Toby Victor Mott (born 12 January 1964) is a British artist, designer, and sometime Punk historian known for his work with the Grey Organisation, an artists' collective that was active in the 1980s, and for his fashion brand Toby Pimlico. More recently he has become known for his Mott Collection, an archive of UK punk rock and political ephemera that includes over 1,000 posters, flyers, and fanzines.
Early life
Toby Mott was born in London, son of academic Jim Mott and social worker Pam. He received a scholarship to attend the progressive, independent St. Mary's Town and Country School. At some point, the scholarship was withdrawn, and he went on to complete his schooling at Pimlico Comprehensive, where he shared a classroom with the screenwriter Amy Jenkins and Patrick Harrington, an infamous leading member of the National Front.
He later studied art at Westminster Kingsway College where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols was an alumnus. Mott was a founder member of the ASA (Anarchist Street Army, a late 1970s organisation that caused disturbances in the Pimlico area of London).
In the early 1980s he lived at the Carburton Street squats in Fitzrovia, a centre of artistic activity at the time – other residents included Boy George, Marilyn, Cerith Wyn Evans, Fiona Russell-Powell, and Mark Lebon. During this period Mott appeared in a number of films made by the British director Derek Jarman, notably The Angelic Conversation and also appearing in Gilbert & George's "Exister" pieces from 1984, currently in the Tate Collection.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was based in New York and Los Angeles working part-time as a bicycle messenger and as an art director for MTV making music videos for various groups, among them Public Enemy, A Tribe called Quest and The Rolling Stones. In 1989 Mott designed album cover graphics for groups such as Information Society and De La Soul, most notably their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising
Anarchist Street Army
The Anarchist Street Army (ASA) was a loose collective of young punks and anarchists from several inner city London Schools including Pimlico Comprehensive, London Nautical School, and Camden School for Girls, who congregated around an independent record shop on Wilton Road called Recordsville and attended Crass concerts. Their motives as an organisation were varied, but had a general ethos of bringing anarchy and chaos to the London streets, such as crashing Capital Radio's Nicky Horne show in an attempt to save the Roxy, and were a forerunner to later organisations with similar attitudes such as Class War, The Wombles, and protest tactics like Black Bloc. The ASA's motto and anthem was 'Running Riot' a punk rock song by the band Cock Sparrer, later adopted by Right Wing factions within the Oi! movement.
Solo art career
Mott was a co-founder of the East London art group the Grey Organisation (GO) who were active from 1983 to 1991. GO worked in several mediums including film and video and participated in over 20 international exhibitions. In January 1985 the group committed an act of "art terrorism" by smuggling one of their paintings into the International Contemporary Arts Fair in London. The following year they mounted an attack on Cork Street, then the centre of the London art world, splashing grey paint on the windows of a number of galleries. After this, members of the group were arrested and for a time banned from central London. This resulted in them relocating to New York City where they exhibited at The Civilian Warfare Gallery in the East Village. When GO disbanded in 1991, Mott pursued a solo career exhibiting at White Columns NYC, The Thomas Soloman Garage, Los Angeles and Interim Art, London. He was for many years represented by the Maureen Paley gallery.
In September 2011 Toby Mott produced a series of paintings inspired by the 2011 England riots, the resulting exhibition 'Unrest' was exhibited at Vegas Gallery, London. Many of the paintings in the exhibition were brandished with the slogan 'All Coppers Are Bastards' in gold leaf a reference to the legendary punk/political slogan.
Mott said of this exhibition "I was going to call the exhibition, 'I’ll keep looting until I get caught'— a quote from a looter but which could equally apply to a banker, [T]hose at the bottom are taking their lead from those at the top; although the rioters act in a cruder way, it is essentially the same thing."