If there ever was

Hello friends,

I'm participating in a quite unique exhibition that only consists of the smells. It's about extinct and impossible smells.

What I've made for this exhibition was the scent of Stasi Smell Jar - the scent of a citizen of East Germany that was captured his/her body odor without being aware of it. You can view the extraction and composition process on the following page:
If There Ever Was

The catalogue comes out with the smells printed on it. Please read further information below about the exhibition and the catalogue.

Best,
Maki Ueda


If there ever was:

an exhibition of extinct and impossible smells


Opening: Tuesday, 29 April 6-8 pm
Artist talk: Tuesday, 29 April 5-6 pm
Draw What You Smell: Tuesday, 20 May 1-3 pm
Exhibition continues: 30 April – 6 June 2008

Artists include:

Kóan Jeff Baysa, Mark Buxton, Bertrand Duchaufour, Christoph Hornetz, Christophe Laudamiel, Patricia Millns, Steven Pearce, David Pybus - Scents of Time, Geza Schön, Sissel Tolaas, and Maki Ueda

Reg Vardy Gallery is proud to host If There Ever Was: an exhibition of extinct and impossible smells.

In his book of essays entitled, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, the physician Lewis Thomas wrote, “The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking itself.” And it is with this appreciation of smell as comparable to thought and interpretation that the exhibition If There Ever Was considers scent as integral to the perception of abstraction and representation.

Scent is the essence of physical presence and lends proof to our surroundings. Contrastingly, the fourteen scents re-created for If There Ever Was are inspired by absence. Like a cabinet of intangible curiosities, their forms are drawn from disparate stories throughout history for which few, if any, objects remain. And although it would be easy to pass the exhibition off as a work of pure fantasy—the product of an over-active perfumer’s imagination—beneath the olfactory theatricality lies a serious scientific basis, says James Wong, a botanist at Botanic Gardens Conservation International, UK.

For the exhibition, Wong helped to re-create the bouquet of four extinct flowering plants by trawling through an extensive list of extinct flowers to identify entries that were closely related to existing scented species. He then combined historical reports of how these extinct plants smelt, with the fragrance of their living relatives, to remix the specific ancient aroma.

From the acrid surface of the sun to the atomic blast at Hiroshima, visitors to the exhibition will be able to experience scents produced by the most renowned fragrance designers in the world.

A book of smells accompanies the exhibition, ISBN: 978-0-9557478-0-9. This hardback publication is on sale at Reg Vardy Gallery (rrp £12.00) and is distributed by Cornerhouse, www.cornerhouse.org. If There Ever Was: a book of extinct and impossible smells is published by Art Editions North.

This exhibition is sponsored by the gas distribution company Northern Gas Networks, which runs north east England’s gas emergency service and uses scent to help people detect gas leaks.

The following fragrance houses have generously donated to this exhibition: International Flavors & Fragrances, Symrise, and Givaudan.

Reg Vardy Gallery is open: Tuesday 10 am to 8 pm, Wednesday to Friday 10 am to 6 pm and Saturday by appointment. For more information please call 0191 515 2128, email robert.blackson@sunderland.ac.uk

from the site:
Reg Vardy Gallery