Spring Soap, 2017
Scented hand soap with short story & text intervention.
A washroom intervention and olfactory portrait commissioned by Spring Workshop, a cultural initiative and artist residency located in the Wong Chuk Hang industrial neighborhood on South Hong Kong Island. A pseudo-fictional short story of a dematerializing visitor could be read on the back of the bottle's label while short proposals for the visiting smeller intervened within Spring's signature typographic way finding system, designed by London-based A Practice for Everyday Life. Comment cards were also made available to encourage visitors to explore the limits and possibilities of using text to describe scent.
The fragrance was developed after a two-week residency at Spring, where I explored smell and smelling as both a literal and poetic definer of place. Upon returning home, I worked as an Artist in Residence at the Institute for Art & Olfaction. At its best, the soap should be sharp, weird, refreshing, and decidedly Spring Workshop-ish: driven by aquatic notes and balanced out with some spice, some sweetness and some uncomfortable funk.
Support and thanks to Mimi Brown & Spring Workshop as well as Saskia Wilson Brown, Ashley Eden Kessler, and the IAO. Graphic design support via A Practice for Everyday Life. Installation photographs by Mandy Chan.