7 March – 7 April
2006
Private View: Friday 3rd March 2006, 6-8pm
Combining the personas of a worldly-wise raconteur with that of an ever so slightly neurotic host, Victor Mount welcomes visitors into the inner sanctum of his ficto-reality, where the quest for truth, conviviality and problem solving are a lost cause.
Mount’s art comes in many forms: sculpture, performance, videos, manuals, paintings and songwriting. These are all based on a logic of irrationality outside of the aesthetic considerations of good or bad. That a high aesthetic quality stamps all that he touches is not of intention but of a high degree of sensibility. The apparent material frugality of his oeuvre proffers much in the way of experimental wisdom. Wisdom based not so much on theory but more so on a forlorn optimism.
As Judith Dean has observed:
“ Time is both compressed and expanded, blurred. Reference is made to a wide range of different eras, from industrialisation to the present day, whilst there are very few specific dates; themes and subjects repeat and mutate through the exhibition, including bands, gigs, events food, drink and art works.”
A visit to the highly informative ding dong twist club (dingdongtwist.org.uk), provides all there is to know about‘ amateur surgery, ‘post-modern prose rubbish’, ‘artists’cocktails’, ‘web sympathy cards’ and ‘Jill Dando’. Yet amongst this make-it-up-as-you-go-along philosophy lurks something altogether more profoundly upsetting.
Assuming the role of the singer/songwriter, Mount demonstrates his lyrical acumen and legendary guitar playing. A catalogue of anecdotes, tales of triumph and disaster, art and life and rallying cries, are delivered with gusto and sincerity, reminiscent of that relic of British industry, the door-todoor salesman. The Hospitality Complex is the art of story telling: the nostalgia of art and the art of nostalgia.
An illustrated brochure with an essay by Judith Dean accompanies the exhibition.
For more information visit: www.dingdongtwist.org.uk
A Biography
After a formal art education followed by years floundering in the turgid gloom of the stagnant art world of the late seventies and eighties, Victor Mount founded ‘The Ding Dong Twist Club’. It has served its purpose as a nihilistic celebration of the cultural renaissance and a vehicle for events, installations, performances and occasional publishing ventures.
Over the past fifteen years, Mount has continued to ‘make work of a more tangible nature’. In 2005, he presented the solo exhibitions History in The Making – A Retrospective, The Metropole Galleries, Folkestone and Say No To Art, Flowers Central, London. The same year also witnessed numerous vintage performances by The Ken Ardley Playboys, including those at the Baltic Gateshead, Wimbledon School of Art, Serpentine Gallery and MIMA, Middlesbrough. Mount’s other recent projects and exhibitions include Les Marvielles Du Monde,The album Make Your Own Damn Music is a new collaboration between Victor Mount and Bob Smith and is available from all good record shops.
