I am an artist and researcher currently undertaking a doctoral award at Leeds Beckett University. My practice-led research navigates the preposterousness of olfaction (through perfume and commercially available scented products) with sculptural resurrection, with links to re-use, ecological demise, corporeal embodiment and memory. I link this research with consumerist delight and disgust, embracing commodification, the written word, a working-class and a queer background.

The act of scenting and the act of smelling are being questioned. The research has opened up many intriguing conversations - please get in touch if you would like to discuss further!

‘This oscillation provokes my practice, providing it with constant nourishment, not immediately apparent. As a neuro-divergent artist (I also have dyslexia), my style of art-production, writing, thinking and presenting is perpetually evolving and shape-shifting. Nothing is neuro-typical, discordance and anxiety becomes part of the questioning and how work is made and why it needs to be made’

‘My research work acknowledges the sensorial re-purposing of objects as sculpture. I suggest a re-application of consumerist techniques in a more absurdist manner - resurrections incorporating the languages of visual merchandising, display, make-overs with audio-visual film techniques to harness and encapsulate, unlocking our senses and ensnaring us’. (A play on peacocking and eye-catching flagship-store presentations alongside the cinematic).

‘I connect with Laura U. Marks’ writing via film references and visual depictions of smell and how, through visual and audio languages, do directors depict the olfactory and gustatory through theatrical mise-en-scène, with gestures and antics?’

I currently co-direct (with Dale Wells) the turntable gallery in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire. The first dedicated space for contemporary art within the town.

Website: www.darrenneave.com
Instagram: @thehazmatguy