Cypher BILLBOARD

More events coming soon...

Watch this space!

Alice Rekab + Éireann and I, We Make Our Own Table

8 October– 27 November 2022  |  Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

A new BILLBOARD x FAMILY LINES poster commission by artist Alice Rekab, developed in collaboration with community archive Éireann and I. Over the last two years they have worked together with members of the Black Irish community in the UK and Ireland to explore experiences of race, place and belonging through a series of consultations, workshops and a public exhibition. The artwork Alice has made for Cypher BILLBOARD is a meditation on the importance of this time spent together and the objects and conversations that were shared.

Footnote to Migration
Sunday 9 October 2022, 3.30-5.30pm  |  MayDay Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, London, EC4Y1DH

A creative writing workshop bringing together reading material from MayDay Rooms, a radical archive based in Britain, and Éireann and I, a Black community archive based in Ireland. In this session, led by Éireann and I, we invite you to trace lines of connection between items that highlight the perceptions and experiences of Black migrants on both isles. 

BILLBOARD x FAMILY LINES: The Changeover
Saturday 8 October 2022, 6.30-8.30pm  |  Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, London, N22 8YB

Join us to celebrate the BILLBOARD x FAMILY LINES programme with a live posting of Alice Rekab + Éireann and I’s ‘We Make Our Own Table’ to launch the second half of our poster exchange, following Henrique Paris’ commission ‘Registo II’. Come early to see both works up on the site and meet the artists over a drink.

Henrique J Paris, Registo II

14 August - 8 October 2022 | Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Henrique’s new BILLBOARD x FAMILY LINES poster commission ‘Registo II’ explores autonomy in Black Life and the overlaps between branding & identity.

The poster commission is part of FAMILY LINES; a multi-platform project by artist Alice Rekab in collaboration with community archive Éireann and I, commissioned by The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin.

Announcing: BILLBOARD x FAMILY LINES 

August - November 2022

We’re delighted to announce our upcoming programme in partnership with Douglas Hyde Gallery, initiated by artist Alice Rekab.

We’re presenting two billboard artworks on our North London site this summer and autumn, an exchange across sites in Dublin, along with corresponding events.

Sounding Sites: The Takeover

Friday 19 November 2021, 1-8pm
www.threadsradio.com

A very special episode of Sounding Sites – a 7-hour takeover of the airwaves, featuring artists and collaborators worked with over the course of the 2022 project. The audio segment features conversations, musical compositions, readings, and a mix assembled by writer and DJ Eleanor Bickers.

Ryan O’Toole Collett, Read a bit, it will be good for you x

10 September – 31 October 2021 | Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

'Read a bit, it will be good for you x' utilises the traditional function of the billboard site to explore strategies of public messaging through acts of reading. The poster artwork features a scanned page, torn from a book given to the artist. Situated locally to Bounds Green School at a time when fewer young people are choosing to read books, encouraging viewers to read could be received in a variety of ways, from didactic to caring.

Sounding Sites: X

Tuesday 21 September 2021, 2-3pm
www.threadsradio.com

Tune in to Threads Radio to listen to a collaborative soundscape with members of Ismena Collective featuring recordings taken from Bounds Green exploring the relationship between reading and listening. Programmed as part of Ryan O'Toole Collett's new billboard poster installation 'Read a bit, it will be good for you x' .

This is the fifth and final of a series of five artist-commissioned radio shows developed for Threads Radio as part of Cypher BILLBOARD’s 2021 programme.

Languid Hands, Detritus!

10 July – 8 September 2021 | Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Protest: as in, where will you be? As in, who the hell set it up like this? And what is everyone being so reasonable about? 

Detritus! is a new billboard commission by Languid Hands. The composite image is made up of stills from their 2019 film Towards a Black Testimony: Prayer / Protest / Peace, which examines the extent to which Black Testimony is obscured, ignored and undermined.

Sounding Sites: A Sonic Testimony
Tuesday 27 July 2021, 2-3pm
www.threadsradio.com

A Sonic Testimony is the first exclusively aural iteration of Languid Hands' ongoing project Towards A Black Testimony, bringing together text, sound and music from the expansive archive of Black culture and resistance. Towards A Black Testimony is an artistic and curatorial project which examines the extent to which Black Testimony is obscured, ignored and undermined and explores the complexities of truth, empathy, justice, the law, life and death for the Black Mass.  

