Exeter Northcott Theatre (via their curator Kathryn Johnson) commissioned me to design and paint a 30m long mural on the large, interior, curved wall of their entrance foyer.

The mural forms part of a wider theatre heritage project, which aims to bring their community and archive content to life. It’s a celebration of the theatre’s rich history, its ongoing heritage and future. Keeping this in mind, I proposed a design that focused on the vibrant, positive and creative community of their theatre.

It was a joy to dive into and reference their extensive image archive when illustrating the performers, stage staff and audience members that formed the basis of the mural design. Look out for references to specific costumes, characters and the hard-working people behind the scenes.

Now, the mural not only guides theatre goers to the cafe/bar and auditorium doors, but it also makes a strong connection between the stage, the theatre building and its vibrant history.

See some of the initial sketches below.

The commission also called for the mural artwork to double up as a surface for a bespoke video piece to be mapped into areas of the design. The theatre commissioned Zsolt Balogh of Palma Studio to mastermind the audio and visual content. I worked with him to ensure the mural design contained suitable spaces for their projections, while still making sense as an artwork when the projections weren’t running.

The video piece (with sound design by Richard Hammarton) is played before each performance.

See stills from the projected content above.

To acheive a sense of harmony across the mural, I suggested a stripped back colour scheme. The colours also relate to the theatre’s brand colours and the wider interior-design direction for the foyer.

It was important to get a diversity of characters across the whole design, as well as plenty of movement and interaction between them. To achieve this I loosely sketched out several characters before composing them in a number of different compositions. I then worked closely with the theatre team, including their heritage manager and diversity consultant Louisa Adjoa Parker, in completing the final design.

Care was taken to ensure that the stylised characters felt timelessness and evoked a sense of theatre without being a stereotypical pastiche. But, one notable character that had to make an appearance, was the legendary Sox, the theatre cat.