Thresholds of Rejected Worlds is an exhibition of new paintings exploring storytelling, cinema and the familiarity of recurring narratives. At the centre of the exhibition is a series of seven new works, each responding to one of the narrative structures identified in Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots. Two earlier paintings extend this exploration of narrative beyond cinema and into literature. After the Alchemist and The Key to Heaven were both inspired by Paulo Coelho’s novel The Alchemist.

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Booker proposes that, beneath their differences, stories repeatedly return to seven fundamental narrative patterns: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth.

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Each of the seven paintings pairs one of Booker’s plots with a surreal or visually distinctive film that embodies, complicates or disrupts its narrative structure. Overcoming the Monster is explored through The Company of Wolves in Good Company; Rags to Riches through Valerie and Her Week of Wonders in Valerie;

The Quest through The Holy Mountain in No Particular Place; Voyage and

Return through Alice (Něco z Alenky) in Rabbit Weather; Comedy through The

Adventures of Baron Munchausen in As Luck Would Have It; Tragedy through Persona in Alma; and Rebirth through The Colour of Pomegranates in After Sayat Nova.

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Across the seven paintings, narrative becomes less a fixed sequence of events rather a structure to move through and rebuild. Together, the works ask why certain stories continually return across cultures and generations, and what might happen when their familiar structures are passed through the logic of surrealism and painting.

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This exhibition was supported by Creative Scotlands Fund for Individuals and Moniack Mhor Youth Led Fund