“Smell it, but don’t stick your nose straight in it,” says Michael O’Shaughnessy, pulling a small white card, sealed twice in ziplock bags, out of a metal chest. “Waft it, close your eyes. Does it remind you of anything?”
O’Shaughnessy, an illustrator and senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, first began using smells with art students, asking them “to develop projects and concepts” based on scents “because it’s a leveller”.
