Everything in the world exists to end up in a book, Stéphane Mallarmé proposed in his far-reaching aspiration for Le Livre — the ultimate book that would encompass nothing short of the world in a single tome. This statement could double as a primer for Derek Sullivan’s practice, where everything that passes through his hands seems to find its way into or out of a book.
Sullivan’s recent exhibition Albatross Omnibus is designed from the outset as a book. An eight-foot-high concertina wall snakes through the first gallery, bisecting the space into two irregular shapes. On one side, framed drawings are hung like illustrated plates from an encyclopedia on modern-ist abstraction; on the backside, large photocopied images of an awkwardly bookish woman holding a novel are postered directly on to the drywall between exposed metal studs. Viewers’ movements through the space per-form the act of reading, physically moving from one page to the next.
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