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THANKS FOR NOTHING-NESS: The words are carved in rounded block letters, into a glossy, enamel-painted wooden panel. True to its word, Graham Gillmore's Thanks for Nothing (Ness), 2007, features ... nothing else. But despite the dearth of imagery, there is plenty of visual interest here: in the controlled aggression of the excavated picture plane, in the delicate shadows cast within each letter, and in the tiny dots that result from the heat emitted by the artist's router. All these features lend an unexpected gravitas to the otherwise dismissive phrase, the sarcastic tone of the underlined "nothing" enriched by the potential earnestness signaled by its existentialist association with "-ness."
