lowana davies wants to take you on an adventure of olfactory sensations - plus, win horizon tickets

“I feel like I’m just hitting a really nice flow state at the moment,” Lowana Davies says. The artist is less than a week into her residency at Falls Farm, but already she’s gotten her hands dirty.

Living, working and creating art on the rad farm in the hinterland village of Mapleton on Jinibara Country in the Sunshine Coast, Lowana is moving between her own creative practice, helping out with farm work, and preparing for Horizon’s Catching a Whiff event. Taking place on May 4th, Catching a Whiff is a free experience that invites curious folk to come along on a journey of sensory exploration.

Guided by Lowana, attendees will be guided throughout the farm and its sensory offerings, combining smell with science, performance and a contemporary classical composition by Tom Lyons.

Later in the afternoon and just a hop skip and jump down the road at Mapleton Public House, Lowana will be teaming up with chef Cameron Matthews to present the Supperclub Mapleton Dining Experience. This clever duo will treat hungry tummies and open minds to a curated experience of art and food – a full-circle adventure that takes you from farm to plate.For now, though, with Horizon still a few weeks away, Lowana is focused on the task at hand. That is, getting down and dirty.

“It's been really wonderful getting my hands in the soil,” she says. “There's the magnificent landscape, a crazy diversity of different plants, some cute dogs and lots of lovely humans [on the farm]. I've been doing a mix of joining in with farm work and then conducting my own creative experiments. It feels like the two rhythms are starting to flow into each other, which is really exciting for me.”

Working on Falls Farm hasn’t only raised Lowana’s respect for the food that she eats and the journey it takes to reach her plate, but she’s also been able to learn valuable insights from the farmers she’s been working alongside.

“They're super-lovely and full of so much knowledge, even about smell,” Lowana says. “I was talking to one of the guys today about geosmin – which is the smell of the earth – and he said that he knew about how the scent of soil actually releases oxytocin in our brains.”

As someone who is quite an expert when it comes to smell, Lowana is like a kid in a candy shop with all the ripper scents on offer at Falls Farm. While she’s always been interested in the sense of smell, Lowana’s fascination with olfactory sensations is a somewhat recent development in her artistic practice.

“There was a really clear moment that happened quite a few years ago,” Lowana says. Working in embodied performance art at the time, Lowana was exploring the idea of theatre in the space of a hospital.

“I was in this elevator and the elevator had this really particular scent. The scent actually caused me to have this really vivid, intense flashback to a forgotten memory that I had from that hospital,” she says. “Once I got over the emotional side of it, I was really struck by the clarity and the emotional weight of the memory as it re-emerged in my body through smell. I just wanted to know more.”While Lowana explores a wide range of smells throughout her current practice, she says that her favourites are still the ones that remind her of the place where she grew up. “Wet earth and eucalyptus forest – it rained a lot there. Petrichor – the smell of rain,” she says. “My favourite smells are also the ones I can't quite describe. I just love discovering a smell that I've never smelt before. The first time I smelt truffle, I was just like, what? This is insane. Like, what is this thing?”

It goes without saying then – with someone like Lowana at the helm – if you're coming along to Catching a Whiff, come ready to sniff up a storm. Lowana describes the event as “a very delicious palette of smells, sights, sounds. It's gonna be a suite of new site-responsive sculptural works that I'm building.”

“There'll be joy and laughter in the experience, as well as the chance to connect with each other and the environment," Lowana continues. "The experience will definitely be a very active one and involve all the participants or audience members contributing to conversations. There'll be a lot of shared listening, smelling and tasting experiences, and lots engaging all of their senses with the site.”

As for Supperclub Mapleton Dining Experience – which you can snag tickets to here – Lowana says the experience of visiting Falls Farm in the morning will hopefully build a deeper connection with what people are eating from the table in the afternoon. Diners will also be serenaded by musician Gabriella Cohen after they tuck into their feast. You can bet your bottom dollar that across the day's events, there will be plenty of laughter, flavour, conversation and – of course – some super-lovely smells.

Have a squiz at the details of Horizon's Catching a Whiff event here and Supperclub Mapleton Dining Experience here. There's also 9 double passes up for grabs to see Full Flower Moon Band play at Horizon on May 4th. Head to our win page to throw your hat in the ring.