perspectival depth and transforms the revellers into a cacophony of forms that mimic the pulsing rhythm of the music. The painting vibrates with the energy of the nightclubs where Forrester sketched in-situ during the 1980s and 1990s to the sound of Jah Shaka and his roving sound system. Each sketch was dictated by the length of the record, roughly four minutes long, with the next beginning in sync with the changing soundtrack.