You can get a sense of what this show would have been like just by scrolling through the titles in the provisional catalogue, also worth a laugh is the pre-emptive criticism of Adjusted Pattern:
Prostrate Falls Flat On Its Face It must be said, straight off, that I am nothing if not critical. It comes as no surprise that as yet another big institutional show, Prostrate Canterbury has difficulty delivering the goods. Once again; we are faced with the kind of laissez-faire pluralism that has become the hallmark of such dreary rounds of political pleasantries and career-building backslaps.Filled with the kind of 'iconoclastic' and 'shocking' omissions and inclusions that are expected of contemporary curation, the show comes across as kind of in-joke, lacking the relish, speed, and sting of really effective historical argument. We are left with a rudderless array of mostly unremarkable art. And isn't the idea of a 'rewriting the canon' one of the biggest cliches in recent art and theory?The contemporary works provide the profoundist disappointments. Here are the fey card holders of latterday Dada club, palming us off yet again 'with half-thought-out joshes. As they sit at home, chuckling up their sleeves, the rest of us are just left standing in the gallery, wondering why we came. So consumed are they in triple layered irony and oh-so-self-conscious layerings that you yawn rather than yearn to understand. That the curatorium, bowing to their democratic impulses, gave representation to the currently fashionable grunge set is a particular disappointment. Tediously prim, smarter-than-thou appropriations and objets trouves exude self-righteousness. Rarely does this show provide the kind of true aesthetic reward that would make one reach for one's chequebook and anticipate a happy lifetime of contemplation on an object of beauty. There is however the occasional piece of rare generosity and wonderful complexity in which one can immerse oneself, a la l'ecole de Time magazine.- Adjusted Pattern
BELOW IS PROVISONAL CATALOGUE LISTING PARTICIPANTS AND PRESS REVIEW BY ROBYN USSHER.
