Art World Perfumes

Art World Perfumes is a billboard ad featuring fictional perfumes from the future. These scents are branded after the most expensive art universities in the UK and they claim to possess magical properties that assure their users’ success within the highly competitive landscape of contemporary art. With the ongoing neoliberalization of higher education in the UK, Art World Perfumes invites the viewer to glimpse an almost-present future where success in the art world is increasingly linked to wealth, privilege, myth, and exclusivity.

The billboard is accompanied by a fictional podcast from the future called Art Deal. The podcast features an in-depth discussion with the CEO of InnovArte Global, a leading multinational conglomerate that controls the majority of UK art universities in the 2040s. The conversation explores the mystical powers of these perfumes, marketing them as guaranteed facilitators of success in the art world.

Art World Perfumes was commissioned by Bloc Projects in Sheffield and is on display from September 2024 to January 2025. To read more about this project, click here.