Entertainment · Books & Arts · 1 hr ago
Gray Wielebinski turns Frieze London toilets into a scented art installation
Artist Gray Wielebinski created a bathroom installation for Frieze London, the art fair held in Regent’s Park.
Called Production, it uses custom-scented urinal cakes and toilet-rim blocks made with the creative studio Dean’s Bottom.
The scents combine familiar bathroom smells with notes drawn from Wielebinski’s studio, including pencil shavings, paint, dust and sweat.
The work also uses sculptural cages and security tags, raising questions about protection, exclusion and value.
It places art in a space shaped by UK disputes over who can use public toilets.
New guidance in force since August says single-sex public facilities should be organized by biological sex and directs trans people to use facilities matching their biological sex or gender-neutral ones.
Trans-rights activists have opposed the guidance, which followed a 2025 Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of sex in equality law.
Visitors encounter the installation in the fair’s public toilets; Wielebinski expects it to prompt a range of feelings.
Gray Wielebinski’s Production turns Frieze London’s public toilets into an olfactory art installation.
The work uses custom urinal cakes and toilet-rim blocks infused with two scents and housed in sculptural cages.
Wielebinski developed the project with creative studio Dean’s Bottom, drawing on the smells of his studio and familiar bathroom scents.
The installation also engages with ideas about privacy, surveillance, value and gendered spaces.
Frieze London opened at Regent’s Park on October 14, 2026.
- Who
- Artist Gray Wielebinski created the installation with creative studio Dean’s Bottom.
- What
- Production transforms the fair’s public toilets with scented urinal cakes and toilet-rim blocks.
- When
- It was installed for Frieze London in October 2026.
- Where
- The public toilets at Frieze London, at Regent’s Park in London.
- Why
- The installation explores scent, bodily function, privacy, desire and surveillance, as well as the politics of gendered spaces.
UK Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance
Trans-rights activists
Use of public single-sex spaces
UK Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance
The guidance says public single-sex spaces should be organized based on biological sex.
Trans-rights activists
Trans-rights activists have strongly opposed the guidance; the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance called it “unworkable.
Wielebinski first became interested in using scent for his installation at Selfridges.
The UK Supreme Court ruled that “sex” in equality law means “biological sex” rather than the gender someone identifies as.
New EHRC guidance on single-sex public spaces came into force.
Frieze London opened at Regent’s Park with Wielebinski’s bathroom installation.
- Artist
- Gray Wielebinski
- Artwork
- Production (2026)
- Venue
- Frieze London, Regent’s Park
- Installation materials
- Custom urinal cakes and toilet-rim blocks infused with two scents
- Collaborator
- Creative studio Dean’s Bottom
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What people are saying
The bathroom holds a very fraught and also sacred and fun and ambivalent place in my world, in my life, in my psyche.
They almost look like cosmetics, or like an art material.
It’s bringing up questions of value too.
unworkable