Muse 2008 Royal Albert Hall Gig Poster

A screaming apple, a mouth within a mouth within a mouth, and MUSE stamped across the top in enormous turquoise lettering. Tommy Davidson-Hawley's poster for Muse's 2008 Teenage Cancer Trust concert is every bit as strange and theatrical as the show it was created to celebrate.

Muse headlined the Royal Albert Hall on 12 April 2008, with The Futureheads supporting. By then, Black Holes and Revelations had pushed the band onto an even bigger international stage, and their live shows had grown with it. The Albert Hall offered a rare chance to bring that scale into one of London's most distinctive venues while raising money for Teenage Cancer Trust.

The night drew from across Muse's catalogue, from Supermassive Black Hole, Hysteria and Starlight to Plug In Baby and the closing Knights of Cydonia. But one of its defining moments could only really have happened in that room. For the encore, Matt Bellamy played the Royal Albert Hall's pipe organ for Megalomania, making the venue itself part of the performance. Contemporary photographs from the concert document Bellamy at the instrument, while the Hall's archive confirms the song's place in the set.

Davidson-Hawley's artwork takes an equally unconventional route. Rather than depicting the band or the Royal Albert Hall, it centres everything on a vivid red apple transformed by a succession of open mouths, each one containing another. The repetition pulls the eye deeper into the image, while the rough, grainy screen-print texture keeps the surreal central image from feeling too slick. The colour combination is particularly effective. Red and orange dominate the apple and foreground, set against a cooler turquoise background and heavy areas of black. Above it all sits the band's name in huge block lettering, giving the poster the immediate impact of an old advertisement before the increasingly bizarre details underneath reveal themselves.

Produced as a five-colour screen print on 300gsm stock, the artwork measures A2 and was printed by Prints of Thieves in Leeds. The edition is limited to 100 individually numbered copies and forms part of Teenage Cancer Trust's collection celebrating the artists who have performed at the Royal Albert Hall since the concert series began in 2000.

Product details

• Limited edition of 100 numbered prints
• Unsigned
• Created for Muse's Teenage Cancer Trust concert at the Royal Albert Hall, 12 April 2008
• Artwork by Tommy Davidson-Hawley
• Five-colour screen print
• Printed on 300gsm stock
• A2, measuring 420 × 594mm
• Commissioned and published by Teenage Cancer Trust
• Printed by Prints of Thieves in Leeds, UK
• Unframed

Every purchase supports Teenage Cancer Trust, helping provide specialist care and support to young people with cancer.

Please note:

This print is unsigned.

International customers are responsible for any import fees or duties payable on delivery.