The Project
Cypher BILLBOARD is a project that seeks to commission responsive site-specific artworks for a billboard space in Bounds Green, London. The site hopes to challenge conventions of display, and act as a launch-pad for generating conversations, through a series of satellite events and workshops. It provides an alternative space and framework for developing new work, holding its own rules and limitations as well as freedoms and extensions.
The Cypher BILLBOARD project launched in September 2017 and the site has hosted seventeen poster artworks to date, as well as a series of accompanying events and offsite projects.
The project was co-founded by artists Holly Graham, Erin Hughes and Amba Sayal-Bennett. In 2023, Harringey-based artist Ryan McClelland took on the running of the Cypher BILLBOARD programme.
In summer 2025, the programme drew to a close, as the site owners made the decision to return the site to commercial use. This website will remain live until April 2025, after which point it will be archived.
Support
Historically, all sales from our limited editions have gone back towards supporting the Cypher BILLBOARD project. However, in the final months of our website being live, up until April 2025, we'll be directing all profits towards charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.
You can purchase prints on the Support page of our website.
Visit to billboard site with young people from Stars Day Service Ltd to view Larry Achiampong's 'PAN AFRICAN FLAG FOR THE RELIC TRAVELLERS’ ALLIANCE (MOTION)', 2019
Cypher
Cypher BILLBOARD takes its title from a previously-active project space and collective of the same name. Founded in Berlin in 2015 by artists Erin Hughes, László von Dohnányi, and Emma Papworth, Cypher began as a weekly group critique meeting and later evolved into a project space and migrating visual arts programme, through which artists were invited to present new works. In 2016 Cypher hosted an exhibition titled 'Backdrop' as part of Art Licks Weekend - the first of many on-going projects based in London.