When I was in Nottingham I visited the contemporary art gallery to see the 'Itchin & Scratchin' exhibition by Denzel Forrester. Itchin & Scratchin is Forresters' most significant institutional show to date, it brings together a selection of paintings and recent drawings. The pieces look as if they are pulsing with music and motion, they record the Afro-Caribbean experience in Britain.
From the late 70s, Forrester was a regular at East Londons dub reggae clubs where he began to make drawings of MCs, dancers, strobes, and sound-systems. He sketched quickly, in the amount of time it took for the DJ to play a single track. He later turned these into large scale paintings that capture the rhythm, movement, and energy.
My favourite piece from the collection was called 'Night Strobe' which he made in 1985. It had grown out of dawings made in a club called All Nations in Hackney. He stated that "the colours were just singing like mad". I loved this piece because it collates colours that you would visualise in that type of environment and the way he paints gives so much movement and energy, it's really easy to feel what the vibe was like at that time in the nightclub.
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