The Bank of England in Ruins

Participation in group exhibition, London/ UK

At the invitation by Sam Jacob, the curator of the group exhibition The Bank of England in Ruins, Aslı Çiçek participates in the show with 'The Bath of England': a digital collage on the ruins of John Soane's demolished masterpiece.

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The Bank of England in Ruins is an exhibition about architecture, ruins, value, and money. The gallery is in the heart of the City of London’s financial district, sited in James Stirling’s postmodernist building No1 Poultry, opposite the actual Bank of England.

Responding to this context, the exhibition’s centrepiece is a large physical model made by Studio Jacob at University of Applied Arts Vienna, based on a drawing by Joseph Gandy showing John Soane’s design of the Bank of England. Soane’s building had only recently been completed, but Gandy’s drawing (1830) shows the bank in ruins after some unspecified future catastrophe.

The strangeness of depicting architecture (and a key edifice of the British state) as a ruin is the starting point for a collection of different projects. These also respond to Soane and Stirling’s interest in fragmentation and reassembly, the reuse of pieces of history to construct possible futures.

(extract from the text by curator)

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The Bank of England in Ruins
curated by Sam Jacob

Hypha Gallery 2 / No. 1 Poultry, London EC2R 8EN

PV: Thursday, 11th December 2025, 6 – 9pm
Open: 12th December 2025 – 17th January 2026

Participants:
Studio Jacob, Aslı Çiçek, Bamidele Awoyemi, CAN, David Kohn, DRDH, Drawing Architecture Studio, Fala, Hugh Strange, Jamie Foubert, Joseph Zeal Henry, Kuehn Malvezzi, Madelon Vriesendorp, Maria Lisogorskaya, Mary Duggan, MBL architects, MOS, Muoto, Nigel Coates, Paradigma Ariadné, Paul Anderson, Peter Wilson, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Piovenefabi, Point Supreme, Sam Chermayeff, Sean Griffiths, Sergison Bates, Shahed Saleem, Space Popular, Supervoid