Cypher BILLBOARD

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.

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’; an ancient belief that has roots across the Middle East and Asia. 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. Within the work, a composition of 3D stock model graphics are accompanied by the voice of the ‘tooth worm’; text-based extracts from a more extensive soliloquy that draws upon histories of sugar and tobacco stained legacies of empire, island isolationism and nationalism, surveillance culture, marginalisation, and the optimistic philosophy of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man (1734).

The evening will feature readings from this text, and a preview of new work developed by the artist, as well as a short guest reading from artist Holly Graham.

Design developed and executed in collaboration with Joe Baglow (Baglow & Sons).

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