Can a Perfume Trespass? (2023)

A healing scent is emitted at the threshold of the exhibition space - prompting the question, can a perfume trespass?

Inspired by Nick Hayes’ suggestion that trespass is a form of “bewitchment”, an invisible spell that has shaped how the people of England relate to and have access to the land. Scent and its effervescent, errant molecules is used as a medium to traverse and disrupt the border. It is used to materialise the imperceptible and fictional whilst also physically and sensorially crossing boundaries becoming both a rebel protagonist and unwanted antagonist. This installation relates to the current critical debate around rights of access to land and the land as property - who has access?; who makes the dividing lines?; what has dispossession and division of the land cost us?; how can we traverse these fictitious boundaries and ownerships?

Where the hegemonic norm seeks to contain, restrain, dominate fleshes of all types, specifically for this project - lands, how might seepage and leakage be a strategy to resist capture?“⁠
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Part of The Green House 2003 at The Lethaby Gallery, UAL