Sounding Sites: Mapping the Hostile Environment in the Arts - a Roundtable Discussion
Tuesday 1 June 2021, 2-3pm | www.threadsradio.com

An audio segment brought to you by artists and designers Siddhi Gupta and Kat McGrath; featuring a conversation with a cross-section of international arts students – Bakhtawer Haider of Sold Out Publishing, Syahadah Shahril of Pause or Pay UK, and Morgan Markey – discussing the Hostile Environment and its impact on their experiences of Higher Arts Education. 

Siddhi Gupta + Kat McGrath: Mapping The Hostile Environment in Higher Arts Education

10 May – 30 June 2021 | Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Kat & Siddhi are international students, alumni, practitioners, and migrant cultural workers. Since November 2020, they have been organising a series of virtual workshops that seek to map how the UK’s Hostile Environment immigration policy manifests within the ecosystems of the Higher Arts Education, and the broader cultural sector. Their billboard is a starting point, a provocation, a window and an invitation into the minds and hearts of those who have experienced the Hostile Environment policy in HigherArts Education in the UK.

BAMBI WOODS PRESENTS: Exhibition

20 – 30 May 2021 | ERGO Collective space + Space52 + Online

Bambi Woods function like a radio that never announces its programme in advance. Initiated in 2019 and gathering contributions from over fifty voices, Bambi Woods are a collective enunciation springing from the anonymity of murmur, a molecular vibration infiltrating processes of individuation while encrypting the status of the author. Like a balaclava-covered DJ sticking black tape on their records’ labels, B.W. distribute chains of reactions and affects that are no longer based on recognition and identification.

Bambi Woods’ next intervention will take place across two mirroring spaces, ERGO Collective and Space52, both located in Athens; and online.  

Ed Compson + Arieh Frosh in collaboration with Bounds Green School

Ánemos: Turbines 2030

8 March – 6 May 2021 | Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Working together in a remote collaboration with Year 4 students from locally-based Bounds Green School, artists Arieh Frosh and Ed Compson have developed a new billboard poster artwork and a corresponding audio segment that question how the wind can be captured, represented, and wildly interpreted.

Sounding Sites: 15.26.40 - 16.02.06

Tuesday 6 April 2021, 2-3pm
Online: www.threadsradio.com

Tune in to Threads Radio and listen to a show brought to you by artists Ed Compson and Arieh Frosh, as an extension of their billboard poster collaboration with Year 4 students at Bounds Green School. It features a selection of audio pieces developed in response to wind data, alongside music that has influenced the project, and a bonus track by musician LEYLAH.

Mapping the Hostile Environment in Higher Arts Education - Workshop 4
Saturday 3 April 2021, 2-3.30pm GMT
Online

Join this free workshop, run by international students, alumni, practitioners, and migrant cultural workers, Kat McGrath and Siddhi Gupta. This is the final in a series of four sessions exploring the hostile environment in higher arts education. The conversations in this workshop will feed into the development of a poster-based artwork for the Cypher BILLBOARD site in North London.

Mapping the Hostile Environment in Higher Arts Education - Workshop 3
Saturday 6 March 2021, 2-3.30pm GMT
Online

Join this free workshop, run by international students, alumni, practitioners, and migrant cultural workers, Kat McGrath and Siddhi Gupta. This is the third of four sessions exploring the hostile environment in higher arts education. The conversations in this workshop will feed into the development of a poster-based artwork for the Cypher BILLBOARD site in North London.

László von Dohnányi, Zombie Print

11 January - 7 March 2021

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

'Zombie Print' considers the dual existence of the billboard site, its virtual and physical presence. As a part of the built environment, the billboard has been photographed, captured and rendered in digital contexts such as Google street view. László is interested in how this previous content persists in the digital realm long after its physical counterpart has been obscured.

How Can We Catch the Wind?: Half Term Challenge

Deadline: Sunday 21 February 2021, midnight

As part of their collaborative project with Year 4 students from Bounds Green School, artists Arieh Frosh and Ed Compson set a creative challenge for students to design their own wind machines. 

Can you create a wind machine of your own? Send us your designs and we'll share them on our Instagram stories. We'll also add them to this webpage. We'd love to see what you create!

Sounding Sites: Zombie  Spectrogram

Tuesday 9 February 2021, 2-3pm
Online: www.threadsradio.com

Tune in to Threads Radio and listen to a discussion between László von Dohnányi and Cypher BILLBOARD’s Amba Sayal-Bennett, Holly Graham, and Erin Hughes, exploring notions of technological transformation, and featuring audio interpretations of László’s Bounds Green billboard artwork created using text recognition software. 

