My so-called life

If there’s a story going on in the group show Lore — devoted to “myth, magic and fairy tales” — some might find themselves longing for Cliff Notes to decipher it.

Cecelia Kane’s “The Memory Bunny” is representative of the very personal but often opaque tall-tales going down in this eight-woman show.

Kane’s slapdash, cryptic installation references some vague trauma through its collision of family photos, a soundtrack of shotgun blasts, women’s gloves and a mixed-media shrine-like installation centered on a malevolent Donnie Darko-style Franken-bunny.

Several of the Lore artists, including Kane and Kelly Reese, rely on antiquated female garb such as long gowns and ladylike gloves as some vague reference to women’s issues never fully explicated.

Equally dependent on curiously outmoded female garb but invested with more humor is Guenn Johnsen-Gentry’s “Whipped.” A formal dress serves as a backdrop for the artist’s snarky commentary on the contemporary folklore of men quaking in mortal fear at the awesome power of poontang.

Johnsen-Gentry references a much older, girl-centered fairy tale in her “Little Red” cape embellished with spiders to imply something creepy-crawlier within our storybook myths. Joyce Hethcox also makes more direct storytelling associations in “Autobiography of Guilt,” in which tiny photos referencing the Adam and Eve narrative are placed within the center of bisected green apples.

In a majority of the works, there is the suggestion that for women, the story of their lives is contained in the body, as in Jena Sibille’s mixed-media works, which describe a skinny Papua New Guinea girl’s desire to use magic to be plump and strong like her girlfriends.

Ann Rowles’ visceral, fleshy clay sculptures of mottled pink and purple body-like cavities continue the sense of one’s body as a repository for narrative. But the works lose some of their uncanny effect when displayed on fussy little restaurant tables with yellow tablecloths that seriously undercut their sinister qualities. Such display details (as well as Kane’s blocking of her own mixed-media installation with bulky video and audio equipment) give a rushed, ad hoc feel to a show whose improvised qualities are reinforced in the similarly sloppy, incoherent execution of much of the work.

Lore runs through June 12 at Ballroom Studios, 107 Luckie St., second floor. Sat.-Sun. noon-4 p.m. and by appointment. 404-522-2709. www.ballroomstudios.com.