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

ART ODOUR - ODOROUS ART

My PhD work is proving to be very evocative - often when talking about how the research started, I find the conversation quickly becomes infused and engulfed with people’s memories and personal associations with perfumes and fragrances and the attempts to describe and recall people, situations, commemorative experiences…. I have always wanted to harness this ‘power’ with my art practice with these conjunctions - what is produced?…. please feel free to share any experiences, especially if you are a practitioner.

Mobirise

Grimsby Venus

I've been seducing the Grimsby Venus de Milo.

New work in the pipeline for 2026.

Keep your eyes peeled and your nose cleared.

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.

Censored due to adult content.

Copyright Darren Neave 2026
Design & technology by Stuart Shackleton