I’ve lived in Sydney and in other places. I’ve lived in Alice Springs and Tasmania. Coming back it was overwhelming. The smell… there was so much going on that it was hard to define. It was disorientating.

Central has always been my point of arrival and departure, so I think of that space when I think of Sydney. The smell of Central has never really changed but the framework through which I perceive it has changed drastically. They city around it has changed as well. It’s filled with smells of very human smells fighting against daily cleaning. Plus the trains and industry. That sort of feeds into this idea of progress and how detrimental it is to the city.

At the moment, in the afternoons, I deliver bread around the city to people that are sleeping rough. And so I’ve had the opportunity or a reason to be in places that people would deem to be unsightly. There seems to be something unhuman about the way privileged people disengage with those spaces.

For me Sydney is a self feeding mechanism of national denial. I think the struggle in Sydney is that the realness of these issues, issues of racial segregation has been whitewashed by a narrative of progress. The experience of this is sickness.

SCENT

Pigeons (pigeon crap), disinfectant, human waste and human activity and on top this high end cologne

By

Angus Webb