Superweirdos

The idea of the artist as the superhero stemmed from the Curatorial Callout for the 2019 Dublin Fringe Festival by Festival Director Ruth McGowan. While superhero movies have become a stultifying force in mainstream culture, Fringe is a celebration of oddities, eccentrics, different perspectives, unheard voices.

Our treatment of the superhero posed the artists as gifted outsiders, differentiated not just by their freakish proportions but by their unique perspective; their size is not threatening or coercive, instead they are curious explorers of their city.

The imagery for Superweirdos combined a multitude of disparate influences into a campaign that was playful and inventive, theatrical and textured. It utilised three artists taking part in the festival as representatives of the breadth of talent that makes up Fringe. The artists were styled in structured, contemporary garments and set against recognisable (but not cliché) locations from Dublin’s built environment.

Photographer Hazel Coonagh shot the artists and locations, bringing the gigantic Superweirdos to life through a combination of perspective trickery and digital editing. The images were used across the festival’s three print brochures (set off with silver details to acknowledge Fringe’s 25th anniversary) as well as their website, social media, signage and posters.