Billboard Archive
Milk Theif
Martha Lyons Haywood, October 2024
“For years my parents have been trying to catch a thief, who has been opening one bottle per night in an attempt to steal their milk. This is a creature tactile enough to open the foiled lid completely, but not enough to drink much more than a teaspoon of the milk. It is clever enough never to be caught, but too skittish not to cover their tracks. After placing a camera at the back door, my parents discovered that it could be badger, crow, or rodent, we are still none the wiser as to who it is.
The Milk Thief has prompted thoughts about my own artistic practice and creative marks. Through their actions I identify with what I want to leave behind or intend to offer when making visual gestures and interventions. In my actions as an artist, I am usually looking for ways to leave evidence of well intentioned, humorous, cheeky, sad, political, beautiful, or disruptive offerings to viewers who witness or discover my work. As an artist I often search for something previously hidden from view; an insect nest, an abandoned piece of metal or wood or a discarded animal bone and mix up its position or purpose in the world. I also make new gestures by using natural materials to disturb spaces or places, adding contrasting objects that are seemingly out of place or adding an alternative way of interaction with the space.
Our actions are ephemeral. Through our work we leave a trail of objects or situations that we've concentrated and cared for, and then hurriedly abandoned to the elements they will face. I identify with the actions of the Milk Thief as a maker of subtle chaos and a quiet searcher of the great alchemical things in life.”
The Gurner
Nat# August 2024
“Tommy Mattinson, the fourteen-time world champion Gurner from Silloth in Cumbria, is a local legend. During the depths of lockdown, I made a pilgrimage to film and interview him with his renowned 'Wolf' Gurn face. Tommy's claim of being a direct descendant of the wolf might just be the secret to his unmatched success.
In my latest project, I’ve chosen to contrast Tommy's iconic gurn with a fluorescent green, ambiguous face. By data mining and regenerating key AI descriptive texts, I aimed to transcend the traditional 'Brathin'—the local term for the horse's collar that frames his face. This juxtaposition of AI and alien imagery creates a striking dialogue between the human and the synthetic, exploring the intersection of tradition and technology in a wholly original way.”
- Nat#
Resounding Weather
Maryanne Royle April 2024
This audio work is connected to the billboard. It draws our attention to the weather through listening. The sounds you hear are live movements; the winds and rain that whip against the building turned into sound signals. The world’s breath on record, sometimes silent and sometimes resounding.
Ebor’s billboard is usually a printed image pasted onto a steel plate. I’ve noticed that more and more often these prints are being destroyed by unseasonably strong weather - ripped down by a mixture of heavy rain and wind. Instead of battling these elements, I have chosen to embrace them by making them a source of sound for a giant plate reverb the same dimensions as the billboard to gain a perspective of what it endures.
Notes From College Bank
Ellie Waters, February 2024
Taken from a short photo-film, made by Ebor associate member Ellie Waters. 'Notes From College Bank' is an on-going project in which Waters looks to document the social and historical significance of the College Bank buildings in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Known locally as 'The Seven Sisters', College Bank is formed of seven high-rise social housing blocks, four of which have come under recent threat of demolition.
Drawing from imagery taken by her late grandfather, M J Burgess, in the late 1970's and early 80's, Waters has been working with past and present residents to create a collective record of life in and around College Bank. The project is on-going, if anyone wishes to share their stories of College Bank then please get in touch, see artists contact via her website.
A/B
Sophie Cooper, January 2024
A/B is a hand knitted work consisting of several discarded cassette tapes mostly sourced from the Morrisons car park in Todmorden. Sophie Cooper wants the viewer to appreciate discarded sound in a new visual and nostalgic context with the Littleborough air breathing fresh movement into the recycled material. Where are your old tapes now?
Sophie Cooper is a Todmorden based trombone player and sound artist. She is currently studying a Research Masters in Music at the University of Huddersfield and strives to be sustainable in her artistic practice.
I became clumsy and late and joyful
Burning Salt (Hannah Hull), October 2023
This work was created using somatic (body-based) meditation techniques.
It is part of Do you know the slope, the grain? This beautiful, sinking, fearless pain, a solo exhibition of somatic drawing, animation, poetry and song open from 14 October to 5 November.
About the artist
Hannah Hull (they/them) is an artist and musician, also known as Burning Salt.
The ancient practice of ‘burning salt’ is an act of expulsion, purification or protection. Hull uses song, poetry, drawing, animation and film to these ends. They studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College.
After a decade of specialism in socially-engaged art, Hull is currently focused on exploring somatic practices and trauma. They are also a boat dweller, TEDx speaker, intersectional feminist, queer person and recovering addict.
