Cypher BILLBOARD

Amba Sayal-Bennett + Ralph Hunter-Menzies

Crazy Talk

2 - 28 February 2018 | Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

Amba Sayal-Bennett’s work tests common conventions of visual communication to probe the relationship between experience and language. By problematizing therelationship between reception and interpretation, i.e. how we obtain meaning from experience and how this experience is transformed and codified, she explores the perceived neutrality of signifying processes by means of their disruption.

Ralph Hunter-Menzies’ works experiment with a plethora of mark-making processes, producing paintings that hold creation and destruction symbiotically. Through composition, he explores ways of making various surfaces that either challenge each other or enter into dialogue.

‘Crazy Talk’ is a collaboration between artists Amba Sayal-Bennett and Ralph Hunter-Menzies, a joint exploration of surface intervention through text and mark-making. Thework 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. The artists consider the billboards role as a modern palimpsest, experimenting with the idea of visible and invisible layers, public and private messages, indexical and printed marks. The text itself:- ‘Crazy Talk’ exists as a trompe l’oeil, a playful yet simulated revealing of layers. The artists contemplate the billboards role as a live surface, an interface for not only artistic collaboration, but also material and interpretive practices: the myriad ways inwhich the context impacts on the image.

Amba Sayal-Bennett lives and works in London. She received her BFA from Oxford University and her MA in The History of Art from The Courtauld Institute. She has recently completed her PhD in Art Practice and Learning at Goldsmiths. | www.ambasb.com/

Ralph Hunter-Menzies lives and works in London. He received his BFA from Chelsea College of Art and Design. | www.ralphhuntermenzies.co.uk/

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