Denzil Forrester was born in Grenada in the Caribbean in 1956 and was fostered by a local family for seven years before joining his mother in London, settling in Stoke Newington in 1967. Despite being deeply embedded in the experiences of London's Afro-Caribbean community, Forrester's work demonstrates a variety of historical artistic influences, including Italian Futurism and German Expressionism, focused on the depiction of the speed and immediacy of city life. He is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and his works can be found in public collections including Arts Council Collection, Government Art Collection, and Tate.
Painter and draughtsman Denzil Forrester was born in Grenada in the Caribbean in 1956. He was fostered by a local family for seven years before joining his mother in England, settling in Stoke Newington in north east London in 1967. When he was 16, he met his partner, Philippa Clayden whose father ran an art centre in nearby Dalston. Forrester attended the centre most evenings for two years, building up a portfolio of work. In 1975 he enrolled on an Art Foundation course at the Central School of Art before beginning a BA degree course the following year. During this period, Forrester was a regular at East London's dub-reggae clubs where he began to make drawings of MCs, DJs (including the legendary Jah Shaka), dancers, strobes and sound-systems. His sketches were made on rolls of A1 paper, in the time it took to play a single track; done quickly on dark dancefloors, they captured energy and rhythm as much as form and colour and were transformed into vibrant paintings during the day. As Forrester himself explains: 'I was interested in the energy of the crowd, particular dance movements and what the clubbers wore. In these clubs, city life is recreated in essence: sounds, lights, police sirens, bodies pushing and swaying in a smoke-filled room' (Stephen Friedman Gallery website).
Forrester graduated in 1979 and subsequently completed an MA in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art in London in 1983. Later the same year he was awarded a scholarship to study at the British School in Rome until 1985. In 1986 he was the recipient of the Harkness Fellowship which enabled him to live and work in New York for 18 months and to further develop his artistic practice. Despite being deeply embedded in the experiences of London's Afro-Caribbean community, Forrester's work demonstrates a variety of historical artistic influences, including Italian Futurism and German Expressionism, focused on the depiction of the speed and immediacy of city life. As art historian and specialist in the visual arts of the African Diaspora, Eddie Chambers writes, however, ' [...] his work [has] touched on other themes, such as deaths in police custody' (E. Chambers, p. 80). Specifically, the death in 1981 of Winston Rose, Forrester's childhood friend from Stoke Newington, became the haunting subject of a number of works, including Three Wicked Men (1982, Tate collection). Forrester's recent works are inspired by impressions of his early years in Britain when his mother taught him to sew bags (such as Stitch Up, 2017). In 1986 Forrester’s work was featured in From Two Worlds, a seminal exhibition at London's Whitechapel Gallery and in 1989 he was included in Caribbean Expressions in Britain at the Leicester Museum & Art Gallery. He attributes the recent resurgence of interest in his work to artist Peter Doig, who saw his master's degree show in 1983 and contacted him by email some 30 years later, keen to make Forrester's oeuvre better known. The result was a slew of shows, curated by Doig along with English artist and publisher Matthew Higgs, including at Doig's London space, Tramps, in 2016, at the Jackson Foundation, Cornwall in 2018, and at Stephen Friedman Gallery in 2019. That same year Art on the Underground invited Forrester to create his first major public commission at Brixton Station, for which he created a large scale, immersive reinterpretation of Three Wicked Men. An extensive overview of Forrester's work, Itchin and Scratchin, including recent works shaped by the sound-systems and open-air parties of Kingston, Jamaica, where Forrester recently travelled, took place in 2020 at Nottingham Contemporary. From December 2021 into 2022, Forrester's works will feature in Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now at Tate Britain.
Aside from working as a practicing artist, between 1986 and 2016 Forrester also taught at Morley College (an institution for adult education which has had a number of immigrant artists on its staff throughout its history), receiving the Morley Fellowship in 2019. In 2020 he was awarded the honour, Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). Denzil Forrester lives and works with his partner Philippa in Truro, Cornwall, England. He is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and his works can be found in UK public collections, including Arts Council England, Government Art Collection, Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, and Tate.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Denzil Forrester]
Publications related to [Denzil Forrester] in the Ben Uri Library