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‘Bad Retail’: A romantic fiction
- Source: Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Volume 10, Issue 1, Sep 2017, p. 5 - 26
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- 01 Sep 2017
Abstract
‘Bad Retail’ is a work of fiction that I wrote to accompany a series of my own narrative paintings. The text was originally disseminated through a series of exhibitions in the form of printed handouts that were included alongside the visual works. The story evolved from a simultaneous investigation of two related devices in literature and painting: anachronism and collage. These terms are linked by an act of displacement: of objects from history and of images from their source. This compositional tendency is characteristic of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century romantic fiction, which often refuses to conform to (and remain within) accustomed genre categories. The aforementioned narrative will be accompanied here by a series of illustrations based on the paintings and drawings that I produced in tandem with the text. The aim will be to treat the journal submission as a form of ‘illuminated manuscript’, in which anachronism might be understood as both a verbal and a visual strategy.