Tova Mozard works predominantly in photography and video. Here, she discusses amongst other works, her most recent pieces shown at her solo show ‘The Comedy Store and Other Stories’ at the Cecilia Hillström Gallery in Stockholm in March 2015. The situations, or perhaps more specifically, the stages of Mozard’s projected world are populated with potentially unsettling subjects uncannily out of character and out of joint; Eddie the Clown, Russ the Extra. Mozard returns to L.A. for the setting of ‘The Comedy Store and Other Stories’ featuring the film ‘Entrance’ and a number of photo-works centred on the famous Hollywood stand-up club. Leaving the curtains and the doors closed, the daytime appearance of the club is revealed devoid of an audience and laughter in photo-works displaying fittings and decoration – the night club in its free-time, the epitome and dank desperation of an empty stage, a silent audience.

‘Entrance’, 2015 takes a plausible stand-up performer, Mel the Comedian, and gives him a free stage, a free set. Mozard’s video portrays Mel in a number of situations, regular and irregular; on stage, in a restaurant, in a park… doing what he does, unnaturally. You may have seen or heard Mel somewhere before, possibly on The Simpsons, definitely somewhere tho’, I’m sure, I’m really sure, then again maybe I’m not. Mel is similar to Mozard’s other Hollywood characters, possibly similar to all Hollywood characters, possibly similar to all of us, on camera. He’s funny. He’s not. He’s normal. He’s uncomfortable. He’s a bit of you and he’s a bit of me. The stage setting is the continual guise of Mozard’s work. The work is a stage, the location and situation to be scrutinised, where self-portrayal, both fictional and real, is unfurled through the particularities of others.