Thomson & Graighead: Apocalypse (2016)
‘The biblical narrative of the Apocalypse can be seen as the ultimate human-centred vision of time.
This prophecy from The Book of Revelation predicts that time will end because of human action and corruption.
While the Apocalypse has been depicted in countless paintings and films, Thomson & Craighead took the very corporeal descriptions, with vivid imagery of blood, bile and burnt meat, as a recipe for an intense olfactory evocation, to be worn on the body. Together with perfumer Euan McCall they created a fragrance.
It is the ironical product of a time in which both consumerism and politics feed on instilling us with fear and doom. Apocalypse is a complex fragrance based on olfactory materials detailed in The Book Of Revelation as it appears in the King James Bible first published in 1611. We established our list of terms from the book and then worked in collaboration with perfumer Euan McCall to develop this chemical depiction of biblical end times’
(text at the exhibition in TENT).
List of terms: thunder; blood; the rocks of the mountains incense; the smoke of the incense; earth; hail and fire; the sea; the creatures of the sea that have died; fountains of waters; wormwood; a rod of iron; the opened earth; a grievous sore; the blood of a dead man; every living soul (who has) died in the sea; plagues; a great river dried up; wine of her fornication; blood of the martyr of Jesus; flesh burned with fire; (and) a lake which burnt with fire and brimstone.
The work Apocalypse is part of Anytime Now at TENT Rotterdam till June 10 2018.