Denzil Forrester: Tutti-Frutti Tu, 2024

Rendered in Denzil Forrester’s characteristic deep purple palette, Tutti-Frutti Tu depicts a crowd dancing in front of altar-like decks as two figures spin and mix. Forrester captured this scene at the 2023 Falmouth Reggae Festival, close to where he lives in Cornwall. 

As a young man growing up in East London, Forrester was struck by the freedom of expression in the reggae and dub nightclubs in Hackney: a marked contrast to the daily lives of London’s Afro-Caribbean community at that time. He began bringing paper, pastel and charcoal into the clubs – sketching to the length of a record in the semi-darkness. In his studio the next morning, Forrester would transpose the sketches into large-scale paintings, using dynamic brushstrokes to echo the gestures of the dancing revellers.