Darren Neave

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.

I recently gained an MRes from The Royal College of Art in London, I have an MFA from the University of Lincoln and a BA from the University of Leeds (Bretton Hall College)

I work between Grimsby, London and Leeds.

I have shown all over the world, including London, New York, Beijing, Berlin and Paris. 

Updates
Mobirise

PhD - The Age of Bronze/The Bronze Age 

This practice-based research examines the ways in which scent, via everyday (commercially available) items can be used to re-purpose (unwanted) objects (recycling or re-purposing) as a method for making artworks.

I like using specifically ‘smelly’ products or mass-produced perfumes and scented products.

The Age of Bronze/Bronze Age links the Rodin sculpture with a found fragrance Nu Parfums Bronze Age

I am interested in the relation of scents to objects, I want to revel in attempts to give scents object-hood, finding ways to scent and permeate items, that perhaps should not smell at all. 

Mobirise

Blue, Blue, Blue, Ultra Blue, Dark Blue, Deep Blue, Private Blue 2023 from the Show Not Fit For Human Consumption at the turntable gallery in Grimsby 

This piece draws reference to Ang Lee’s film Brokeback Mountain, towards the end of the feature one of the protagonists re-engages with a lost lover when visiting his bedroom in his former home. He picks up a denim jacket, brings it close and inhales deeply.

Each blue jacket was sprayed with a different Blue titled perfume. Not all the smells will resonate with the audience but the act of moving in on each jacket and gently inhaling, in turn, presents us with a different way of experiencing art works. A performance with intimacy. Do we become aware of ourselves in the gallery with the ‘act of smelling?’ I wanted to make it more apparent.

Perfumes are very much part of our everyday lives, I see this as a way of giving each scent some sort of object hood, and in turn attempting to link each garment with a person, who may be still around or not. Perfume, indeed resonates and this piece was an attempt to delve into that aspect. 

Mobirise

Addiction/Heron Porn 2014-2024

The piece has been an unassuming work in progress, linking digital hoarding with art and porn addictions, culminating in an array of a collection from various sites over the years. Images were constantly collected and ‘dumped’ into a folder, recently I decided to give the project closure and create a visual thumbnail / spreadsheet. There is a nod to the German conceptual artist’s Timm Ulrichs’ 1992 work Kunst und Leben and to Simon Fujiwara’s installations Since 1982 at Tate St Ives.

I particularly like the fact that Patrick Heron’s work Horizontal Stripe Painting November 1957 - January 1958 is displayed wrongly, the horizontal becomes vertical, in many of the images.

Blurred due to adult content.

Copyright Darren Neave 2024
Design & technology by Stuart Shackleton

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