Yesterday I held a perfume making workshop at Bank Street Arts which gave the participants the chance to make their own fragrance and gave a sneak peek (or a sneak sniff) of some of the perfumes that will be on display for my upcoming exhibition.
Within a formal and relaxed atmosphere I talked a little about my approach to perfumery and how it can be a platform for portraiture. I then gave a demonstration of the perfume making process before overseeing participants make scents of their own.
I don’t claim to be a perfume making expert but one string to my bow which separates me from conventional perfumers is the freedom of experimentation and failure. It doesn’t matter if I make a bit of a hash of a fragrance, because it’s a learning process. And it doesn’t necessarily matter if a fragrance smells nice, because my approach seeks to place perfumery within a fine art context. I think this translates into a pertinent learning experience, which seems to have inspired, and made people think about the possibilities of scent and the implications of finding alternative functions of a pre-conceived product.
All in all, this workshop was a great way to talk about perfume from the context of fine art and I’ll be running drop-in workshops during my exhibition.