This report is taken from PN Review 215, Volume 40 Number 3, January - February 2014.

A Short Catalogue of Three Concurrent Exhibitions
What, Why and Where It Happened

Frank Kuppner
First Room

  1. Where, eh, what was it? [Not a very brilliant start!]

  2. Look! The first place we visited together! (Now, bafflingly, posing as something else.)

  3. Yes. I was pretty much a regular visitor here for years before I met you.

  4. Where I sat waiting for the next (absolutely endless) 25 minutes to pass. [Which they duly did, of course.]

  5. But only many years later did I realise quite why you had brought me along here with you. [Really? Then why not just say why?]

  6. In the shadows of which she must have played so often as a child. [With others, naturally. So. Precisely where are all these former children now? (One! Even one!)]

  7. Where I remember thinking for the first time: 'Oh my God! Women!' [Such hopes! (A busy street in the city centre.)]

  8. Where something like the clouds seeped in through the window… [Why? (Or, rather, what?)]

  9. Where I first became aware of the fact that I had something called 'an Auntie'. [Another street, as it happens, in the same bloody city centre!]

  10. Where I heard somebody yelling about somebody else's mother.

  11. Where one of us hid rather brilliantly inside a cupboard. [Metaphor, presumably?]

  12. Where I did something utterly unforgivable with a rather ornate old family heirloom.

  13. 'How the Hell did I manage to get this car to the wrong side of the river?' [These everyday miracles!]

  14. The dead-right street which we truly thought we might well end up living in. [(After all, other people did, didn't they?) (Yes. ...
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