This, in the final analysis, is the chief mechanism by which the site distinguishes itself from the wealth of links pages that already exist on the Web. Its merits lie in its ability to slow and shape the usually frenetic gaze of the websurfer (a similar effect, one realises, is achieved by spacing and layout in a 'real life' gallery) so that the works on display are granted an aura of significance, one which seems to exceed that of usual Web content. The basic formula of the site - offering relatively few hyperlinks of high content value, rather than (as with most links pages) many links of a relatively lower content value - should be one that will prove valuable to other Web-based archiving projects. Links pages are, amongst other things, ad hoc exercises in curation, and offline galleries inevitably still have a few tricks to teach their online counterparts.

However, there is real a sense in which a project such as Some of My Favourite Web Sites are Art tests the notion of a 'real life' gallery, mainly through its obviation of the instrumentality of space in offline curation. One can feel this site's designers struggling to maintain a semblance of space through the vectors and lines which are used to designate plateaux and contours, interiors and exteriors - the gallery's virtual environs. One also senses those designers' reluctance to cede control of the work they're archiving: placing the linked-to sites in new windows (sans toolbars) ensures that the gallery space is shuffled to the back (and thus not left behind entirely) when visitors scrutinise the work.

Yet in spite of, or perhaps because of, these assiduous attempts at preventing gallery-clickers from escaping into the Web-at-large, it seems inevitable that curatorial practice on the Internet must cede such control once the visitor clicks the final link. At this point, everything - the spatial metaphor, the textual analyses, the whole notion of the gallery - is left behind. Which, this exhibition leaves you thinking, can't really happen offline, where the works remain rooted in space, organised and structured according to the agendas of this or that curator. Of course, this is one of the many facets of the offline art experience that the Net artists have hoped to circumvent with their work online. I'm sure many of the artists featured here will be wondering how they've managed to end up in a gallery again, but in these early days of online curation, Some of My Favourite Web Sites are Art holds valuable lessons for future attempts: importantly, it is also a more-or-less precise snapshot of Net art as it is practised today.