Beth Gray

tokyo:ocean is a fictitious arts venue based in a former shoe factory in Hoxton, East London. It operates on a ‘shared space’ basis with its studios and galleries available for exhibitions and performances by up and coming artists, designers and performers, in addition to a fully licensed cafe-bar and restaurant. I designed a series of A2 posters to advertise a season of dance performances to be hosted by tokyo:ocean, each featuring a different event.

Since each poster advertised performances which ranged in style from expressive to high-energy, I opted to feature kinetic techniques to create the background artwork. My reasoning was that simply to advertise dance you need to convey movement, I chose to do this by, for example, spinning paint at a high velocity and allowing the force to create the energy in the artwork.

Other techniques I implemented included dropping pigments from a height to create splatters and inking-up the wheels of my off-ice skates and performing jumps and spins on a large sheet of paper, I was trying to capture the energy of movement and transfer a selection of this to my finished poster designs (below).

This poster was created by spinning paint/ink and allowing the energy behind the force to create the imagery, I really like the silhouette of a dancer that appeared in the middle, not bad for a fluke!