Bloc Billboard: The Myth of Thamesis
March - June 2026
Free & Open to All
Documentation image of The Myth of Thamesis by Nwando Ebizie.
We are delighted to present The Myth of Thamesis by Nwando Ebizie, an audio-visual billboard presented in partnership with Unlimited. As part of the commission, Nwando has created a visual prose-poem that you can see and/or listen to in the link above, as well as access in situ via QR code. In her own words:
Let me tell you a story
Allow the river to be your vessel. To carry you along. To speak to you, through me
All I ask is that you prepare a space in your mind and let me weave my tale - allow the threads to wind their way inside. Open up, take a look, step inside.
In 2024 I was invited by Estuary Festival to do a residency along the Thames Estuary, an epic borderland of sea and earth, ancient pollution and thriving wildlife, funfairs, beaches and boats. Mythology meets mythology. I took this image when I was invited for a mud walk by the artist Gerolamo Gnecchi Ruscone in Leigh on Sea. A seasoned mud walker, he balked when I arrived in shorts. He told me that I didn’t want to get any of what was in that ‘mud’ on my skin. Centuries of ship burials had taken place in the mud. Corporations have buried years of toxic waste. It was so beautiful there. But what lays beneath? Ever bubbling up to the surface?
This is the essence of the Myth of Thamesis - we are on a precipice - our waters, polluted by corporate interests poison us and we have to decide - will we come together to demand change? Or sit on the sidelines, watching the waters rise?
Nwando Ebizie is a multidisciplinary artist whose research-led practice imagines futures through performance, music, neuroscience, and diasporic African rituals. Working with a broad range of practitioners, she creates immersive, layered projects that include the expansive Distorted Constellations, her alter ego Lady Vendredi, and the long-form opera Hildegard: Visions, which has toured internationally.