Siobhán McGibbon & Frank Bloem
Rotting With You

Siobhán McGibbon & Frank Bloem
Rotting With You
13 to 22 October 2025

Studio Open to the public on Monday and Tuesday.

Rotting With You is a collaborative project by Visual Artist Siobhán McGibbon and olfactory artist Frank Bloem, developed for McGibbon’s 2026 exhibition at Uillinn. Rooted in Myross Woods, the work explores intimacy, decay, and more-than-human connection through scent and ritual. Set within a bio-material installation of mycelium and rhododendron, participants are guided through a sensory couples therapy game with two ancient oaks, a fungal web, a Killarney fern, and the encompassing rhododendron. Blending art, scent, and ecological inquiry, the residency deepens research into decomposition as devotion—an invitation to rot-with, listen, and love across species boundaries.

During their residency at Uillinn, Siobhán McGibbon and Frank Bloem will focus on developing the olfactory language of Rotting With You—a scent-based sensory couples therapy game rooted in the ecology of Myross Woods, West Cork. This phase of the project centres on the creation of a series of distinctive scents that evoke the intertwined lives of two ancient oak trees, a fungal web, a Killarney fern, and the encompassing rhododendron.

The residency marks an intensive period of research and experimentation, where McGibbon and Bloem will translate the processes of decay, tenderness, and transformation into a palette of evocative aromas. Drawing from the woodland’s materiality—moss, soil, rot, and mycelial life—the artists will explore how scent can communicate intimacy and ecological connection beyond the visual or verbal.

This work forms part of McGibbon’s wider project Act 3: Decomposition is Devotion and the Land Longs for You, which reimagines decomposition as a love language and an act of more-than-human devotion. Bloem’s expertise in olfactory storytelling complements McGibbon’s material and ecological practice, together creating a sensorial narrative that invites empathy with the slow, interdependent rhythms of the forest.

The residency will lay the sensory foundations for a series of participatory experiences and public events to be presented in 2026, both at Uillinn and within Myross Woods. These future encounters will invite audiences to experience scent as a medium of relation—an invitation to rot with the living landscape.

Dr. Siobhan McGibbon (she/her) is a Visual Artist, Researcher and World-builder with a transdisciplinary, art, science and narrative practice. Her expression merges sculpture, animation, drawing, text, permaculture and participatory installations.

McGibbon created the world of Xenophon in 2015 to query post-Anthropocene futures. The world unfolds with each body of work, collaborating and researching with practitioners in specific fields to build the narrative.

Xenophon is activated in multiple contexts; galleries, labs, gardens, site-specific and virtual interventions. Including: CCA, Derry (2025), Pallas, Galway Arts Centre (2023), Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2021), Sirius Arts Centre (2019), Triskel Arts Centre (2018), The Science Gallery(2017), TULCA (2017), The LAB (2017), Millennium Court Arts Centre (2016) and Galway city museum(2015).

Frank Bloem (1978) studied visual arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. After graduating from the Rietveld Academy in 2007, he focused on working with scent in 2014. In 2016, this led to the establishment of The Snifferoo, a laboratory for scent in the broadest sense. In addition to perfumes, Bloem develops fragrances for Artis (elephant fragrances) and De Ambassade van de Noordzee (the perfume Zeelucht). He makes his own scent installations and collaborates with artists who want to use scent in their work.

Bloem gives scent workshops at art institution Mediamatic, where he manages the Aroma Lab. In November 2022, the book GEUR, the forgotten sensation was published by Ten Have publishers, in which Frank takes the reader on a journey of discovery into the world of fragrance. In a light-hearted way, he provides insight into how smell influences our daily lives and how it marks great moments in world history.

Frank has taught at various art academies. He is also involved with Odeuropa and Neuswijzer. Both projects of the dutch Royal Academy of Sciences.

https://www.instagram.com/siobhan_mcgibbon/
https://www.instagram.com/thesnifferoo/
www.siobhanmcgibbon.com
https://www.thesnifferoo.com/

Supported by the Arts Council’s Project Award, Research & Development (Strand 1), 2025

Image caption: Rotting with you, research image.