‘Pursuing a narrative’

‘Pursuing the Narrative‘ showed at Bankley Studios Gallery, Manchester in 2011, a collaboration of artist/writer Jo Manby and artist Gary James Williams, interpreting aspects of the short story, Celestial Lace, written by Jo Manby. The story was set in India, and was re-imagined through archived moving image installations by Williams, and sculptural and collaged artworks and objects by both artists which filled the gallery, examing the blurred boundries of the fictional and factual.

Jo Manby is a freelance writer and artist who writes various types of fiction. She works in painting, sculpture and drawing and has extensive experience of gallery curating and project management.

Gary James Williams exhibits internationally, working in a broad interdisciplinary practice. Williams’ work enquires into the creative potentials of the narrative structure, the arena of storytelling and our relationship with the material and the ephemeral.

Extracts from short story, Celestial Lace by Jo Manby

She enters an alley, heading north of the centre of the city. A small shop – but one which she finds to be labyrinthine inside – attracts her attention: it is selling curiosities. She is suddenly reminded of the party game where a tray of objects is brought into the room and then swiftly removed, and the children have to remember as many things as possible before it is taken away. Only, instead of the banal everyday items such as a teacup, a comb, a pair of scissors and a toy car, here the objects are firstly unnameable to anyone but an expert, and secondly, enough to hold one’s attention to such an extent that one would forget about the other objects altogether.

There is an artificial mermaid, created by curing and sticking together a fish’s body, a monkey’s head and an eagle’s claws. Pauline puts out one finger to touch the body and an old woman appears and puts her hand on Pauline’s arm. She flinches….

…The old woman shrugs and returns to her position at a small desk. Pauline’s attention is drawn to a piece of gold filigree hanging towards the back of the first room of the shop. She reaches out to feel it with her fingers, and again, the old woman is at her side. The gold wire lace sends a tremor like a tiny electric shock, down her fingers, hand and forearm…

…“An old story?” asks Pauline.

“Old, yes. You have heard me. Now, pay, take and go. Use it wisely and no trouble coming.”

Pauline takes the Celestial Lace back to the hotel, orders chai to be brought up to her and puts her treasure, wrapped in its brown packaging, on the coffee table to look at it more closely. A very finely wrought lace, sewn in gold wire finer than a hair, she can see that it depicts birds of paradise, flowers and trees. It is oval, but with points; a ten-point star. Then suddenly she remembers the wishes.

“Worth the laugh”, she thinks, closes her eyes and wishes for a bottle of champagne in a cooler. There it is. “Joking over then.” She pours herself a tumbler-full. There’s a knock at the door, and she jumps, but it is only a hotel orderly with her chai…

…Trying to rationalise the situation, Pauline opens her laptop and has a good look at the British Museum website; nothing that relates to Celestial Lace. The British Library appears to have a manuscript or two with the reference. She finds the staff list and emails the keeper in question to arrange a meeting on her return to the UK. She wishes for a handsome prince to stay with her while she’s in Delhi. Then she is upset when he disappears at the end of her stay. She wishes for an extra £20K a year at work and then worries that she has been promoted to a job that she doesn’t have quite enough experience, time or skills to do. She wishes for eternal life and gets a slap round the face from an invisible hand. She wishes to own a Titian and then is bothered to discover there’s been a mysterious but major art theft from the National Gallery…

…Another flight, a hotter, dustier Delhi. She returns to the shop but it has packed up and gone, another one in its place, selling house paint. It’s a shock; she wanders into the Museum and asks to look at their archive. A helpful curator, Mr Jamun, leads her past little green and yellow birds fixed inside glass cases, each one named and standing on its own little patch of twig, branch, lichen, or mineral. For what seems hours he brings her manuscript after manuscript, placing them on a lectern and then stepping back courteously so that she can pore over them…

Extracts from short story Celestial Lace © Jo Manby 2011

‘Pursuing a narrative’

27th May 2011 to 12th June 2011.

Bankley Gallery, Manchester, UK.

©️ Gary James Williams