Abstract

This artwork resonates with a precluded tangibility. One might discern urbanity in the regular lines of concrete blocks; nature in the sand-coloured clouds; domesticity in the starched indigo-dyed fabric. Spliced angular planes converse and intersect; soft against rough, warm against cool. The work’s title extinguishes any hope of fresh feeling: satiety turns to glut, then a numbness settles in. Suggestions of familiar palability are undercut by the collage in two main ways: firstly, through the transformative abstraction of collage itself; and secondly, through the alienation of a work made solely from cut pages. Just as the idea of ‘feelingness’ flickers within ‘unfeelingness’, the depiction of texture on paper injects haptic sensation into what is merely seen. But the smoothing abstraction of images yields unexpected hierarchies. Even severed nerves retain their link to sharp sensations: a studied indifference is undermined when phantom feelings recur.

Keywords: unfeeling, Nothing New, Sylee Gore, urbanity, collage

How to Cite:

Gore, S., (2022) “Nothing New”, Moveable Type 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.1755-4527.151