Mapping the Hostile Environment in Higher Arts Education: Workshop 2
Wednesday 3 February 2021, 2pm GMT
Online

Join this free workshop, run by international students, alumni, practitioners, and migrant cultural workers, Kat McGrath and Siddhi Gupta. This is the second of three sessions exploring the hostile environment in higher arts education. The conversations in this workshop will feed into the development of a poster-based artwork for the Cypher BILLBOARD site in North London.

Mapping the Hostile Environment in Higher Arts Education: Workshop 1
Saturday 23 January 2021, 2pm GMT
Online

Join this free workshop, run by international students, alumni, practitioners, and migrant cultural workers, Kat McGrath and Siddhi Gupta. This is the first of three sessions exploring the hostile environment in higher arts education. The conversations in this workshop will feed into the development of a poster-based artwork for the Cypher BILLBOARD site in North London.

Announcing: BILLBOARD 2021! 

January - October 2021

Our third series will feature five billboard presentations over the coming year, along with corresponding audio commissions for Threads Radio, launching in January and finishing in October.

Participating artists: Laszlo von Dohnanyi, Arieh Frosh + Ed Compson + Bounds Green School, Siddhi Gupta + Kat McGrath, Languid Hands, and Ryan O’Toole Collett.

Cypher BILLBOARD 2021: Open Call

Deadline: Monday 30th November 2020

The 2021 BILLBOARD series will feature five new commissions. One of these will be selected through this open call. We are seeking an artist to develop work in collaboration with students from neighbouring Bounds Green School in March-April 2021.

Cypher BILLBOARD @ APS6

Sunday 27 September 2020, 2-7pm | Online

Join us online for this year's Artist Self-Publishing Fair, where we'll be launching our new publication: The Viewer / The Reader / The Heckler.

Conscious Isolation - Cypher BILLBOARD: The Viewer, The Reader, The Heckler

Tuesday 13 July 2020, 6-7pm | Online

A talk and Q&A delivered by Cypher BILLBOARD co-founders Amba Sayal-Bennett, Erin Hughes, and Holly Graham, delivered as part of Conscious Isolation's Fine Art Lecture Series. The talk discusses some of the research and thinking that has shaped the project so far, as well as the wider advertising landscape that the billboard sits within. It features a reading of an essay collaboratively written for online journal DATEAGLE ART, titled ‘The Viewer, The Reader, The Heckler’, exploring different methods of critically engaging with this context through approaches framed as viewing, reading, and heckling.

BOUNDS: Exhibition

17 Jul – 22 Oct 2019

skelf.org.uk

A group exhibition curated by Cypher BILLBOARD for online project space Skelf. This web-based show hopes to extend conversations taking place on the billboard site whilst exploring the relations it has to Skelf’s online space.

To Be So Entangled: Resistance / Complicity / Collaboration

Sunday 20 October 2019, 3-5pm | Hot Milk Cafe, 1 Maidstone Road, London, England, N11 2TR 

An Art Licks Weekend 2019 discussion event considering resistance, complicity, and collaboration within collective organisational practice in the arts; programmed to mark the closing of online exhibition BOUNDS.

Larry Achiampong, PAN AFRICAN FLAG FOR THE RELIC TRAVELLERS’ ALLIANCE (MOTION)

5 September - 20 October 2019 | Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Larry Achiampong’s billboard poster artwork, ‘PAN AFRICAN FLAG FOR THE RELIC TRAVELLERS’ ALLIANCE (MOTION)’, highlights African diasporic identity. Belonging to a series of flags, they culminate as Afrofuturistic icons moving towards unity and equilibrium. 

RELIC TRAVELLER: Film Screenings 

Monday 14th October 2019, 6-9pm

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

An evening of screenings of films from within the Relic Traveller series by artist Larry Achiampong, to accompany his Cypher Billboard installation, PAN AFRICAN FLAGS FOR THE RELIC TRAVELLERS’ ALLIANCE, MOTION.

Dan Mitchell, Hello Stupid Eyes

7 - 28 August 2019 | Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

A new site specific commission by Dan Mitchell developed for the Cypher BILLBOARD site.

Hello Stupid Eyes: Abnormal Hypnotherapy

Wednesday 21st August 2019, 7-9pm

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Join us at the Cypher BILLBOARD site for abnormal therapy and hypnosis by Dr Robert Laing, with live instrumental by The Rebel.

soft/WALL/studs, 65goddex65

8 - 30 July 2019

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Wouldn't you like to move in a different direction? In new work for the billboard site, soft/WALL/studs explore the form of billboard and banner advertisement. Let the Goddex listen to your desires: direct message your wishes to 65goddex65 on Instagram now. 

