The Piccadilly Circus billboard is a landmark location for any brand, having displayed electrical advertisements for more than a century. Coca-Cola, Kodak, eBay, Nescafé, Hyundai, L’Oréal Paris, McDonald’s… the list goes on. This past week, .art Domains have also been spotted on the legendary screen thanks to its adopter, an innovative new platform showcasing digital art CIRCA.ART.

Each month CIRCA commissions the artist (or an artist collective) exhibiting on Piccadilly Lights to create an exclusive, limited-edition print. The CIRCA Prints are made by some of the most significant artists working today, and offer the unique proposition of affordable prints, limited in availability to the time spent by each artist on the Piccadilly Lights: one month.

First in line is £, by Ai Weiwei, made to highlight the relativity of money.

“100 £ buys 17 cans of baked beans from Sainsbury’s”, begins the limited-edition print, which consists entirely of text. Available for one month only, 1-31 October 2020, the work is an edition limited by time. Orders may only be placed during this time period and then the work is gone forever.

The quirky design of circa.art makes you think of the early days of the Internet, making it even more obvious how far digital technologies have taken us.

CIRCA is committed to distributing the proceeds from the project to help struggling artists and creatives throughout the UK through its charitable and institutional partners.

Meanwhile on Piccadilly’s screen, Ai’s episodic films form an hour-long auto-biopic, taking us from his initiating experience of conceptual art, as a student in New York, to the Coronavirus crisis and its aftermath.

Here’s a fascinating fragment from the artist’s interview:

In planning for CIRCA 2020, how much did you think about the pedestrian walking through Piccadilly Circus – the London businessman, the teenage tourist, the Westminster City Council staff member – who happens to find themselves under the advertisers’ lights at 8:20 that day?

“The art has been put there to give a surprise. And it’s almost surreal.”

Stay tuned and don’t miss your chance to own a living artists’ masterpiece: circa.art

We’re truly honoured to be part of this initiative, which brings cultural sector into focus with the help of technology.