At the intersection of scent, touch, memory, and place, Dublin-based multi-disciplinary artist Erin Quinn, whose practice melds visual art with olfactory installations, has crafted an immersive experience for the Liberties Festival 2025 called Holding Space — inviting you to breathe, to reach out, and, above all, to feel.
My work is deeply anchored in collective consciousness. My series An Tuile/The Flood — haunting self-portraits staged in submerged, waterlogged domestic spaces — earned me the Royal College of Physicians Climate and Health Arts Award and Gold at the Budapest International Foto Festival in 2023. By combining photography with AI, these works are at once unsettling and melancholic, probing the emotional contours of climate anxiety and human vulnerability.
In addition to photography and AI, my practice incorporates scent. I’ve crafted conceptual fragrances for the National Gallery of Ireland shop inspired by Frederic William Burton’s Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs, as well as a scent commemorating James Joyce’s Ulysses centenary. Most recently, I worked with artist Clodagh Emoe and Donal Lally on A L T A R; a site-responsive art installation/intervention creating a scent in response to Goldenbridge Cemetery, Dublin. My scent practice extends beyond mere perfume; it aims to conjure memory, emotion, and shared histories.
During Ireland’s stringent lockdown, I collaborated remotely with the celebrated artist and singer Ceara Conway, creating a scent to accompany her album Viriditas. In a time defined by isolation, we mailed samples back and forth to each other, having Zoom meetings discussing changes, eventually agreeing on a final scent. I formulated the scent, hand-bottled and we distributed 200 little bottles to carers across Ireland alongside the music. Scent and song arrived together, offering connection where touch could not.
I find it fascinating that our sense of smell is actually the only one of our senses directly wired to the brain’s emotion and memory centres. It’s such a powerful medium to use in artworks. In this instance, combined with music, it became almost like a warm, familiar embrace from a stranger, a moment of comfort in such a disconnected time.
Lockdown also sharpened my awareness of touch — how its absence can wound, how its gentle presence can heal. From these meditations was born Holding Space, an intimate project first unveiled at the 10th anniversary of Another Love Story Festival in 2024.
In a confessional-like sanctuary, festival-goers slipped their hands under a velvet curtain to be held with compassion and presence. The space was infused with Deep in the Woods, a scent I created inspired by the magical forests of Killyon Manor, where the festival is held.
Holding Space became this incredible moment where age, race, gender, politics — all of it fell away. There was just tenderness. Vulnerability. A pure human moment. As one participant simply put it, “I didn’t realise how much I needed my hands held, until they were.”
When Michael McDermott, Director of the Liberties Festival, asked me to bring Holding Space to the Liberties Festival this year — also supporting the project as producer — I knew I wanted to create something deeply rooted in the people and the atmosphere of this storied, resilient neighbourhood.
My project unfolds in three phases: I began by running a series of workshops in the spring with elders, youth, and integration groups from the Liberties, at IMMA’s Creativity Hub, to tease out and unlock scent memories of place and to share stories and connect.
Some of the memories captured included the horses that echo through the streets past and present, the tang of hops from beer brewed there for generations, the honey carefully tended and harvested in the Liberties, as well as whispers of rose dedicated to Kathleen Farrell, the beloved Liberties flower seller who passed away in January.
Gathering the research from these workshops, I noted several scent memories that overlapped across groups. I then sourced these scent ingredients from all over Europe, in the form of essential oils and perfumer’s molecules. Some of the memories captured included the horses that echo through the streets past and present, the tang of hops from beer brewed there for generations, the honey carefully tended and harvested in the Liberties, as well as whispers of rose dedicated to Kathleen Farrell, the beloved Liberties flower seller who passed away in January. In all, there are approximately 25 scent ingredients intermingling to create the Scent of the Liberties. These richly layered memories have been distilled into a scent poem to the Liberties, composed from the intimate recollections of its people.
During the Liberties Festival, visitors will step into my little sanctuary space in Bridgefoot Street Park off Thomas Street. Hands will meet across the divide, held in silence, both parties cocooned in the scent of the Liberties. Each sitter will leave with a small, hand-made scented token, each one I’ve sculpted and hand-painted, infused with the Liberties’ essence — a fragment of communal memory to revisit whenever they wish.
My collaborators — from NCAD’s Claire Campion and her students Erne Rodgers and Kristine Lauron who created all the design elements, to Michael McDermott for producing this project, to O’Dwyer and Sons on Meath Street who donated the installation space and hay, to Caroline Martin who crafted the interior of the installation, to The Liberties Weavers whose tapestries adorn the space, to the Liberties Community Project who provided local and integration workshop participants, to Warrenmount Secondary School students for their input — ensure this is as much a collective creation as it is my singular vision.
With Holding Space, I hope it’s a reminder that the most profound and moving experiences can often be the simplest — the brush of a hand, the drift of a scent, a shared breath in a quiet space. This project underscores my belief in art as an instrument of empathy and inclusion. I invite you to come with an open heart, not just as a witness to this art installation, but to inhabit it, to embrace it — and perhaps to leave feeling a little more connected than when you arrived.
Holding Space is made possible with thanks to Dublin City Council’s Neighbourhood Grant and will take place at the Liberties Festival from 6:30pm to 8pm from July 22 – 24. Erin Quinn will host a workshop on July 26 at 11am discussing the making of the Liberties Scent in IMMA and you can also join artist Erin Quinn and fellow collaborators on July 25 at 5:30pm in St. Catherine’s Church, Thomas St. Tickets are free but booking is recommended at thelibertiesfestival.com
Photography by Claire Campion, Kristine Lauron and Erne Rodgers, NCAD, and Erin Quinn.
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