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Viktor Wynd | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Robert Wyndam Bucknell |
| Born | November 5, 1976 London, U.K. |
| Occupation(s) |
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| Years active | 1995–present |
Viktor Wynd is a British artist, author, and curator, known for his collections of curiosities.
Wynd established The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History in London's East End, a cabinet of curiosities featuring two-headed lambs, Fiji mermaids, unicorns, taxidermy, dodo bones, erotica, old master etchings, surrealist, occult and outsider art, [1] and celebrity faeces. [2] The museum was featured in a BBC Four documentary on cabinets of curiosity. [3] [ non-primary source needed ]
He previously ran a curiosity shop, Viktor Wynd's Little Shop of Horrors, dealing in taxidermy, shrunken heads and other oddities, [4] including the erect mummified penis of a hanged man. [5] In 2010 it was reported that Jonathan Ross's wife Jane Goldman had bought the skeleton of a two-headed baby from the shop. [6]
He has curated around 50 exhibitions at his gallery, Viktor Wynd Fine Art, including exhibitions on Mervyn Peake, [7] Tessa Farmer, [8] Leonora Carrington, [9] and Stephen Tennant. [10]
In 2005, Wynd had an exhibition entitled "Structures of The Sublime: Towards a Greater Understanding of Chaos" at Ingalls & Associates in Miami, featuring drawings and video. [11] [ non-primary source needed ]
In 2007 he had another exhibition in Miami entitled "The Sorrows of Young Wynd" (in reference to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) based around a waxwork figure of himself hanging by a noose from the middle of the gallery, and many other images of him committing suicide. [12] [ non-primary source needed ]
He founded The Last Tuesday Society with David Piper in 2003,[ citation needed ] which became known in London for its halloween parties and masked balls, [13] often with literary themes. [14] He also organised Wyndstock, a festival held at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, [15] and runs a long-running literary salon in London. [16]
Wynd is the author of two books: Structures of The Sublime: Towards a Greater Understanding of Chaos, a fragmentary, modernist anti-novel published in 2005 in Miami, and Viktor Wynd's Cabinet of Wonders, published by Prestel/Random House in 2014. [17] [ non-primary source needed ]
Wynd wrote an essay about his friend Sebastian Horsley for Yale University Press's book Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion, compiled by Kate Irvin and Laurie Anne Brewer.[ citation needed ]
He has made several TV appearances, including the National Geographic documentary series Taboo .[ citation needed ] He has also lectured about cabinets of curiosities, his book and his museum at The Lost Lectures, [18] the British Library, [19] Manchester University, [20] 5x15, [21] and the Barbican. [22]
He is a committee member of the London Institute of 'Pataphysics. [23]
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. The four works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was prevented by his death. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien, but Peake's surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.
'Pataphysics is a "philosophy" of science invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) intended to be a parody of science. Difficult to be simply defined or pinned down, it has been described as the "science of imaginary solutions".
Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body by mounting or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study. Animals are often, but not always, portrayed in a lifelike state. The word taxidermy describes the process of preserving the animal, but the word is also used to describe the end product, which are called taxidermy mounts or referred to simply as "taxidermy".
Stephen James Napier Tennant was a British socialite known for his decadent, eccentric lifestyle. He was a central member of the socialite group referred to as "Bright Young Things" by the tabloid press of the time. Tennant was noted for his affected demeanor, appearance and behaviors.
Cabinets of curiosities, also known as wonder-rooms, were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Renaissance Europe, yet to be defined. Although more rudimentary collections had preceded them, the classic cabinets of curiosities emerged in the sixteenth century. The term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history, geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art, and antiquities. In addition to the most famous and best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe formed collections that were precursors to museums.
Boy in Darkness is a novella by English writer Mervyn Peake. It was first published in 1956 by Eyre & Spottiswoode as part of the anthology Sometime, Never: Three Tales of Imagination. A "corrupt" version of Boy in Darkness was published both in an anthology, The Inner Landscape, and separately in 1976 with an introduction by Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore. Referring to the corrupt text, she wrote that "although the Boy in Boy in Darkness is assuredly Titus Groan, [Peake] did not call him so by name"; however, adding the name Titus was one of the specific changes that Peake made between writing and publishing his novella. The correct text has recently become available again in an anthology entitled Boy in Darkness and Other Stories, with a foreword by Joanne Harris and a preface by Peake's son Sebastian, as well as Maeve Gilmore's uncorrected introduction from 1976.
Nicholas David Gordon Knight is a British fashion photographer and founder and director of SHOWstudio.com. He is an honorary professor at University of the Arts London and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by the same university. He has produced books of his work including retrospectives Nicknight (1994) and Nick Knight (2009). In 2016, Knight's 1992 campaign photograph for fashion brand Jil Sander was sold by Phillips auction house at the record-breaking price of HKD 2,360,000.
David John Tennant is a Scottish actor. He was the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in the sci-fi series Doctor Who, returning to the show as the fourteenth incarnation of the character from 2022 to 2023. His other notable screen roles include DI Alec Hardy in the crime drama series Broadchurch (2013–2017) and its 2014 remake, Kilgrave in the superhero series Jessica Jones (2015–2019), Crowley in the fantasy series Good Omens (2019–present) and various fictionalised versions of himself in the comedy series Staged (2020–2022).
Hackney Central is a sub-district of Hackney in the London Borough of Hackney in London, England and is four miles (6.4 km) northeast of Charing Cross.
Mary Leonora Carrington was a British-born surrealist painter and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the women's liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s.
Sebastian Horsley was an English artist and writer. Horsley's writing often revolved around his dysfunctional family, his flamboyant and eccentric behavior, his drug addictions, sex, and his reliance on prostitutes.
Tessa Farmer is an artist based in London. Her work, made from insect carcasses, plant roots and other found natural materials, comprises hanging installations depicting Boschian battles between insects and tiny winged skeletal humanoids.
The Blue Elephant Theatre is a 50-seat fringe theatre situated in the borough of Southwark in London. It was established in 1999 by Antonio Ribeiro.
Maeve Patricia Mary Theresa Gilmore was a British painter, sculptor and writer, and the wife of author Mervyn Peake.
The House of Fairy Tales is a children's arts charity based in London, England. The House of Fairy Tales brings together artists, performers, actors, writers and philosophers to deliver theatrical events, guides and exhibitions. The House of Fairy Tales is a registered charity and holds the registration number 1140334 in England and Wales.
Musée Patamécanique is a private museum located in the Historical District of Bristol, Rhode Island. Founded in 2006 by Neil Barden Salley, it is open by appointment only to friends, colleagues, and occasionally to outside observers. Presented as a hybrid of an automaton theater and a cabinet of curiosities, it contains works representing the field of Patamechanics, an artistic practice and area of study chiefly inspired by Pataphysics.
The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History is a museum and bar in Hackney Central, situated in a former call centre on Mare Street in the London Borough of Hackney. It is operated by Viktor Wynd and part of The Last Tuesday Society and was funded on Kickstarter in 2015.
The Last Tuesday Society is a London-based organization founded by William James at Harvard and run by artist Viktor Wynd with directors Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Everett. Based at an eponymous gallery space and cocktail bar in Hackney, the society holds regular absinthe tastings, literary and artistic events.
Giacomo Brunelli is a British/Italian artist working with photography, who lives in London.
Eddie Peake is a British artist. His work includes performance, video, photography, painting, sculpture and installation. His art focuses on "implicit drama within relationships between people", and "how things like desire, sexuality and depression impact on them".
