Exhibition: Currency

This week in the Arts Space, was another familiar SHOP-face indeed ... Jayne Marshall, one half of SHOP and a Director of the CIC.  You may have read in the last newsletter, that Brett and Jayne both decided to put their money where their mouths were, when saying art and creativity should be a universal pursuit ... so, they're trying things on the 'other side' of SHOP by having an exhibition each in the Arts Space this July.
Jayne followed Brett's 'By a Click of Paint' last week with her exhibition, 'Currency: A Novel on Five Walls'.  Here's what she had to say about it, on her own website, Bookyish: 

After going to see Alain de Botton talk about Religion for Atheists, and being struck by what he said about art, I decided – as I run a vintage clothing shop and arts space which preaches ‘art-for-all’ – I should challenge myself by having an exhibition of my own there, something I have never done before, or ever considered doing.

I did, however, immediately have a clear idea of what I would like to do.  All the exhibitions we have had in the arts space over the past two years have been visual, and my thing is words, so I thought I would have an exhibition based on the art of literature.

Bit of background: when I was twenty-one and freshly graduated, I wrote a list of all of the things I wanted to achieve before I died (I actually put ‘and/or thirty’, as obviously at that point I assumed there is no life after thirty) and one of the entries was, ‘write a novel’.  Although this compulsion has always been present in some dark corner of my mind, I didn’t act upon it until about four months before my thirtieth birthday, finally finishing it exactly one week before my thirty-second birthday this year.

The full novel is of a normal novel length and I toyed with the idea of recreating it exactly over the walls of the art space.  However, I then became shy and began to prefer the idea of having five extracts printed up and pasted onto each wall.  The extracts make a collective story of their own (as well as each extract individually), whilst also giving a brief glimpse into the main preoccupations of the full novel.  Accompanying the extracts are a synopsis of the novel and a bit of info about me, which I’m told is called an Artist Statement.

Here is the Artist Statement and synopsis, followed by some pictures of the exhibition and the extracts in full:

ARTIST STATEMENT


I’m Jayne.  I have an MA in Literature, but rarely put it to any use as I run a vintage clothing shop (the one next door).

Before there was the shop, books were my first love and I’ve always wanted to write my own novel.  I promised myself, aged twenty-one, that I would do it by the time I reached thirty.  However, the right time never presented itself and I didn’t end up revisiting the idea until four months before my thirtieth birthday.  I finally managed to finish Currency one week before turning thirty two in April this year.

The complete novel is standard length, but for this exhibition I have chosen to exhibit five chronological extracts.  The extracts make a collective story of their own (as well as each extract individually), whilst also giving a brief glimpse into the main preoccupations of the full novel.

The story gathers around the disappearance of, and subsequent search for, a father.  It is dually narrated, through the voices of the father and his daughter.  It is primarily concerned with power and identity, but also family and loss.

SYNOPSIS

The three central themes of Currency are: Power, Identity and Time – and the fluid nature of each.  The main motifs employed to illustrate these themes are: money (lack of, causing powerlessness), sex (use of, to gain power), the family (crisis of identity) and aging (time passing).  The story is told through a dual narrative, using the first-person voices of the protagonist, Rose, and her father, David.  The novel is set in the present day and uses the back drop of The City as the main location.

The story begins a few days before the protagonist’s thirtieth birthday.  The first three chapters are concerned with illustrating how dislocated she has become, as a result of a combination of the three main themes.  At chapter four, all the main characters are gathered for the protagonist’s birthday party, the narrative then switches to the father for chapter five.  He introduces himself and his story, which is essentially the same as his daughter’s – though they stand at the opposite ends of life, and both feel utterly alone, yet they unknowingly mirror each other and each other’s crises.  The father looks back at his own life and sees only its losses and missed opportunities, he feels life has only happened to him and around him.

The party is the central crisis point of the novel.  As the protagonist is reaching the depth of her own personal crisis, at the same time, the novel is reaching its also – which is the point at which David makes the decision, unknown at the time to the other characters, to disappear.  During the party, we also meet Rose’s aged Uncle Pete, who asks her to assist him in finishing a book he has been writing for over fifty years, called On Being Conscious.  She promises to do so, even though she is annoyed with him for burdening her further with it.

From here, once the main characters discover that David is missing, the novel centres on the search for him by the protagonist, her mother (Gwen) and her sister (Lizzy).  As Rose searches for her father, so she is forced to take responsibility for her life and her own issues of identity, powerlessness and loss. A sub-plot develops in which she begins a relationship with a person (Neil) whom she has continually rejected previously, and in doing so has to come to terms with abandoning her use of sex as a tool for power.

Throughout the search, the reader is privy to what David is doing and going through, although of course the protagonist, her mother and sister, are not – remaining unable to fathom what has happened to him, and subsequently to their family.  David has taken off across Europe, hoping that taking freedom will allow him to feel empowered.  However, finding that this is not the case and not being able to find a way to reconcile himself to what he has done and the issues he was running from, finally, the reader witnesses David’s suicide (the ultimate taking back of power) and the end of his narrative role.

The final three chapters are narrated by the protagonist.  We see her and her family attempting to come to terms with the heartbreaking realisation that they know very little about their father/husband and as a result are failing/have failed to find him.  They decide they must ‘let go’ and we witness a kind of funeral, before the protagonist, in a subversion of the usual happy ending, commits somewhat apathetically to marry Neil.  The final scene sees Rose discovering that her Uncle Pete has died (after the wedding), without ever having finished his book, and so without ever having found any wider meaning to life.

 

 

 

 

 

EXTRACT 1
PARIS

At the bar, I ask the waiter to pay.  I pretend to myself that Lizzy’s overstuffed purse, full of receipts and credit cards and cash, is mine.  It feels good. 

 Page 8

EXTRACT 2
CURRENCIES

As I walk through the city, the spring weather is warm and light.  I notice for the first time how green the trees have become and everywhere seems to be teeming with animals and children.  The fresh, warm air hits my body, making it flash with heat in patches.   I try and remember a time when I didn’t feel so unhinged.  A mechanical street sweeper keeps pace with me.  If I speed up, it catches me, and if I fall back, it falls back too.  It seems to have a malicious intent towards me, not wanting to give me moment free from its monotonous whirring and grinding that is pounding through my head, making it throb painfully.  I really need a sweet drink.

Page 26

EXTRACT 3
DAD

I suddenly just had to get out of there: that party, those people – my family.

 Page 60

EXTRACT 4
DAVID

I run my hands over the book shelves, dotted here and there with items that are so familiar as to have become completely invisible to me.  The ornaments, the pictures, and the Russian dolls my granddad bought for my mum when she was a little girl, they must have been sitting there all my life.  The crack over the smallest doll’s eye, where the paint is flaking off around it, so recognisable I may as well be looking at my own reflection.  But, when did I stop noticing that they were there?

 Page 76

EXTRACT 5
GIVING UP, LETTING GO

We stop and hug.  I think how strange we probably look, two grown women embracing in a suburban street, for a few long minutes, under the moonlight.  When we break off, we smile at each other and turn back towards the house in silence.  After a while I find the courage to ask,

“What do you think happened?  To dad?”

Page 130