Vicki Lee's 'The Scent of Now' was a space to be present and feel

WORDS Samantha Corry PHOTOGRAPHY Olivia Repaci PUBLISHED Wed, 30 Oct 2024 - 1:15 pm

In Vicki Lee’s gallery last Friday, The Scent of Now unfolded as an invitation to experience the present—a creation sparked by a feeling she encountered during a family sabbatical. “The show itself was a showcase of a scent I constructed off a feeling that hit me,” she explained. This was no ordinary fragrance launch; it was a space to feel, to be, without expectation or outcome.

“Once an idea hits, to have the time to allow it to permeate and to ‘play’ with the ideas without a desired outcome is all an artist can really ask for,” she shared. This sense of artistic freedom became the foundation of her showcase, a sensory experiment that aimed to explore the intangible – the scent of a moment, an “experience of NOW without any artworks for sale.”

Working alongside her husband, Ted O’Donnell, Lee crafted a soundscape that merged seamlessly with scent and light, each element circulating “as one bubble.” Together, they created a composition to bring guests into a single shared moment with glasses of champagne. From the start, it was clear that this wasn’t a traditional show. There were no hanging artworks, no commercial transactions. “The purpose of my show was to share one moment (of course it was NOW) together,” she remarked, adding that digital clocks were sent to guests in advance, to mark the countdown to this moment of pure presence.

For Lee, “all of my work has only one story: the beginning (the creation), the middle (the time of most discomfort for me), and the destruction.” This cycle is an inescapable pattern, one that she approaches with openness. “This process is far beyond my control. All I can do is try and make it fun.” Embracing the constancy of the circle, she mused, “Since the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter* remains constant, my belief is that we may as well spin the circle (cycle) big.”

As the night went on, the lighting followed this cyclical journey, beginning in soft peach tones, warming gradually to a deep, fiery sunset—“the light moved in accordance with the increasing haze to ricochet off our guests’ skin just as a sunset would at the very last light on the beach.” The room filled with a mist that lingered, creating a sense of “slight (massive) discomfort” before evolving into something transformative. As the light shifted, O'Donnell's polyrhythmic beats built toward the unveiling of the scent, a sensory culmination of months of evening work, that those memories "will forever be the best part of this show" says Lee.

Reflecting on the beauty of shared artistic labor, she expressed “The expansion of our minds and hearts doing this as ‘work’…will forever be the best part of this show. To have the excuse to converse in the ultimate way we match. Through the art. Through the sound. Through the scent.” This shared language brought guests closer to a universal truth – that life’s gifts are fleeting, “supercharged” by impermanence. “Understanding impermanence supercharges my life,” she said. “Unfortunately, what I think I’ve realised is that you are never handed the present. You have to move for it. Move with the Force of life.”

As the haze cleared and the moment faded, 'The Scent of Now' became a meditation on presence, a reminder to “spin big” and embrace the now, not as a passive observer, but as a part of the experience itself. It was Lee’s hope that this ephemeral moment would “invigorate our guests,” leaving them with a deeper sense of the present – an attitude, a shared breath, a fleeting memory of now.