In this publication of drawings, Derek Sullivan reprints Evidence of the Avant Garde Since 1957, first published by Art Metropole in 1984, one of the first books (and exhibitions) to curate and catalogue distributed art practices – artworks that required wide circulation to fulfill their intent.
Based on Sullivan’s own copy of the original catalogue purchased from a library book sale, the original pages are interrupted by other kinds of distributed objects: prisms scatter rainbows, ragweed’s pollen gives the reader a runny nose, metro tickets spill out of pockets, invasive dandelions are dug out of a garden, recent art pamphlets pile up on the table. In reproducing these moments, Evidence of the Avant Garde Ex-Library examines the poetics of circulating artworks and the content that they pick up along the way.