Day of crypt0fferings

Sunday 14 July 2019, 1-4pm

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Join us for drinks and a 'burning cyber-ritual’ to accompany Singapore based collective soft/WALL/studs' new billboard artwork ‘65goddex65’.

Jennifer Martin, Britain Been Rotten

5 - 30 June 2019

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

As the old British dental saying goes, ‘don’t let the rot set in’. In new work developed for the billboard site, Jennifer channels the mythology of the ‘tooth worm’. She posits the fictitious parasite, imagined to be the cause of toothache and pain, as analogous to the immigrant/migrant, the mythical cause of rot as espoused by hostile government policy.

Britain Been Rotten: Reading

Saturday 22 June 2019, 7-9pm

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Join us for drinks, readings, and a preview of new work by Jennifer Martin, to accompany her Cypher BILLBOARD poster work, Britain Been Rotten.

SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD

Wednesday 29 May 2019, 7-9pm

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

A muddy selection of sounds, punch, snacks and karaoke, to accompany EILIS + JAKOB's Cypher BILLBOARD commission TWO 4 ONE. All insects and friends welcome. More sugar TBC. 

EILIS + JAKOB, TWO 4 ONE

2 - 30 May 2019

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

New work by EILIS + JAKOB, a site-specific artist response for the Cypher BILLBOARD site. TWO 4 ONE is a love poem written to activate the "nothing" that the billboard faces, exploring W.H. Auden's assertion that poetry actively makes “nothing” happen.

Cypher BILLBOARD 2019 Fundraiser

Thursday 11 April 2019, 7-11pm

The George Tavern, 373 Commercial Road, London, E1 0LA

An evening of music, readings + performances from:

DON’T FREAK OUT / ORIGINAL COPY: JOHN STRUTTON + RICARRDO CARBONE / TAMU NKIWANE / ANDREW HART / JAMES STOOKE-VAUGHAN / JENNIFER MARTIN / + more tbc ...

Cypher BILLBOARD x RCA Information Meeting

Monday 18 March 2019, 1pm

Room FRA127, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, Kensington, London SW7 2EU

An opportunity to hear more about the Cypher BILLBOARD project and upcoming 2019 programme ahead of the current open call deadline.

FAKERS: Booklet Binding and Discussion Group

Sunday 16 December 2018, 4pm

Thames-Side Studios Gallery, Harrington Way, Woolwich, SE18 5NR 

Join the artists for an informal discussion about themes around the exhibition, and hand-bind your own catalogue to take away.

FAKERS: Threads of Interest Tour

Saturday 8 December 2018, 4pm

Thames-Side Studios Gallery, Harrington Way, Woolwich, SE18 5NR 

A tour of the FAKERS exhibition.

FAKERS: Exhibition

Preview: Friday 30 November 2018, 6.30-8.30pm 

Exhibition continues: 1 - 16 December 2018

Thames-Side Studios Gallery, Harrington Way, Woolwich, SE18 5NR

FAKERS brings together eleven female artists whose work demonstrates a deep understanding of technical process. The exhibition explores how their contemporary methods are able to question and redefine historical and gendered notions of the term ‘craft’. 

Perfection by the Lines: Fine Art Perspiration: Performance

Thursday 30 October 2018, 7-9pm

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

A performance developed by Francesca Tamse in collaboration with Mellor & Banks, to mark the closing of her Cypher Billboard installation, Perfection by the Lines: Fine Art Perspiration.

Francesca Tamse, Perfection by the Lines: Fine Art Perspiration

5 - 30 October 2018

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

New work by Francesca Tamse, developed for Art Licks Weekend 2018, with its theme of Peripheries. Perfection by the Lines: Fine Art Perspiration is a collaboration with Mellor & Banks art handling company, that thinks through what it means to perform masculinity in public space. 

Panel Discussion: Art in the Public Realm: Creating Experiences

Friday 24th August 2018, 7-8pm
Camden People's Theatre, 58 - 60 Hampstead Road, NW1 2PY 

Join Glass Cloud Gallery for the finale of their ACE funded summer of exhibitions. During this hour, the panel will introduce their public facing projects and together will explore reasons for creating them and celebrate their benefits. The panel will include Erin Hughes, speaking on behalf of Cypher Billboard.

Faking It: Collage Workshop

Wednesday 8th August 2018, 12-2pm
The Baytree Centre, 300-302 Brixton Rd, London SW9 6AE

A workshop with young people from The Baytree Centre, led by Milly Peck, considering ideas of fakery in relation to the dissemination of images via advertising and digital modes of communication. Participants will look at social media and discuss how images are constantly altered and manipulated presenting a false or warped representation of reality, particularly in relation to the representation of the body and gender.

