‘Envelope’ is a fictional character study commissioned for the solo exhibition, ‘Leaves Turn Inside You’ by Charlie Hodgson at David Dale Gallery (Glasgow). This highly compressed and elliptical prose describes imaginary and real power struggles enacted in the medium of conversation. Through ‘Envelope’ the political and personal stakes of talking in social and public space are overlaid with interior monologues.

‘Envelope’ was written in response to a painting by Hodgson with the same title but veers into autobiographical writing and fuses memories of a car crash with observations on painterly touch. Protracted conversational loops are set in motion against the backdrop of a shattered windscreen which melts.

This is an experimental character study which threads together moments of intense interiority, repressed anger and observations of exteriority. Together these strands create a stilted, asymmetrical conversation and an introduction to a painting of a shattered windscreen behind which lays a blank envelope.