Anthrocoral
Babs Smith, August 2023
@Babssmithart
Made in VR & AR and presented in Artivive
Sound by Sophie Cooper
This billboard is linked to the adjoining exhibition in Gallery FRANK Immersive Watergrove.
An interactive art and sound experience responding to the sunken village of Watergrove and current environmental changes. Download the Artivive app on your phone and Walk around Watergrove Reservoir to discover and experience the four images. Visit Gallery Frank on Fridays and Saturdays until 3rd September to experience more of the exhibition.
More info: immersivewatergroveblog.wordpress.com
One of the many rivers that reemerged during last year's drought, forms the background for black freshwater coral. This is created in 3d print in response to found objects retrieved from the cracked earth of the reservoir bed. Black coral is known for its regeneration and purification. The coral's colour references coal dug from Bell Pits and sold to local households.
JOY IS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE
Vicky Hilton, May 2023
Joy is the only way for me to sustain acHvism. Without the intenHonal use of joy to foster change I find it very difficult to exist in this world. My propulsive urge can easily be shadowed by the hard-hiTng reality of life. My work oUen fuels an emoHonal response that counteracts oppressive structures and calls for social change which is rooted in hopeful attitudes and resilience. Joy resists the powers of oppressive systems in the world by providing an outlet for hope and creativity, allowing myself and others to counteract despair and fear with moments of celebration and pleasure. I use joy as a form of protest, a symbol of defiance and resistance, a symbolic tool to resist oppressive forces and express rebellion against injustice, inequalities, and discrimination.
I create moments of joy and happiness as a form of pushback against the oppressive elements of society. Joy in this context is seen as a positive form of protest that eschews anger and aggression in order to effect change. It is a way of refusing to be held down by adversity and finding a way to create happiness and hope.
I like to disrupt the expected. Joyful disruptions encourage us to view the world from unexpected perspectives and with a creative mindset. It gives us permission to soar, think new thoughts, and take calculated risks—while still having a healthy dose of playfulness and curiosity. These prompt us to look deeper, to think differently, and try unique approaches to solve everyday challenges. It helps us to be resilient, adaptive, and innovative in ever-changing surroundings. Joyful disruption appeals to the desire to find a sense of pleasure and enthusiasm in the chaos and uncertainty of our lives.
Ways of Listening
Alison Cooper, March 2023
This billboard design responds to a body of research undertaken in the depths of lockdowns in 2021. During this time I reached out to ask, "How do people listen in their many different ways?" From music, spoken word, prepared sound or the found sounds that surround us daily.
As the Ways of Listening project developed it became more poignant, containing one of the last communications between myself and a friend (who sadly passed away). The channels of communication became multi layered. On the one hand enquiring with individuals about their personal listening experiences for the project but also as an act of listening and receiving of information between friends in a strange and unfamiliar world of separation. This last interaction later informed a collective group listening experience, during the act of mourning.
Although we may 'hear' something, to listen is to give our full attention to everything which is around us.
The finished design uses letterpress printed versions of the word 'listening' positioned to replicate the undulating repeating pattern of a sine wave. This sonic pattern is cyclical in nature and represents amplitude alongside a variability of change in time.
The Creature Who Knows Us Most
Martha Lyons Haywood, December 2022
"These works are a part of an on-going drawing series that celebrates the birth, death and life of birds that share our daily spaces. Recently their familiarity offered me comfort during the last 2 years while I lived away from the UK in Iceland.
Being relatively neighbouring islands, some of the bird inhabitants were familiar and identifiable in Iceland and their confidence in sharing human space meant that I could listen, watch, photograph and draw them without difficulty. In their usual behaviours they had no idea of the feeling of safety they gave me. These drawings are a celebration of the birds I met in Iceland and bringing them to the UK is a celebration of my homecoming – an experience many bird species are all too familiar with themselves in the changing of the seasons.”
Critical Threshold
Babs Smith, September 2022
Made in ColoryVR and presented in ArtiviveAR July 2022 Sound by Holly Phelps @IORA @Babssmithart
Babs works with traditional and virtual materials traveling between online and offline processes to understand the effects of our increasingly cyborg existence.
Her practice explores subjects such as: movement, light, energy, sound, and time within the landscape of environmental issues. Her work is often collaborative, and cross disciplinary.
Critical Threshold is reference to the tipping points we are now experiencing as a result of climate change. A monumental shift, demonstrating lost edges and our irrecoverable path back to safety. make all the difference.
Helvítis / Himnaríkis
Paul Haywood, June 2022
Helvítis / Himnaríkis is a photograph that was taken on a short ferry journey between two small ports in the western fyords of Iceland. It is a depiction of the horizon, or of what I could see as a horizon in that moment, in those conditions, looking at that seascape.
