On Friday, a friend and I went to see Eva Kotátková’s A Storyteller’s Inadequacy at Modern Art Oxford.

Because we’re both writers, we were a bit nervous that as storytellers we might be shown to be inadequate.

It would appear however, that Ms Kotátková’s exhibition wasn’t so much about storytellers (or even storytelling) as it is about mankind’s arduous everyday struggle with words and ideas.

Now I fully realise that ‘words’ can be inadequate to convey ideas. As a product of postmodernity, I know what ‘I’ write or say may not have any meaningful connection to what ‘you’ read or hear.

Further, I get the point that ‘idea’s can be prisons when transformed into theories, rules, and codes with which we – as social animals – are expected to conform (pretty much) without question.

I even get the esoteric implications of God creating the universe through ‘words’ in accordance with the blueprint of his ‘idea’ (‘In the beginning was the Word’ – John 1.1) and as humans we got the short end of the stick because according to Gnostic teachings, the demiurge created the material world to be a prison.

But quite what this all has to do with storytellers and the inadequacies we may have – I remain at a loss.

Perhaps someone might enlighten me?