Mikey Georgeson

In London, he has had three solo shows: 'My Magic Life' Sartorial Art 2008, 'Father, Son & Holy Smoke', Bear Gallery 2009, and 'Tragicosmic' at Sartorial Art in 2010[3][5] Georgeson describes his paintings, which use thickly applied bright oil colours, as "a distillation of a desire to capture what I consider to be episodic globules in the glistening, sticky fluid called paint.

In his autobiography there is an illustration of Devant making a ghost disappear 'in front of a critical audience' which, as a title alone, has parallels to painting pictures if you ask me....About the time Harry Pye first suggested time was right for a Devant themed show, I was sorting through some books I hadn't touched since they had come into my possession via my polymath cousin, Ricky Rhubarb.

The first chapter of the first book was a sketch of Augustus John basically saying he was a bit hit or miss but when his work clicked 'one stares at it with amazement as if this were a Maskelyne and Devant trick and one saw a box floating in mid air'.

Eleven paintings in the show focus on Georgeson's ongoing love of Liverpool Football Club as a trope through which he can explore 'sending an emissary from his adult rational self to mix with the transcendental awe of his childhood'.

He taps into memories of his boyhood bedroom in which his father had created a large scale recreation of the Kop, pasted together with faces cut from the Observer Magazine.

His doctoral thesis, The Vision of the Absurd, Aesthetic Machines, Entanglement and Affect, looked at the ways in which 'art has an excess that delivers understanding outside of conceptual cognition'.

'[11] As a tutor at UEL, Georgeson created the Dewey Decimal Dowsing Project, which "began as a way to make the library more engaging and accessible to new art students and also bring practice and research closer.

Using dowsing, the student would then select three books, create a clay effigy "to process the encountered knowledge"[12] and then write "a simple scientific report (Title, Apparatus, Method, results, Conclusion).

Georgeson's work also features prominently (alongside other Sensorium contributors) in the book Affect and Social Media: Emotion, Mediation, Anxiety and Contagion.

In the procession we express the cosmos as it makes it up as it goes along.”[18] This led Georgeson to wear the paintings as a 'Cloak of Longing', in processional performances including singing and meditation, first in the Container Space at the University of East London[19] and later, in June 2023, in the Liberty station in San Diego, California.

In Brighton, in May 1992, Georgeson formed his first band, David Devant & His Spirit Wife, with Foz Foster, ex-guitarist of the Monochrome Set, Jem Egerton, a classically trained musician, who played bass, and drummer Graham Carlow.

Georgeson took the name for his band from a second-hand copy of My Magic Life, the autobiography of the great English stage magician, David Devant.

The documentary, shown in 1999, marked a farewell to the first incarnation of David Devant as, in the final sequence, filmed in 1999, Georgeson symbolically set fire to his wig.

Mr Solo has performed at live art events, as a member of The School of English Dada and Daniel Lehan's This Happy Band, a group of roving musicians, inspired by medieval troubadours.

As part of Margate's 'Dead Season Live Art' festival of 2010, This Happy Band paraded 'around the seaside town, commemorating its past, and the themes of Winter Dormancy, and Glorious Resurrection'.

In 2008, Georgeson collaborated with Eddie Argos to create Glam Chops, inspired by the stomping rhythms of The Glitter Band and the image of Sweet.

The critic Simon Price described the new band: "Think Evel Knievel jumpsuits, Red Indian head-dresses and star-shaped warpaint, think lyrics about Bowie vs. Gary rivalry, think parping saxes and stomping stack-heeled beats.

"[22] The band released a Glam cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.", with a video showing Georgeson and Argos singing the song while driving down the M4.

The new band, called The Civilised Scene, released a single "Moth in the Flame"/"Bringing Rocks Back from the Moon" (Corporate Records).

Ashley Hames, writing in the Huffington Post, described the album as a 'blinding triumph....it seems that only now are critics reassessing the undeniable pop sensibilities of David Devant & His Spirit Wife.