A feast for all the senses at the National Portrait Gallery
02 August, 2011
by: Spoonfed Arts Team
Sights, sounds, tastes and smells - give all your senses a treat!
This Friday sees something a little bit special going down at the National Portrait Gallery. Not content with offering up a treat for the eyes, they're teaming up with a group of artists and curators to present ReAnimate, a feast for all five human senses.
With all sorts of music, soundscapes (including music from the splendidly named Optophonic Lunaphone – created by Brian Duffy), and specially created ReAnimate cocktails, the institution is claiming to be “the first museum to create a five-sense visitor experience”. And who are we to argue? In addition to all this is, as it were, the icing on the cake: a range of fragrances is to be wafted through the gallery spaces by scent artist Sissel Tolaas. Amazing, huh?
Interestingly, it might be argued that such an event was foretold on this very website back in 2010. Every year Spoonfed asks a selection of art experts for their predictions of what's going to be big in the year ahead and, frankly, it's pretty rare for many of these predictions to come true. Until now that is...
In December of last year, artist and co-founder of The Stuckists, Charles Thomson predicted that 2011 would see contemporary artists take the logical next step after sound artist Susan Philipsz scooped the £25,000 Turner Prize:
“The Turner Prize will need something even more farcical than someone singing a whiny song in an empty room. After sound, I suggest smell as the next big thing at the Tate. It shouldn’t be difficult, as the whole institution already stinks to high heaven.”
Well he got the wrong place, but it's pretty darned close. The major difference though is that this event at the National Portrait Gallery sounds pretty cool, we reckon.
Click here to see what's on at the National Portrait Gallery.
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Image credit: Marvin Ayres. By Davide Simonetti 2011 © Davide Simonetti
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