Perfume Synaesthesia Late

PLEASE NOTE: The Perfume Synaesthesia Late is now SOLD OUT.

There will be limited availability for the Jack Warne: Listening Sensory Sound & Visuals and the Kate Mclean: Sensory Mapping: Self-led Walking Tour, please see below for details.

There are tickets available for all other remaining evening openings of the exhibition.

This one off evening of events features a range of free cross-sensory drop-in activities across the Somerset House site that encourage you to prioritise your sense of smell.

Artist Kate Mclean has devised a sensory tour of the building encouraging attendees to explore the architecture and the fragrance within it. Designer and Musician Jack Warne's Sensory Sound installation invites you to investigate the harmonies between colour and sound. Artist Tereza Stehlíková hosts free workshops exploring story telling and the lesser utilised senses, touch and smell and their link to memory and emotion, spaces for this part of the evening are limited and must be booked in advance, more info on all events below.

The exhibition will be open late until 21.00, a perfect opportunity for some after hours olfactory investigation with a range of activities for perfume professionals, seasoned synesthetes and nasal newcomers alike.

Due to the popularity of the exhibition pre-booking is advised as ticket availability may be limited.  

Kate Mclean: Sensory Mapping: Self-led Walking Tour

Starting point: East Wing by Perfume admissions desk

Smells, invisible yet influential, are on display within the Perfume exhibition, but what about the hidden odours that make up our everyday smellscapes? Take this self-guided smellwalk devised by Kate Mclean that takes a fresh approach to sniffing the environment around us. Smellwalking (ie. walking ‘nose-first’) proposes a knowledge of the world that counters the predominant visual hegemony. Through this immersive walk, you will come to know the olfactory landscape of the rooms, corridors, terraces, doorways and courtyard of the building.

Unlike the eyes, we can’t close our noses. We breath 24,000 times a day immersed in smells, but mostly paying only scant attention. Collect a printed guide from the East Wing Galleries admissions desk and put your nose to work exploring the spectrum of smells across the site.

Bio

Kate McLean is a British artist and designer and mapper of urban smellscapes and founder of Sensory Maps. She is Programme Director for Graphic Design at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. She is also a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, UK researching fine-grained, human-centred olfactory perceptions of cities worldwide and the methods by which this information can be rendered visible.

John Foley: Tasting: Taste Test Lab Demos

Throughout the evening scent maker and artist John Foley will be in the Perfume Lab within the exhibition for an exploration of sensory harmony and dissonance with relation to smell and taste. Using the knowledge that what we experience as taste is 80% smell John will be in experimenting with various scents and flavours. These two inextricably linked senses will form the background of the explorations in particular their relationship with emotion and memory.

Alongside the live demos John will be giving a feature talk every half an hour from 18.30 last talk at 20.30 lifting the lid on sensory phenomena such as cognitive and retro nasal breathing, anosmia and hyperosmia. 

This lab residency is drop-in and free with exhibition entry; capacity may be limited during busy times. Whilst the Lab is interactive and questions are welcomed, these are not hands-on workshops.

John Foley is an Artist, Costume Designer and long term scent enthusiast interested in the crossover between the senses and their ability to invoke memories and emotions. Recent projects have included a Scent of Utopia workshop with Perfume co-curator Lizzie Ostrom, collaborating with Sarah Kraus for an installation at the Tate Modern and the Scent of Mystery in which a film was accompanied by a score of twenty different scents dispersed through the audience and was performed at Bradford Cinema Museum, Copenhagen Film Festival and the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood.

Jack Warne: Listening: Sensory Sound & Visuals

Terrace Room 3, Opposite the Perfume Shop
18.00-21.00, Drop-in 

Jack Warne is a designer and musician working across the realms of the analogue and digital. For the Perfume Late evening he will be showcasing an interactive synthesizer, inspired by the exhibition design (originally by Julia) that visitors can play and create their own audio visual piece.

Jack's project ‘A Synesthetes Process’ is an on going self-initiated critical design project focused on the phenomenon of Synesthesia. A critical design project communicating his experience of synesthesia to a non-synesthetic audience through digital and analogue methods. The project utilised two hand built visual synthesisers and Cinema4D to create eight audiovisual animations and one short film.

Tereza Stehlikova: Touch Talk Tell: Sensory Storytelling

Courtyard Meeting Room, South Wing
18.30-19.30 & 20.00-21.00