Sissel Tolaas’s work is more subtle but it’s one of the most innovative – and surprising – pieces in the whole show. It’s a series of small, white, abstract sculptures equally spaced across four walls. These sculptures hide secrets. Each is imbued with scent, which triggers a memory or a feeling or, sometimes, an acute physical reaction.
— Scent artist Sissel Tolaas collected smells from Melbourne, and is now exhibiting them at the NGV Triennial, which runs until April 15 at the National Gallery of Victoria. Read more at Smelling Art with Sissel Tolaas at Broadsheet Melbourne, or find out more about the Triennial here.
Reminds me of this piece I experienced recently at the Cleveland art museum: http://www.clevelandart.org/art/2014.403
Yes — their work is very different but scent installations are cool and hope we’ll see more of them.
https://nstperfume.com/2006/02/21/perfume-books-aroma-the-cultural-history-of-smell-by-constance-classen-david-howes-anthony-synnott/
I would love to see that show.
Robin, just putting this link to a review you ran back in 2006 as the book includes some interesting material on aboriginal knowledge and meaning re. Smell. I think there has been quite lot of research since . I was reading something about western Australian aboriginal knowledge of plants/ smells in relationship to greeness that was interesting but was in one of those academic papers that are hard to access unless you can use JSTOR .
I wish we had Marcello back as a contributor, he was so much more knowledgeable on the subject than I am!