Cypher BILLBOARD

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? The Goddex is a biotechnical entity composed of drill bits, surveillance, globes and an orchidaceous shell, operating as a digital cottage industry and advertising services, from karma laundering to the spiritual righting of wrongs. Let the Goddex listen to your desires: direct message your wishes to 65goddex65 on Instagram now.

In this work, artists Luca Lum and Weixin Quek Chong, of Singapore-based collective soft/WALL/studs, explore the form of billboard and banner advertisement. They use linguistic and aesthetic cues for transcendence and mysticism, recalling advertisements seen regionally and online for spiritual services and cults. Much commerce is built around spiritual services such as the religious tradition in Singapore of burning paper offerings or effigies (kimzua). With the seamless shift of advertising into digital platforms, 65goddex65 explores how networks such as WhatsApp and Instagram, riddled with commerce and entangled with the spectre of personal desires, become channels for belief, hope, motivation and action.

The billboard artwork will be accompanied by a digital commission for online project space SKELF to be exhibited on http://www.skelf.org.uk/ between 17 July – 22 October 2019.

soft/WALL/studs is a collective project based in Singapore involving artists, writers, filmmakers, art workers, and researchers. Its various formats include exhibitions, hosting, support, resource sharing, research, writing, détournement, game-making, teaching and collaboration. 

Born in 1991 in Singapore, Luca Lum is an artist, writer, and researcher whose practice pivots around writing, performance and installation. Her foci include intimacy, exchange, erotics, media, and infrastructure. Her projects have been presented at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, LUMA Westbau (Zurich), Cemeti Institute of Art and Society (Yogjakarta; with soft/WALL/studs), Ikkan Art Gallery, and the NUS Museum (Singapore). She runs a collaborative project called soft/WALL/studs with several other artists, and lives and works in Singapore.

Weixin Quek Chong is a visual artist whose work explores materialities and relationships between the digital, organic and aesthetic. Her recent projects are inspired by processes of transformation in the biodiverse world and cyborg adaptation; incorporating images, sculptural objects, installations and sensorial-based explorations that frequently involve tactility, sound and immersive environments. Weixin graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art (London) and a BA(Hons) from LASALLE College of the Arts (Singapore) and was a recipient of the NAC Overseas Arts Scholarship (Postgraduate) (2012) and the Tan Ean Kiam Postgraduate Scholarship. In 2018 she received the President's Young Talents Grand Prize conferred by the Singapore Art Museum and in 2019 the National Art Council of Singapore's Young Artist Award. Working between Madrid, Singapore and London, she has presented projects in Singapore, London, Seoul, Santiago, Yogyakarta, Taipei and Brussels among other cities and is an alumna of artist residencies in the Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art (Korea), NTU-Center for Contemporary Art (Singapore), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo- Molten Capital in Santiago, Chile as well as co-founder of the collaborative project soft/WALL/studs.

Addendum: Alongside Lum and Chong, another artist was involved in the making of this project. Due to ethical breaches, he is no longer a part of soft/WALL/studs, and has agreed to have his name removed from this project.