Fragrant Tests | Goods
Exhibition 5 April–9 May 2025
Installation view: Fragrant Tests curated by Lemeeze Davids, April 5–May 9, 2025. Image courtesy of A4 Arts Foundation.
Title Fragrant Tests | Goods Dates 5 April–9 May 2025 Location Goods
Curator Lemeeze Davids
Credits

Practitioners:
Georgia Munnik
Andrew Putter

Fragrant Tests is a curatorial prototype exploring aroma in A4’s Goods corridor. It examines the practicalities of sensory intervention, specifically how scent can be placed and sustained within an exhibition space through five tests.

–

Goods is a project space for work in process and thinking aloud. The location’s transitory nature as a thoroughfare encourages a light-footed navigation of curatorial and artistic practice and rapid prototyping of ideas.

Fragrant Tests
A4

Five tests. – April 3, 2025

Path page
Fragrant Tests
A4
Five tests. – April 3, 2025
Path page

Test I


Georgia Munnik’s Strangling Fruit acts as a holder and diffuser of a handmade perfume. Titled Phenotype 13, the perfume has notes of tree moss, lemon verbena tinctures, white musk, jasmine, and patchouli, amongst other ingredients, which were sourced and synthesised by the artist.

Test II


For Fragrant Tests, Putter revisits his 2007 artwork 20 Smells. Rather than repeating it, he has created a forthcoming, smaller work for A4, titled 6 Smells, to be realised as a potential module for a larger reimagining of 20 Smells, centering on indole—a chemical that hovers tantalisingly between the living and the dead, linking decay and bloom.

Test III


For this test, the curator saturated one cedar wood block with atchar oil and one ceramic disc with mandarin oil to evaluate the radius of the aroma and how long the smell lasted.

Test IV


The curator was interested in testing ways that plants can introduce scent into an exhibition. Mindful of the allergens that flowers can release, Davids made an arrangement using eucalyptus and lemon leaves, gently bruising them to encourage the release of their oils.

Test V


The end corner of a number of wayfinder for Fragrant Tests was scented with Benzoin oil, a resin harvested from the bark of several species of Styrax trees. The curator described the smell as “a warm balsamic note reminiscent of vanilla or caramel.” Visitors could choose a scented or unscented wayfinder, depending on their preference.

Text: Lemeeze Davids
Editor: Sara de Beer
Design: Ben Johnson
Download
Header
Close
Text