AIR FRESHENERS OF THE APOCALYPSE Exhibition to Open May 29 at Cheshire Street

From May 29th Beach London and Bompas & Parr will be hosting a month-long apocalyptic exhibition at Cheshire Street gallery. Here, air freshener aficionados and apocalypse analysts (or any regular Londoner) can enjoy our showcase of the ten custom air fresheners, designed by the country's most indomitable illustrators, each inspired by a different fictional apocalypse. Bompas & Parr will be matching each design with the scent one would most like to smell in the midst of an apocalypse. The exhibition will commence from May 29th and is free to attend.

The end of existence is a reoccurring motif throughout recorded human history. From 250 BCE to present, apocalyptic literature has focussed upon dreams and visions of the future, secrets of the cosmos, deadly and devastating epidemics, biological catastrophes, crazed mutants and monsters and revelations from God about the eventual fate of humanity.

To kick off the project, Beach and Bompas & Parr chose twelve of the greatest fictional apocalypses, from the visionary text of the Book of Revelation, depicting the Four Horses of the Apocalypse to J.G. Ballard's haunting and evocative The Crystal World, to the radioactive world of Andrew Norton's Daybreak 2250AD.

These were sent out to ten of the UK's best illustrators, selected by Beach London, including Rob Flowers, Tom Sewell, Essy May, Marcus Oakley and Emma Rios, who were tasked with designing the air fresheners they'd want dangling from their rear-view mirror as they drove across imagined and literary apocalypses. Each illustrator was provided with a significant amount of research material giving the finished illustrations a richness and powerful narrative background.

The designs are gutsy, bold and beautiful, and Bompas & Parr -- using microencapsulation and artisanal perfuming techniques -- have developed equally powerful scents to raise the humble in-car air freshener to a collectible item guaranteed to get the olfactory neurons firing. The emotional response smells provoke totally bypass the higher cortical areas of your brain, affecting mood, memory, behaviour and emotional, all the more important given that the average person breaths 23,040 time a day!

The grand launch of the Air Fresheners of the Apocalypse -- complete with giant-size versions of the air freshener designs, ample booze supplies and apocalyptic photo opportunities -- will be kicking off at 8pm Beach London's Cheshire Street gallery on May 29th (from 10:00 - 6:00pm) and finishing in June. Each of the fully functional bespoke-scented air fresheners will be on sale for the highly reasonable price of £8.

Sam Bompas, Partner at Bompas & Parr commented: "Driving through parts of Britain today you can readily imagine yourself in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. With one of these zesty air fresheners dangling from your rear view mirror indulge in your own Mad Max fantasy as you motor along boarded-up high streets and past underfunded public services".

Charlie Hood, Beach London's creative director, said: "We wanted to celebrate both the UK's illustrators and true creativity. What better way to get the public involved than offering them a way to smell the end of the world."

About Bompas & Parr - Bompas & Parr leads in flavour-based experience design, culinary research, architectural installations and contemporary food design. The studio first came to prominence through its expertise in jelly-making, but has since gone on to create immersive flavour-based experiences ranging from an inhabitable cloud of gin and tonic, the world's first multi-sensory fireworks and a Taste Experience for the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, officially the best place to taste Guinness in the world.

The studio now consists of a team of creatives, cooks, designers, specialised technicians and architects. With Sam Bompas and Harry Parr the team works to experiment, develop, produce and install projects, artworks, jellies and exhibitions, as well as archiving, communicating, and contextualising the work. Bompas & Parr also collaborates with specialist technicians, engineers, artists, scientists, musicians and many other disciplines to create wondrous events.

Bompas & Parr has written five books, the most recent in late 2014 which saw the studio republish Memoirs of a Stomach, a lost-and-forgotten 18th century tome brought up to date with visuals from inside the digestive tract of food writer, pop-up chef and Sunday Times columnist Gizzi Erskine.

The studio works with some of the biggest companies and the world's foremost cultural institutions to give people emotionally compelling or inspiring experiences.

Bompas & Parr has exhibited at Barbican Art Gallery, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Salon del Mobile, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Serpentine Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum and the Wellcome Collection and collaborated with such firms as Diageo, Cargill, Selfridges, Disney, Louis Vuitton, Unilever, Vodafone, Kraft Foods, Heinz and Mercedes-Benz.

About Beach London - Beach London is a gallery and creative agency in Shoreditch that exhibits some of the World's most exciting commercial creatives. By allowing these artists to explore and experiment with their practice, Beach harnesses this development to apply the results into unforgettable work and experiences for global brands. Recent clients and collaborations include Topman, ASOS, Converse, Depop, Urban Outfitters, MTV and many more.