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.
As part of Cypher Billboard's 2021 publication, my visual arts essay explores the title Reading by ear. Charting the sensory journey of our aural connection to the visual medium.