Thomas Abercromby

Photo by: Matthew Arthur Williams

In residence: March - April 2026

Thomas Abercromby is a visual artist and curator working across film, installation and socially engaged practice. Based between Oslo and the UK, his work explores how art can generate spaces for collective care and social imagination. Central to his practice is the use of scent as a structural and critical medium, employing olfactory experience to investigate memory, class, abolition, queerness and environmental precarity.

Abercromby develops projects through long-term collaboration with artists, gardeners, recovery communities, academics and activists. These processes inform multi-sensory installations that combine moving image, sound and composed olfactory elements. Working at the intersection of documentary and fiction, his installations invite audiences into layered narrative environments where personal testimony, social history and sensory encounter converge.

He has held roles at the Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow and Glasgow Sculpture Studios, and has undertaken projects and residencies with organisations including the Collective Gallery, Market Gallery, British Council, OCA Norway, Glasgow International and Cove Park. Recent projects include a commissioned work acquired by the University of Edinburgh examining class and olfactory culture, alongside ongoing research into the political and sensory histories of malodour and chemical control.

During the residency, Thomas will explore the 2018 Maxim Popov incident in Longyearbyen, where a mental health crisis intersected with a rare bank robbery, situating the event within the broader context of ongoing conversations around mental health provision in the archipelago. He will investigate how questions of care, justice and responsibility are understood and negotiated within Svalbard’s socially and geopolitically distinct environment. Working closely with local residents, Thomas will gather sound and scent materials through conversations, workshops and site-responsive research, which will inform the development of a new installation exploring memory, mental health and collective care.

Instagram: @thomasabercromby

This residency is supported by Necessity