In 2016, American multidisciplinary artist Mike Bouchet hired a German perfume expert to distill the scent of the US dollar and spent almost a year extracting the chemical compounds from the pressed banknotes. Cotton and linen were infused with more than 100 chemicals, including ink, metal and sweat, before Bouchet’s new sculpture appeared at New York’s Marlborough Chelsea Gallery in early 2017. Tender, the “synthesized scent of US bills,” filled every corner of the gallery’s 45,000 cubic feet.
When art patron, collector and activist Rachel Verghis read Bouchet’s interview in The Wall Street Journal, she was shocked. “It was like a commentary on the commercialization of art,” he says now. Tender remembered during the pandemic, when it occurred to him that paper money would almost disappear. “People wouldn’t know what sterling looked like or smelled like. So I came up with this crazy idea to capture the essence of the white five, which was first issued by the Bank of England in 1793, and was one of the most popular notes in the world until it was withdrawn 150 years later.’
However, Verghis, who worked in banking in the UK and his native Australia for 15 years before falling in love with art and becoming a collector, did not want to simply reproduce the scent of the five white; he wanted to distill it too. in a gin “Both distilleries laughed at me, but Hamish Martin, the botanist who made his gin, very kindly said he would lend me his still, out of hours, for free.” The distiller sent jars of botanicals to Verghis; one replicated the white five, but using printer ink, then had to find a botanical that matched the ink. “Creating MarGin was a long and complex process, but in the end it was pure alchemy,” says Verghis.
Verghis had no intention of turning MarGin into a commercial project – he liked to enjoy the gin “very clean, very dry”, which is his spirit – but Martin said it was too good not to sell. So it made sense to join the dots: since Verghis is so deeply rooted in the art world, why not agree to open various London art fairs and galleries, including Frieze, with MarGin? On a more micro level, Verghis serves his five white gins at art-related events at his Belgravia home, which has an impressive art collection.
When I arrive for the interview, Verghis offers “delicate Parisian white tea” with Oreo cookies and a tour of his high-ceilinged apartment, which is like a private boutique gallery. He jokes almost always in black, and relies on the art he collects to bring color into his life. As he says, he can draw his life through the art he collects; the piece recalls certain periods of his life, such as the birth of his son Louis. “Art anchors me,” he says. One wall in the living room is dominated by 12 panels synchronized together to create a changing algorithm of different seasons: cherry blossoms herald spring while sunflowers represent summer. It looks like a sort of floral version of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms.
“It’s like having an artificial garden in my house,” Verghis says with a smile. “TeamLab is a collective of Japanese artists, engineers, CG animators and architects. It arrived on a USB stick, but it took a month to install. It was a nightmare! By the time I reinforced the wall, the coding was outdated. I finally found a tech genius from Sussex who had nothing to do with art, but managed to get it working in time for the Serpentine Mystery Nights art fundraiser I was hosting in my flat.
Another wall displays a large painting of an elongated pink body by George Rouy, a 30-year-old UK artist who studied at Camberwell College of Arts and is a rising star. “I went to his second show and by the time I got there it was completely sold out. Note: always on opening night. This is one of my favorite pieces – it’s almost luminous. I got it this morning, but God knows what they’re worth now.’
Rachel Verghis with artwork by George Rouy Photo by Trisha Ward; Hair and makeup by Grace Hatcher
Also living in the living room is another 30-year-old Briton, William Brickel, who works in oil painting, charcoal and watercolor and compares with interwar artists. “I just found it,” Verghis explained. “He paints himself and his alter ego. He and she He says a painting is never finished until the hands get it right, and I love that. Like Rouy, it has now become stratospheric.’
Today, I’m making a tea cocktail with gin. Not a bad way to spend one’s time
Rachel Verghis
Verghis has stated several times that he has no formal training, apart from a short course at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, but he clearly has a strong intuition and always buys with his heart and not his head. He points to a sculpture of a plant by the French artist Marguerite Humeau and explains that he paid in installments. “It’s like using Klarna; most galleries are open to paying in installments, which I would like more people to know, because it would encourage them to buy art.’
We will walk next to two paintings by the German neo-expressionist AR Penck, a color photograph by the Australian artist Julie Rrap – a woman with a knife in her mouth, and Verghis, laughing, before her morning coffee – and three artworks by the contemporary Australian artist Shaun. Including a portrait of Gladwell using Vegemite and a video of him skating on Bondi Beach. Verghis says it reminds him of home, with a touch of nostalgia.
In the AstroTurf back garden, which has a small gate and a basketball net for Verghis’ 13-year-old son, is a tall wall covered in 200 lead frogs by British artist Patrick Goddard; until recently, there were 180 birds at Goddard. attached to the walls of his living room by piano wire (one visitor had such a severe ornithophobia that he suffered a panic attack at the sight of birds and Verghis almost had to call an ambulance). On the back wall is a neon sign by Tavares Strachan, the Bahamian artist whose sculpture The First Supper (Galaxy Black) (2023) is currently adorning the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts as part of the Entangled Pasts, 1768-now exhibition. “He has a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from Yale,” says Verghis, turning on the neon. “This sculpture says WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER, which he did during the pandemic. It’s obviously a political statement because we only came together globally for a nanosecond”.
In the long term, Verghis hopes to open a private art gallery in Iceland to house his growing collection of Icelandic art amassed with a former partner. “It would be free for locals, but the two million annual visitors would have to pay. It won’t be easy, but it’s a dream I hope to make come true. Art should not be kept in storage; it really has to be seen.” Meanwhile, MarGin will be one of the sponsors of the 23rd annual Serpentine Pavilion Summer Party. The pavilion will open in June, and this year it will be designed by the Korean architect Minsuk Cho. Five Whites seems to continue to pay dividends. “Yes! The pavilion will have a Tea House, so I’m preparing a tea cocktail with gin. Not a bad way to pass the time, watching the seasons change in my teamLab and trying gin.’
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