Art in the Lavatories: Gray Wielebinski's Scent Work Takes Over Frieze London
Check the toilets at Frieze London, the art fair in London, and you will find art.
Artist Gray Wielebinski has made Production (2026) for the fair's public lavatories. The work is a site-specific commission, a piece made for one place rather than moved from gallery to gallery. It belongs to the programming for Frieze London and Frieze Masters 2026, according to Frieze. Frieze first flagged the commission in August in its announcement for the 2026 London and Masters programme.
It is in place from 14 to 18 October. That five-day run covers the public opening of this year's fair, FAD Magazine reports. The timing puts the work in front of every visitor who passes through during the week.
Forget frames and plinths. Wielebinski has worked with the fittings themselves.
Production (2026) takes the form of urinal cakes and toilet-rim blocks, the solid fresheners usually dropped into urinals or clipped under toilet rims to mask odour. Here they are encased in sculptural cages, small constructed holders that keep the functional objects visible while holding them in place. Together they diffuse a customised scent through the rooms, Frieze says. The scent was mixed for the work, not taken off a cleaning shelf.
Frieze describes the result as an olfactory intervention, a work met through smell, and as a transformation of the fair's toilets. The guide to this year's fair lists it as a new commission made for the site, Frieze Guide. Commissions of this kind respond to their setting. Size, placement and, in this case, smell answer to the room itself.
The choice of location carries weight. ARTnews reports the work confronts Britain's continuing dispute over public toilets and who they serve. Public lavatories are shared infrastructure, used by staff and visitors alike. Questions of provision, maintenance and access affect anyone who needs to use them. The report places the toilet-based work inside that wider conversation.
What makes this stand out is the audience. Everyone at the fair ends up in the same small rooms. No separate queue. No white wall.
For visitors, this means no map reading is required. If you go, you find it. The work meets people during an ordinary pause in the day.
