The Stolid Stench of Death

Yeah I know cheap theft of a line from Suffer Little Children by The Smiths but that's what I've experienced this week...kind of.

I visited the Reg Vardy Gallery whose latest exhibition is not your usual visual arts presentation, mainly because apart from the little white cards with writing on that always accompany an exhibition there isn't really anything to see. Nope for this one you need to follow your nose.

Curator Robert Blackson has pulled together an interesting range of smells to give visitors an experience not to forget. Working with a range of perfumers and other smell creationists he has brought to life a range of weird and wonderful smells like the surface of the sun or Hiroshima after the bomb or quite wonderfully the smell of Cleopatra's hair.

So why the reference to death? Well of all the smells on offer, including the vodka soaked body odour stench of the MIr spaceship and the smell of Communism - it really does smell like the hotel rooms I stayed in as a youngster in the Eastern Bloc - the one that made me feel really ill and was for me the worst smell on offer was the smell of the last meal of of a death row inmate. It was awful.

As an experience this was truly unique. Smells for many people have a huge resonance, one smell of a certain type of wood polish and a shiver runs down my spine as I'm reliving my first day at school or a whiff cooking mince pies and I'm rolling out pastry with my grandmother for christmas with huge smile on my face. Most of the scents on offer here have no reference point to almost everyone on the planet unless they were at Hiroshima in 1945 or onboard Mir but that doesn't matter the smells smell right.

If you get the chance to visit Sunderland then I urge you to check this out, it's an experience not to be missed. Failing that you can buy a scratch and sniff book!

Check it out at http://www.regvardygallery.org/