Art Metropole

#14644

Evidence of the Avant Garde Ex-Library

Artist

Derek Sullivan

Price

$20.00

Date

2021

Publisher

Art Metropole + Struts Gallery + Owens Art G

Format

Artists' Books

ISBN

9781989010099

Genre

Drawing, Art History, Canadian, Books on Books, Available for Wholesale

Derek Sullivan’s work responds to systems of distribution and how the meaning of objects change as they circulate in the world. His recent drawings look at the structure of books and their subjects, exploring the relationships between physical reproduction and the spread of information.

In this new publication of drawings, 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.