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From: Ben Zanoe Category: Art Date: 24 December 2008 Time: 07:10 AM Review: The Cornwall Contemporary Gallery in Parade Street, Penzance, United Kingdom is exhibiting a show entitled A Christmas Exhibition but it is not about Christmas, neither does it feature Christmas - a fact for which we can, I think, be truly thankful. The contemporary part of this title is presumably, the acreage of white paint, Cornwall just cannot resist trapping itself in the post war cliché epitomised by the great comedian Anthony Hancock's filmic sideswipe at pola-necked existentialists. The installed works battle for something invisable, notoriety perhaps ?, one views the works as an audience might survey a village pantomime, local jokes hit a certain familiarity and create a cosy enclave where the polemic is agreed with a nod of conformity. Though it is unstated, the quest here is loudly, one of authenticity, a vying campaign calls from these walls of wistful landscape, of familiar seascape, of each grain of sand from the towans; what can epitomise the seasonal cycle with more rustic chivalry than a singed stubble field? A chunk of Surfboard perhaps? Anything is possible in this three dimensional matrix and I state this without the satirical timbre inflected elsewhere. This vying campaign lacks the authentic voice it so clearly desires, the familiarity of the "in-joke" is a bitter silence to the uneducated visitor who can perceive such flaws from well behind the stalls. At the panto there are villains and heros, all these parts are agreed in a tradition or a script if all the parts what to be equally heroic, protaganist, maverick, innocent then there will be no fun at the panto, sweeties will not be thrown into the audience and there will be less meaning attached to, (appropriately) Behind You!!!