Victoria Melody

The true story of how Victoria became a beauty queen and her Bassett Hound (Major Tom) became a champion show dog, reflecting the British fascination with celebrity, beauty and winning.

Performer and artist Victoria Melody entered Mrs Galaxy UK (the “married” version of Miss UK) to explore her own prize-winning potential after becoming inspired by the struggles of her Bassett Hound (Major Tom), a star of the amateur dog show circuit, but widely criticised once in the professional realm. She spent the last year appearing as “Mrs Brighton”, after winning her regional round, and has undertaken a wide range of public appearances as a beauty queen, documented through film and video in the show. An artistic experiment that took over Victoria’s life as she delved further into an obsessive and confusing realm of personal scrutiny, Major Tom questions the seductive power of beautification, celebrity and competition.

When Major Tom graduated from the amateur to professional dog show circuit, he kept coming last: the judges would never take his personality into account, only interested in his looks, from his ears, to his colour, and even the size of his ribcage. While he wasn’t perfect, (a bit smelly, perhaps, and with a voracious sexual appetite for Greyhounds) Victoria felt guilty that “Major Walking Prozac” was being subjected to such criticism. If Major was being scrutinised, Victoria believed she should be too, and so she stared to enter beauty pageants.

Victoria documented her year through film and photography and the performance has a strong multi-media element. Victoria’s eccentric, ethnographic approach to making performances finds Victoria immersing herself in other people’s worlds, Victoria examines national characteristics, focusing on the extraordinary in the everyday.