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Men Who Like Women Who Smell of their Jobs

Alison Erika Forde creates daydream-inspired paintings and misleading twists on reality with a pinch of mischief and dark humour.  For Manchester Literature Festival 2014 she produced a set of works based on the short stories of David Gaffney. It was called Men Who Like Women Who Smell Of their Jobs and was exhibited at John Rylands Library from 1 October 2014 to 31 January 2015 .



The dark humour and weird logic of David Gaffney’s critically acclaimed Sawn-off Tales series meets the warped gothic fables of internationally exhibited contemporary visual artist Alison Erika Forde.

Check out this short film about the project here

The exhibition was launched on Thursday 9 October at 6.00 at John Rylands Library, and featured an introduction to the work by Alison, a reading from David Gaffney, performances by short fiction writers Socrates Adams and Anneliese Macintosh, and ended with an intimate sharing of specially commissioned music based on the texts from electronic/ambient two-piece O>L>A.


Alison Erika Forde is represented by International 3 and has had exhibitions at Manchester Art Gallery and her work was recently shown to great acclaim at the London Art Fair. Alison creates her daydream-inspired paintings on an eclectic mix of objects. By re-using old, unwanted items including mass-produced second-hand prints, bric-a-brac and household wood, Alison transforms these undesirables with her imagined story-book snippets, producing misleading twists on reality, with a pinch of mischief and dark humour.


Find out more about Alison's work here

"Gaffney’s arresting 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. Madly imaginative " The Skinny, November 2014


Here's an article about it in the Manchester Evening News

Check out these great photos by Jonathan Lewis of the fantastic launch night






Below, Alison Erika Forde and Neil Dymond-Green of John Rylands library check out potential sites for Alison work - very exciting.



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