All horizon views are constantly shifting and permanently in flux as the ambient landscape is subjected to weather conditions, atmospheric pressures, and the different refractions of the sun's light rays as the day matures. There is nothing fixed about horizon views apart from the two components on either side of the horizon line. This photograph captures something that has no phenomenological reality other than our visual experience; horizon.
What we see is the liminal edge between firmament and materiality, between the sky and the sea, above and below. Our cultural interpretations perceive a juxtaposition and meeting point between heaven and earth, nirvana and the underworld, salvation and damnation, redemption and execration, the light and the dark. Except that, in this presentation, light is emanating from helvitis (the Icelandic word for hell) and absorbed across the expanse of himnarikis (the Icelandic word for heaven). The sublime Icelandic landscape is enormous and the presence of Hades is life affirming; the supposed binaries of dark and light (arcadia and perdition) very frequently synergise or entwine to offer an optimistic and energising experience.
Porous
Ivon Haywood, April 2022
Made by printing scorched wood, exposing the grain of both Beech and Oak. As the wood is scorched, the softer parts of the grain are burnt away leaving high points that act as a relief block to print onto.
The woods used are Beech and Oak for contrasting effect. Beech and Oak are very different in their appearance and are seldom seen in the wild growing together. In the circle is the end grain of Beech where you can see amazing detail of the grain and growth rings. The rectangular length of oak shows the side grain, and how open and irregular it is.
Long Live the Witch
Lee Freeman, February 2022
Lee works in art education and values most that art can always convey a message to the audience in line with or different to the intention the artist had themselves.
He wanted to take this opportunity to bring attention to the plight of 'Witches', not only the plight of those of the past but those who are still hunted today. There are many countries who still use the stigma of the term 'Witch' to persecute women. It is this persecution of women that he wanted to explore in this piece.
The woman in the piece depicts a 'Witch' an older, poor woman in reflection. She embodies not only the traits that might have caused her be a target of a witch hunt but also the bravery and stoicism with which women of the time must have possessed to live in such circumstances.'
The witch hunt could be seen as a metaphor for the realities of gender inequality or simply a sad tale of needless deaths of innocent women.
Yarn Bomb Monster
Cheryl Beswick, December 2021
He is made using knitted and crochet pieces found in her studio, and left over foliage from our wreath making workshop, hoping to inspire us to recycle and reuse this Christmas and New Year.
Kurma
Kara Lyons, October 2021
"My drawings are created by working into randomised blobs and smudges to ‘see’ what emerges. I draw upon a repertoire of forms and images that I’m interested in such as mythical figures, human forms, creatures and other natural elements. I utilise the innate properties of drawn materials to extend the possibilities of visual imagination. I am interested in the universality and timelessness of myth particularly found in women’s oral storytelling.
Kurma is Sanskrit for turtle or tortoise and is associated with the legend of the churning of the Ocean of Milk, which is to do with the creation of the origins of life. Here you can see 2 mirrored turtles with fish tails supporting a swirling oceanic vortex.” - Kara Lyons
Untitled
Rahela Khan, July 2021
Untitled by Rahela Khan is scanned work in printmaking.
The two etched prints have been created by using strong acid to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio ink on the metal. Lace, and embossed wallpaper were used to create the design on the plate. The original images were created on A5 paper, which have been enlarged in order to be printed on the billboard, creating a different way of looking at the work. The interpretations of the piece are not didactic, they’re meant to be abstract and ambiguous.
Fabric in, Fabric of
Maryanne Royle, May 2021
The photographic work Fabric in, Fabric of was made by combining analogue and digital technologies. The billboard is designed to be looked at in person so you can see it change as you approach it. The fabric in the image is visible when far away, the fabric of the image is visible when close.
Forwards
Mary Naylor, March 2021
The colourful triptych Forwards is by Ebor Member and painter Mary Naylor. The work is in keeping with Mary's signature style; bright and full of character.
Covid Willow
Angela Tait, 2020
COVID Willow was created by Atic Studios, a collaborative project by ceramicist and Ebor Member Angela Tait and photographer Ian Clegg. The work is inspired by the willow pattern, traditionally found on tableware but here we see it with a 2020 twist and on the exterior of our building!
#protectthenhs
#protectthenhs, April 2020, was the very first display on our billboard. It was a responsive work which was painted directly on to the aluminium by Martha Lyons Haywood. #protectthenhs was exhibited at a time when Ebor Studio was only open to members of one family; it was a way to connect with the outside world and our artist members who couldn’t access their studios, a way to show appreciation to the NHS workers who were saving lives and risking their own every day, and a way to exhibit art when there were very few ways to do so.
The painting demonstrated to us that, as well as a premeditated and organised exhibition format, the billboard can be used as a tool to show public facing current work very quickly from concept to execution.