DON'T FREAK CL!VE OUT

Sunday 29th April 2018, 5-11pm

Grow Tottenham, Ashley House, N17 9LZ

Cypher Billboard is joining forces with Harry's Helpers to bring you a night of of musical fun[d]raising to get you sweating out a two-step; featuring bluesy-folk double-act COSKEYASS, soulful duo NEPO TEMKO, digi-soul outfit CL!VE, funkadelic troupe DON'T FREAK OUT, and DJs into the night for those serious about the boogie.

Cypher Billboard 1st Edition Closing Drinks!

Thursday 22nd February, 8pm 

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Join us for a celebratory drink and see the final work in a series of five site-specific artworks for the Cypher Billboard site -  Amba Sayal-Bennett in collaboration with Ralph Hunter-Menzies: Crazy Talk.

Cypher Billboard Discussion Group

Thursday 22nd February, 7pm 
The Big Green Bookshop, Unit 1, Brampton Park Road, N22 6BG

A reading group in conjunction with the February instalment of Cypher Billboard. Taking graffiti as a starting point for thinking about creative practices embedded within the everyday, the proposed text for discussion is an excerpt from social theorist Marcel De Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1988).

Amba Sayal-Bennett in collaboration with Ralph Hunter-Menzies, Crazy Talk

2 - 28 February 2018

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

New work by Amba Sayal-Bennett in collaboration with Ralph Hunter-Menzies, the fifth and final instalment in a series of five site-specific artist responses. Crazy Talk is the result of a joint exploration of surface intervention through text and mark making. The work developed out of a shared interest in the material history of the billboard site, a multi-layered surface, often bearing signs of wear and tear or vandalism. 

Relocation: Making Collages

Wednesday 24 January 2018, 5-7pm

Trinity at Bowes, Palmerston Rd, London N22 8RA

A workshop with young people from Trinity at Bowes Youth, led by Felicity Hammond. Participants will make collages exploring ideas around consumerism, discussing the differences between what people need and what people want. 

Milly Peck, Rinse and Repeat

2 - 29 January 2018

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

New work by Milly Peck, the fourth instalment in a series of five site-specific artist responses. Rinse and Repeat parodies the format of the billboard as a physical site for the continual regeneration of the image.

Rinse and Repeat Print Launch

Tuesday 9 January 2018, 6-9pm

The Step, 101 Myddleton Road, N22 8NE

Cypher celebrates the launch of the Billboard boxset, with a print sale of limited edition screenprints by Milly Peck.

Felicity Hammond, Relocation

2 - 29 December 2017

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

New work by Felicity Hammond, the third instalment in a series of five site-specific artist responses. In recent work, Felicity has been extracting imagery from architectural renders and bringing them into the physical space through creating 3D photo-sculptures.

Erin Laura Hughes, Home Me 3

2 - 29 November 2017

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

New work by Erin Laura Hughes, the second instalment in a series of five site-specific artist responses. Recent work by Erin Laura Hughes depicts simple interiors using home improvement materials to look curiously at our implied domesticated desires. 

Home Me 3: PV and Film Screening

Saturday 4 November 2017, 6-9pm

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

An evening of screenings to launch the second instalment of Cypher Billboard, with work by Patrick Goddard, Daniel Schine Lee, Amba Sayal-Bennett, and Gray Wielebinski in collaboration with Georgia Lucas-Going; programmed by Erin Laura Hughes.

Holly Graham, After Harry Jacobs: Outside

29 September - 29 October 2017

Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

New work by Holly Graham, the first in a series of five site-specific artist responses. After Harry Jacobs: Outside builds upon a body of work centred around studio images taken from the extensive archive of late South London-based photographer Harry Jacobs, now housed in the Lambeth Archives. 

Billboard: Artists in Conversation with Jon Horrocks

Sunday 1 October 2017, 4-5.30pm
The Springfield, 133 Bounds Green Road, N11 2PP

Exhibiting artists discuss overlapping concerns within their practices, with reference to their individual responses to the Billboard site. This event is part of Art Licks Weekend 2017.

Cypher Billboard Launch with Art Licks Weekend 2017 

Thursday 28 September 2017, 6-9pm
Domino Houses Billboard, 117 Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Cypher launches Billboard with Art Licks Weekend 2017. Presenting new work by Holly Graham; the first in a series of five site-specific artist responses.