It is recognised that a retrospective regard is bound to single out what may be seen as consistent and causal features and concerns from the point of view of current interests. Charles Harrison & Fred Orton, 'A Provisional History of Art & Language', Editions E Fabre, 1982 p78 The Conceptual Art Museum from Memory 1966-1979 (2004) provides an alternative counter-narrative for Conceptual art presuming there to be an evolving multi-faceted Art & Language practice with several possible antecedents, staging posts as well as possible outcomes. But thwarting any such ambition Conceptual Art Museum from Memory 1966-1979 shows a dialogue on work caught up in museum abandoned in 1986 following the release of radiation from the fire at Chernobyl. In this exhibition held at the Cultural Centre in Pripyat work is either being prepared for display or being taken down. The exhibition and its narratives are halted at an incomplete state. The trappings of work-in-progress lie around the table and chair, with piles of books and the filing cabinet of work-in-hand. Faint and distorted echoes of a conversation between Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Philip Pilkington and David Rushton can be heard discussing Joseph Kosuth’s Art after Philosophy. The work in the Museum remains compromised by radiation and its extended isolation from a market that has long moved on, disengaged for many years the work’s physical robustness is also beginning to suffer. CCTV footage monitors the decline although the exhibition’s Negotiating Table and Shadow Cabinet are vainly reconstructed by remote scanning to provide facsimiles unfit for purpose.
