Men Who Like Women Who Smell of Their Jobs @ John Rylands Library, Manchester

Spread across two corners of the John Rylands Library, and as abbreviated as the micro fiction that it celebrates, Men Who Like Women Who Smell of Their Jobs is a new collaboration between writer David Gaffney and artist Alison Erika Forde.

Gaffney’s arresting yet accessible series of short stories Sawn-off Tales seems to operate much as Surrealist paintings do: able to strike with depth through peculiar arrangements of thoughts and ideas – ‘there were human eyes, fish eyes, reptile eyes and bird eyes, beady eyes for toy bears and giant eyes for dinosaurs.’ These stories always value the laconic over the florid. Forde's response, a series of paintings that transform Gaffney’s words into cartoonish gothic visuals on wood, plates and canvas, are individually engaging, yet never seem willing to leap fully into the irrational world of the madly imaginative Gaffney.

Amid the brief exhibition spots the artists do battle and meld, with Gaffney’s wild vignettes contorted and realised through the mind of Forde. It is the format in which the images are displayed, rather than the works themselves, however, that forms Forde’s most interesting contribution. As collaborator, especially for tales that are always close to the absurd, I feel her role should be to take small unexplored aspects of the story and differentiate them, making them her own. Instead she acts too much as responsive illustrator, making the too obvious visual, drawing what we ourselves have imagined while reading. Forde’s work is engaging and warm, no doubt, but ultimately lacks the laconic wit of the narratives they’re pursuing. There is also, it has to be said, an underwhelming amount of stories on display – a shame, considering the evident abundance of Gaffney’s creativity.

To conclude, though sadly less perplexing and forceful than its title, the exhibition is still worth a visit. The individual quality of both artist and writer is clear, even if their collective interaction feels somewhat stilted and unnecessary when placed together. I wanted the writer to smell of the illustrator and vice versa, but ultimately they have only a whiff of the other's job.