Above, Liquid Trust production image (2025). Produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, Bétonsalon, Paris and Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin. Photo: Harry Mitchell. Courtesy of the artist. 

On 4 March 2018, former Russian military intelligence officer and double agent for the British intelligence services, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, were poisoned in Salisbury, England, by two officers of Russia’s military intelligence agency. Several months later, on 30 June 2018 – when Skripal, his daughter, and the police officer who investigated their home, had been discharged from hospital – Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were poisoned in a town eight miles away. Rowley and Sturgess had met when they were living in separate homeless shelters in Salisbury, and had recently moved to a flat, where Rowley gifted Sturgess a bottle of Nina Ricci perfume that he found in a Salisbury charity shop donation bin. As Sturgess sprayed Premier Jour onto her wrist, both were exposed to a Novichok nerve agent, a scentless liquid that had been poured into the counterfeit perfume bottle. They were hospitalised in critical condition; Rowley survived, and Sturgess died a week later.

In her essay “The Eternal Pursuit of the Unattainable” (2023), published in “The Interjection Calendar 009” by Montez Press, artist Racheal Crowther reflects on the Salisbury poisonings, opening out the case to explore how this seemingly isolated incident holds far-reaching consequences. The men who travelled to Salisbury to poison Skripal had a calculated plan, but how their risks would reverberate with fatal impact wasn’t considered by them, or punished by the state. They were charged with conspiracy to murder Skripal, his daughter, and the police officer who fell ill after going to the Skripal home. They were charged with the use and possession of Novichok, contrary to the Chemical Weapons Act, and for causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Yulia Skripal and DS Bailey. They were never charged for the poisoning of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, or for Sturgess’s death.

Dawn Sturgess’s death, and Charlie Rowley’s illness, was the result of careless decision-making in a seemingly calculated risk on the part of the Russian military intelligence officers, which was treated like it was just a case of bad luck. Their short-sighted thinking, and the legal system’s limitations, showed the imbalance between how risks reverberate and the limited scope of responsibility, or who is considered of consequence. “I often think about this tragedy and the fact that the poisoned chalice in question was a perfume bottle,” Crowther writes. Even without scent, the French name, elegant packaging, and projected image of sophistication held the promise of a world Sturgess wouldn’t usually have access to. The luxury narrative drew her in, as it does by design. “In the early 2000s, as I was entering the thralls of puberty, I remember begging my mum to buy me a bottle of Glow by JLo,” Crowther recalls. “Instead, I had an inexpensive body spray from Asda. 13-year-old me was worlds away from J Lo’s intentions for the scent: ‘I wanted Glow to be fresh & clean, but still sexy and sensual – something that feels like you just came out of the shower and are the sexiest person in the world.’”

Racheal Crowther traces her research into scent back to 2021, when she experienced a short period of being anosmic due to a Covid-19 infection. The pandemic transformed our relationships with our surroundings, whether through the impact on our sense of smell and taste, in how every surface became a potential carrier of sickness (from door handles and taps, through to clothing, fruit and vegetables), and how air – or lack thereof – became a health hazard. Every move felt like, and often was, a risk in the strangely heightened, grossly traumatic period.

“Sense marketing” is used in the automotive industry, where the smell of leather is pumped into a showroom

Scent research, image courtesy of the artist.

Crowther’s interest in fragrances, and how immaterial phenomena like radio or sonic frequencies impact behaviour, and can have express or indirect political dimensions, led her to enrol in a course at A Library of Olfactive Material, Glasgow, and later, a residency at Bétonsalon, Paris, which drew her into the world of scent. “I was looking at how fragrances might be used in an environment, the power and politics of scent,” she tells me. “Odour-related legislation, odour pollution, the psychological and physiological effects of scent in space. Ambient fragrances, sensory marketing, and how scent is used in subliminal ways to modify behaviour, in casinos, shops, factories, schools and prisons.”

Crowther and I met at her London studio ahead of her forthcoming institutional solo exhibition, Liquid Trust, opening at Chisenhale Gallery in April 2026, which investigates the politics of scent as a tool of influence and social control. The title of the exhibition is drawn from “Olfaction Warfare: Odor as Sword and Shield”, a report published by the Army Research Laboratory in 2013, which outlines the use of oxytocin in a military context. Known as the “love hormone”, oxytocin reinforces attachment between mothers and infants, triggers milk release during breastfeeding, impacts bonds between romantic partners, and influences feelings of trust, empathy and anxiety. Although it doesn’t have a scent, oxytocin impacts how the brain processes smell, and it is mimicked through associated smells. It can be inhaled via a nasal spray, may be “induced” by smelling essential oils like lavender, sandalwood, or jasmine, and it has inspired perfumes that play on the warmth it inspires though almond, musk and vanilla. The British military has experimented with oxytocin, administering it intravenously for war veterans with PTSD, and testing the use of oxytocin to manipulate hierarchy and influence bonds between people or factions of the army. “Oxytocin has a weird, shadowy use within the military context,” Crowther says. “It is essentially representing this life source, so for it to be taken into a laboratory context is interesting.”

Close Call Only (W1S 3ET), 2024, exhibited at Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photo: Jack Elliot Edwards. Courtesy of the artist.

