This week I have been fluctuating between deciding on final fragrance designs for my upcoming exhibition at Bureau and charting a course of action for my olfactive endeavours in 2019. Perhaps being constantly concerned with past, present and future is a bane all artists have to contend with? or maybe, as 2018 incessantly marches onto its third month, I am becoming nervous to the fact that, in a mere 10 months’ time, I’ll be without any confirmed exhibitions.
As such, I pose to myself the question ‘where do you want to exhibit, and why?’ While it’s true that perfume works well in a conventional exhibition space, placing it in less conventional spaces re-contextualises and alters an audiences experience with it.
A recent trip to BasementArtsProject (where I will be exhibiting in a two-man show in October) reaffirmed the fact that placing perfume within certain spaces has a bearing on how we perceive it: It acts similar to my thematic exhibitions, whereby placing perfume within a theme reveals new ways of connecting to fragrance. A Basement is an ideal environment to enlist alchemist and pseudo-scientific narratives as a means of playing with the stereotype of a mad scientist. Suddenly, the experimental nature of fragrance concoction is revealed and will aim to highlight the further possibilities of scent both to myself and an audience.
So, where else? …A botanical garden? That will certainly allow me to directly reference the herbal, medicinal properties found within perfume ingredients. …A Stately Home? I suppose that will allow my work to reference the historical and domestic nature of perfumery. …A pub toilet? That would work as a means of playing with Eau De Toilette and it’s ‘toilet water’ aesthetics. The possibilities are endless!
