THE SENSORIAL OBJECT

Abstract

Curated by Natasha Mayo and Zoe Preece, this exhibition brought together new digital technologies with the long established traditions of ceramics, textiles and glass, to examine the ways in which artists explore the sense experience through the materiality of things. Taking the domestic object as our site of exploration, offered up the possibility of not only re-visiting our sensory world, but also of discovering rich layers of complexity and depth and new apertures of perception within and beneath our familiar daily experience. The essay submission examined how, throughout the course of our lives, we gradually compile essential, irreducible components of an idea of ‘home’ and assemble them almost as a sensory shelter within the bricks and mortar of our houses. From our choice of a cinnamon and lemon air freshener to the sounds, textures, colours and arrangement of furniture, we overlay olfactory, audio, tactile and visual properties that approximate that subjective feeling of being ‘at home’ in our surroundings.