During her residency in Paris, Crowther visited International Flavours & Fragrances Inc, a company that patents and supplies molecules used in flavours and fragrances: 

“I had never seen scent on this commercial scale. Everything was so controlled, it was surreal,” she says. “They have software that monitors the brain activity in response to each molecule, which allows them to advise brands on which scents will produce particular feelings in response to a shampoo or moisturiser. They can see which molecules enhance particular behaviours and what works against them. The chemistry of emotions is quite fucked.”

Ambient fragrances have become increasingly popular in commercial contexts, with many brands having bespoke scents designed to encourage particular behaviour, which are dispersed through discrete systems into a space. “Sense marketing” is used in the automotive industry, where the smell of leather is pumped into a showroom. It’s also used in healthcare, at trade shows, on planes, and in hotels. “The obvious examples would be Subway or Greggs, which pump out a smell that makes you want to go inside,” as Crowther tells me. Abercrombie & Fitch filled its shops with signature scent Fierce by pumping it through scent-spraying machines and having staff spray it at the entrance and on the shop floor. Marketed for men, the fragrance smelt of fir, orange, jasmine, rose, musk, and sandalwood, and like its shops, featured a “ripped male torso” on the box. Scent has been used in factories to enhance workflow and combat fatigue, and ambient fragrances are pumped through the HVAC systems of casinos as part of an environmental effort to mesmerise people into gambling for as long as possible. Blends with citrus or cedar can mask the smell of cigarettes, stale Piña Coladas, and body odour, they have been found to reduce stress, and have been linked to increased slot machine revenue of over 50%. They can have an “invigorating” effect, which along with the curving corridors, hallucinatory lighting concepts, and heavily-printed carpets, can keep people playing through the night.

In Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (1994), the authors Constance Classen, David Howes and Anthony Synnott explore how in the 1990s, researchers increasingly promoted odours as behaviour modifiers. “In 1991 […] British company Bodywise had discovered a scent that makes debt collection more efficient,” the authors write. “It appears that persons who received bills treated with androsterone, a substance found in men’s sweat, were 17% more likely to pay up than those who received odour-free bills. Bodywise reportedly patented the odorant and was already offering it to debt collecting agencies for £3000 per gram.” The phenomenon of scent impacting behaviour extends to the artificial, manmade habitats of big cats, and specifically the Bronx Zoo. In the early 2000s, zookeepers tested a series of perfumes in the enclosures of lions and tigers, who had been displaying self-harming behaviours in confinement. The zoo sought to expand their sensory environment through scent, and Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men took off.

Its original, 1985 formula contained a paste scraped from the anal glands of civets, a secretion said to have a “warm, musky, seductive” scent, meant to function like pheromones. As with many other perfumes, it was marketed with an atmosphere of science and the promise of attraction. Humans can’t detect pheromones, but for the lions and tigers, the scent functioned as it was intended – as a biochemical tool.

The potential for scent to influence behaviour and dynamics, to form bonds, and control responses, is also true of a lack of scent. In “Olfaction Warfare”, the authors discuss the uses of odour within the military and stealth operations, all relating back to the animal kingdom, predator-prey dynamics and animal communication. One of the tactics is to eliminate scent to make themselves undetectable, whether that is the smell of cooking or sweat. There are specific fragrance-free detergents and soaps used by the military and hunters, which promise, as Crowther recalls from her research, “zero fragrance, zero brightness, zero enzymes, zero residues, destroys all odour on skin, hair, mouth, clothing, footwear and gear”.

Scent is used as a weapon, too. The “Skunk” was developed in Israel by Odortec, a company specialising in “the research and development of non-toxic, non-lethal scent-based repellents for law enforcement”, in collaboration with the Technological Development Department of the Israel Police. It was first used in the West Bank by the Israeli Border Police in 2008, and has since been deployed on a regular basis by Israeli security services as a collective punitive measure against Palestinians, as well as being sold to US police forces and security companies. The Skunk mist, which is sprayed from a water cannon, smells like “rotting flesh, like vomit, like shit,” Crowther tells me. Although it is described as “non-lethal”, using “100% food-grade ingredients, 100% eco-friendly, harmless to both nature and people”, the Skunk causes skin irritation, abdominal pain, eye pain and breathing difficulties. It can be used as a tracking device, as the smell sticks to people for days, and there are cases where it has been sprayed into shops, homes and schools, making them uninhabitable for days, breaking windows, and ruining belongings.

The immaterial qualities of scent – be it a stench, a perfume, something in the air, or something eliminated – the fact that it often doesn’t translate beyond the moment, it is difficult to describe, hard to pin down, means that its potential as a weapon, as a tool for manipulation and coercion can hide in plain sight. Materialising the immaterial, capturing a feeling, or paying attention to things that can’t be or just often aren’t seen, is a consistent thread in Crowther’s work. In Close Call Only (W1S 3ET), she programmed an antenna to pick up active radio frequencies in a 30-mile radius. “It was picking up security guards, people on construction sites, air traffic control – all this labour happening around the gallery, that people couldn’t see or wouldn’t notice”, she says. The work reflects the radius of a moment, raising the voices of the people in the area, those in the zone of impact. As in the case of the Salisbury poisonings, seemingly isolated decisions reverberate and layer. In the case of Close Call Only (W1S 3ET) it stays in the realm of an atmosphere – while the poisonings showed how widely the consequences of a single risk can reverberate. .

Close Call Only (W1S 3ET), 2024, exhibited at Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photo: Jack Elliot Edwards. Courtesy of the artist.