Wall drawings, a new body of work by Derek Sullivan that explores the entanglements of place, memory, and perception through drawing and land-based installation.

After spending a year studying an abandoned Richard Serra sculpture in a farmer’s field in rural Ontario, Sullivan began constructing a stone wall in the field at his rural studio, located 250 km east of Toronto. Built using dry stone techniques and composed of material unearthed during the site’s construction, the wall stands as a structure that resists enclosure. Instead, it offers orientation—a device for grounding oneself in a shifting landscape, and for reconsidering one’s relationship to place.

In tandem with this evolving land work, the exhibition features a series of large-scale drawings that imagine the architecture of a book in formation. Rendered in the format of a press sheet—where pages are laid out prior to folding and binding—these drawings operate as fragmented texts, presenting a book caught in mid-production. Within these unbound narratives, subjects emerge like ghosts: the stone wall itself, local flora and fauna, echoes of printed matter drawn from both literary sources and contemporary art, selfie shadows, and bird flight paths.

Together, the wall and the drawings form a meditation on construction and disjunction—how meaning is shaped through what is seen, remembered, or pieced together.