BIO

Jay Gilleard aka Cbloxx (b. 1983) is an internationally recognised multidisciplinary artist working across large-scale muralism, painting, and stone sculpture. After over a decade producing monumental murals internationally, the artist has increasingly turned toward stone carving as a permanent and archaeological form of mark-making.

Born in a former mill town in Yorkshire, UK, they first gained international recognition as the co-founder of pioneering queer street art duo Nomad Clan, before returning to solo practice following a formative period living and working in Los Angeles, culminating in a public commission for UNESCO’s World Art Day. Having headlined Nuart Aberdeen momentum continued securing artistic residencies in Mexico, Basque Country & a groundbreaking major public art commission at the University of Hawaii, Maui.

Their practice is rooted in site-specific research, responding to geology, archaeology, and ancestral narratives to explore environmental awareness, spirituality, and historical memory. 

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ARTIST STATEMENT​​

Cbloxx practice explores how identity, mythology and cultural memory become embedded within landscape, stone and shared histories. Figures within the work often appear to emerge from geological forms or fractured blocks, echoing archaeological fragments, artefacts and mythological beings. Drawing from ancient civilizations, petroglyphs and ritual, Cbloxx investigates how cultures encode stories, knowledge and belief systems within the land itself.

Underlying this work is an ongoing investigation into pre-Christian belief systems and their relationship to land, ritual and identity. Raised in Yorkshire — a region shaped by Celtic tribes such as the Brigantes and later Norse settlement in Jórvík — the practice draws from these history to examine how indigenous knowledge, symbolic languages and spiritual frameworks have been suppressed, displaced or absorbed through processes of cultural and religious transition.

Living and working in a rural moor landscape where seasonal cycles are observed and festivals such as Imbolc continued to be celebrated, this connection to place remains active. 

As one of the first openly out trans street artists, Cbloxx’s work is also informed by a personal search for suppressed histories of gender fluidity within ancient societies where non-binary identities were embedded within spiritual and social structures.

Across murals and sculpture, the work imagines contemporary monuments as future archaeological artefacts — asking how the symbols of our time might be encountered by generations yet to come.

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Selected Public Art & Institutional Projects

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• 'Athena Rising' Leeds — Public Landmark tallest mural in the UK 
• 'Destiny' sculptural installation commission, National Football Museum, Manchester
• 'Between Worlds' Public art commission, University of Hawaii x Maui Public Art Corp, Hawai‘i
• Projects with Urban Nation Museum, Berlin
• Public mural commission, Groninger Museum
• NYC Pride mural project with Stonewall and The Lisa Project NYC​

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