Toby Mott

Biography

Toby Mott, born in London in 1964 and currently residing in Westminster, is a celebrated artist renowned for his significant contributions to punk visual culture. With a career spanning several decades, Mott's artistic endeavors traverse themes of rebellion, counterculture, deviance, and transgression across various mediums, including painting, publishing, and installation. In the early 1980s, Mott co-founded the Grey Organisation, an East London art collective that vehemently opposed the stagnant status quo of the establishment. The impactful work of the Grey Organisation, including the notorious Cork Street attack, is credited with revitalizing art's potential for subversion and critique. During this period, Mott also made notable appearances in several arthouse films by British director Derek Jarman, notably in "The Angelic Conversation" and also featured in works by Gilbert and George. Transitioning to the United States in 1985, Mott collaborated with renowned musical artists such as A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy. His most notable contribution during this time was creating the cover artwork for De La Soul's breakthrough album "3 Feet High and Rising," which remains an iconic album cover in hip-hop history. In the late 1990s, Mott launched the fashion line Toby Pimlico, whose detention line slogan tees, based on his artwork, captured a zeitgeist of pithy pop rebellion and swiftly became a British cult classic. More recently, Mott has founded the international publishing fair Cultural Traffic, serving as a platform for social change through DIY practice. Having come of age in the epicenter of punk culture, Mott began collecting posters, flyers, and fanzines from its inception. This early ad hoc archiving evolved into The Mott Collection, an expansive personal archive of British subcultural ephemera encompassing various movements such as new wave, post-punk, Northern Irish punk, anarcho-punk, skinhead, new romantic, warehouse, sound system, queer, acid house, rave, and jungle. This unique collection has formed the basis of several acclaimed publications and exhibitions. Throughout his multifaceted career, Mott has consistently remained at the forefront of provocative artistic expression. His iconoclastic work has been exhibited globally and continues to challenge conventional norms while inspiring artistic discourse.