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THOMSON & CRAIGHEAD
NO ESCAPE

18 MARCH - 15 MAY 2022

“I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth. To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, imagine what we can do.” – Richard Branson (2021)

Tech billionaires spend fortunes hurling themselves into space, playing in the skies with their mile high and beyond club, as they milk the resources of our “beautiful” earth.

Science-fictioning our relationship to the world today No Escape, by Thomson & Craighead, crashes into the billionaire vision hurtling it and its “stars” back to the ground, where eggs fry on bonnets and cars melt in the reflection of prismatic high rises.

“They dream of a new life in orbit; a new life on the moon; on asteroids, and on the dead planet of Mars. They dream of leaving their mistakes behind and starting again. They dream and dream and dream…
but there is no escape. Back at Ground Zero, we live with their mistakes ever more divided, a little warmer every year.” – Thomson & Craighead (2022)

Haunted by menacing shadows, No Escape’s fictional landscapes explore the walled gardens of Social Media and flights of space fancy. Photographs and videos nod to the corporate fantasies of entering the Metaverse (see Walmart’s plans for a 3D virtual world); an immersive space escape for the masses.

No Escape will be the public launch of a ten-year long performative artwork measuring climate change through the consumption of whisky. Punch drunk on these fictional accounts of a world gone mad, Thomson & Craighead experiment in trying to see our world gone mad more clearly, and while clarity can bring hope there is still No Escape.

INSTALLATION VIEW

Photo by Lindsay Friend

SEE THROUGH

INSTALLATION VIEW

Photo by Lindsay Friend

INSTALLATION VIEW

Photo by Lindsay Friend

GAS GIANT (2022)

Lightbox


A black, square, and ornately designed container box with a perfume bottle standing next to it, against a plain white background. The matte jet black box is decorated with a glossy, meticulously calligraphed gothic drop capital letter “A”, reminiscent of medieval manuscripts. It is illuminated with drawings of flowers and dragons. Next to the drop, the remaining letters of the perfume’s name are visible in gothic capitals, construing the word APOCALYPSE. A small, slick perfume bottle, filled to the brim with wine-dark liquid, stands next to its container box. The bottle bears a small label, decorated with the same pattern, this time with reversed colours.
APOCALYPSE (2016)

Eau de Parfum, bespoke box and signed inserts
100 ml bottle
Edition of 50
£350
BUY NOW
Dancing on the backs of the four horsemen, we gallop towards the constellation that ends us so that we can begin again. Asteroids cascade around us lighting up the Apocalypse, a revelation that unfolds as we douse ourselves in the perfect perfume for the end times and renewal. Luxuriating in its olfactory tones The Book Of Revelation awakens our senses. Let’s celebrate by bathing in the chaos that is enlightenment, letting the aromatic waves pulse over the skin and into the void. Glide with us as we shimmer in and out of company, leaving the mystical musky tones of the King James Bible of 1611 in our wake to be soaked up by our avid congregation.

Apocalypse, is a complex and delicate scent that was produced in collaboration with the Scottish perfumer Euan McCall. The perfume contains notes such as Frankincense, Myrrh, Nard, Costus & Musk. Combined all together, these notes create accords of Blood, Smoke and Metallic that will mesmerize you in a harmony of sensations…
In a limited edition of fifty 100ml bottles, the Apocalypse fragrance is encased in a bespoke box with signed inserts and a label designed by Steve Carroll. On unwrapping the Apocalypse, you will be met with a secondary scent that has been carefully laced into the lining of the box.

To spray or not; is it Apocalypse now or do we savour it later?

Apocalypse has travelled the world, weaving its scent into multiple lands. As a result, it has received wide public attention in art and mainstream press; notably it was a question on the BBC panel show, QI (Series O, Episode 5 – Odorous And Odious), and was the subject of an article in the New Yorker magazine (The literal stink of the Trump Apocalypse, Daniel Wenger January 26, 2017).

The perfume is held in private collections but also in Reed College Library Archive, Portland, Oregon USA and The Bible Museum in Australia.

INSTALLATION VIEW

Photo by Lindsay Friend

#SCREAMING

A white, semi-transparent text box juxtaposed against a background picturing stacks of wooden whisky barrels. The text reads: “In February 2020 we purchased a barrel of whisky. The barrel is stored on the west coast of Scotland near Kilchoon on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. It will stay there for ten years until it has matured, ready for bottling sometime in 2030. This is the same year as the United Nation’s intergovernmental panel on climate change predicts global warming left unchecked will become unstoppable and catastrophic. So for ten years we will make a record of events charting our journey to the brink. It will become a documentary timeline that once completed will be etched onto the glass of thirty bottles from the barrel. This will be our invitation to whoever drinks our whisky from beyond the brink. To drown your sorrows because as the bottle empties, the etched words will become obscured and with each dram our story will slowly disappear. Jonathan Thomson & Alison Craighead.”

WORDS ALAS DROWN I (2020-30)

Poster