Auto Italia, 2026
Rose Nordin and Brighter Futures present A Ritual for Playing in the Rain the Way We Used To, a new exhibition at Auto Italia, opening 3 November, 6–8pm.
This exhibition is the culmination of a collaboration between Auto Italia participation artist-in-residence Rose Nordin and collaborators from Brighter Futures, a group of young migrants supported by Praxis and Kazzum Arts. Working with scent, the project explores how fragrance can hold memories, evoke places and create connections beyond spoken language.
Rose works with the fragrances, drawings, words and reflections produced through the workshops, developing the collaborators’ ideas through graphic design, the publication and the exhibition. Building on the group’s work with smell, Rose has developed a “scent alphabet” that gives visual form to the different scents explored and the fragrances made by collaborators. These “scent grammars” give each scent its own visual symbol, and will appear throughout the exhibition and publication.
A new pocket-sized, scented publication, A Cloud in the Fold of the Elbow, brings together the fragrances, drawings, words and reflections created by the collaborators through the workshops. Alongside documenting their work with scent and the making of their own fragrances, the publication connects this work with Rose’s wider research and includes new texts and interviews about scent by Ezra-Lloyd Jackson, Amrita Dhallu and Sarah Shin, edited by Lillian Wilkie.
Malay Magic: The Skeleton of the Original Legend.
2024
Publication edition of 60.
Malay Magic is a talismanic graphic reproduction of a series of research texts by Walter W. Skeat [1900]. The original publication documented folklore and the traditional animistic and Islamic practices of magic in Malaysia.
The edited text by is embellished and reworked into a talismanic miniature codex. Designed in residence by at the Jan Van Eyke Academie and exhibited at Project Arts Centre, Dublin and Metroland&Cultures, London and featured in DAZED.
The publication is part of a larger project “Spelling t-a-l-i-s-m-a-n aloud” which considers the role of the book designer as “the custodian of that magic talisman, the printed word.” Through experiments in molybdomancy and symbology, graphics commune to explore the ceremony of those who deal in letters and all they contain.
2024
Publication edition of 60.
Malay Magic is a talismanic graphic reproduction of a series of research texts by Walter W. Skeat [1900]. The original publication documented folklore and the traditional animistic and Islamic practices of magic in Malaysia.
The edited text by is embellished and reworked into a talismanic miniature codex. Designed in residence by at the Jan Van Eyke Academie and exhibited at Project Arts Centre, Dublin and Metroland&Cultures, London and featured in DAZED.
The publication is part of a larger project “Spelling t-a-l-i-s-m-a-n aloud” which considers the role of the book designer as “the custodian of that magic talisman, the printed word.” Through experiments in molybdomancy and symbology, graphics commune to explore the ceremony of those who deal in letters and all they contain.
MDA: A Capsule
2026
is a publication developed through a series of creative engagements with the Malaysia Design Archive. Acting as an incomplete index of the archive, it brings together responses from artists, designers and writers across a diverse range of Malaysian and UK-based practices.
The publication forms a [time] capsule as an extension of selected collections from the MDA, in a form that can circulate and create an opening for further encounters and responses.
Each artist and writer responds to a collection from the Malaysia Design Archive through the concerns and methods of their own practice.
Initiated and designed by Rose Nordin and edited by Heiba Lamara , with an introduction by Jac sm Kee and Ezrena Marwan of the Malaysia Design Archive with careful image support and guidance from archivist Penny Wong
2026
is a publication developed through a series of creative engagements with the Malaysia Design Archive. Acting as an incomplete index of the archive, it brings together responses from artists, designers and writers across a diverse range of Malaysian and UK-based practices.
The publication forms a [time] capsule as an extension of selected collections from the MDA, in a form that can circulate and create an opening for further encounters and responses.
Each artist and writer responds to a collection from the Malaysia Design Archive through the concerns and methods of their own practice.
Initiated and designed by Rose Nordin and edited by Heiba Lamara , with an introduction by Jac sm Kee and Ezrena Marwan of the Malaysia Design Archive with careful image support and guidance from archivist Penny Wong