World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
Theory / Essay
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
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'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
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Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
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Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
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Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2024, French / English
Softcover, 256 pages, 13.5 x 20 cm
Published by
Shelter Press / France
$40.00 - In stock -
The voice is everywhere, infiltrating everything, making civilisation, marking out territories with infinite borders, spreading from the farthest reaches to the most intimate spaces. It can be neither reduced nor summarised. And accordingly, when taken as a theme, the voice is inexhaustible, even when seen in the light of its very particular relation with the sonic or the musical, as is the case in most of the texts collected in this volume. There is no point therefore in trying to circumscribe or amalgamate the multiple avatars of the voice. We must rather try to apprehend what the voice can do, to envisage its landscape, its potential effects.
Authors: Francois J. Bonnet, John Giorno, David Grubbs, Yannick Guedon, Lee Gamble, Sarah Hennies, Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, Stine Janvin, Joan La Barbara, Youmna Saba, Akira Sakata, Pierre Schaeffer, Peter Szendy, Ghedalia Tazartes
2024, English / French
Softcover, 296 pages, 13 x 19.6 cm
Published by
Éditions 1989 / Paris
$49.00 - In stock -
The first book devoted to the late African American writer and actress, Dorothy Dean, one of the few prominent African American women of New York City's bohemian heyday, close to Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe.
Edited by Anaïs Ngbanzo, this second release from Éditions 1989 features Dorothy Dean's unpublished writing and selected correspondence with Edie Sedgwick, Rene Ricard, and Taylor Mead, among other friends and artists. This volume also includes Dean's transcendent script of an unrealized film starring Factory actor, Ondine.
Lyrical, humorous, political, and brutally honest, Who Are You Dorothy Dean? is a tribute to one of the few prominent African American women of New York City's bohemian heyday.
Dorothy Dean (1932-1987) was an African American writer and actress. She entered the 1960s New York underground scene and quickly became one of its key, if overlooked, figures, starring in six of Andy Warhol's films and inspiring the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe and Robert Creeley. Presumably the first woman ever hired as fact-checker at The New Yorker, Dean held brief editorial and proofreading positions at publications such as Vogue before launching her very own bulletin of film reviews, the All-Lavender Cinema Courier, in 1976.
Texts by Dorothy Dean, Edie Sedgwick, Robert Creeley, Gerard Malanga, Rene Ricard, Taylor Mead, et al. Translated from the English (American) by Rachel Valinsky. Graphic design: Rick Myers.
1976, English
Softcover (staple bound), 23 x 17.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Impetus Publications / London
$140.00 - Out of stock
Very rare copy of the inaugural issue of Impetus magazine, 1976. Impetus was an important British magazine of "new music", avant-garde, experimental and improvised musics, edited by Kenneth Ansell. Features Stomu Yamashta, György Ligeti, Carla Bley, Keith Tippett, Can, Darius Milhaud, Manfred Mann Chapter Three, Alexander Scriabin, plus further "new music" news and reviews, illustrated throughout.
Good copy with general age/soft edges/wear.
1977, English
Softcover (staple bound), 30 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Impetus Publications / London
$140.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of Impetus magazine issue 6, 1977. Impetus was an important British magazine of "new music", avant-garde, experimental and improvised musics, edited by Kenneth Ansell. This special issue is dedicated to Company, the improvisation collective formed in 1976 by Derek Bailey, including interviews with Anthony Braxton, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Steve Lacy, Han Bennink, Leo Smith, Steve Beresford, Paul Rutherford, Tristan Honsinger, Lol Coxhill, Maarten van Regteren Altena, Terry Day, Misha Mengelberg and more, plus further "new music" news and reviews, articles, discographies, illustrated throughout.
Very Good copy.
1978, English
Softcover (staple bound), 30 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Impetus Publications / London
$120.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of Impetus magazine issue 7, 1978. Impetus was an important British magazine of "new music", avant-garde, experimental and improvised musics, edited by Kenneth Ansell. This issue with cover feature on Eberhard Weber with interview and discography, plus Johnny Dyani, Daevid Allen (Gong), Rock In Opposition, John Renbourn Group, Bead Records, Roger Dean & Lysis, Salman Shukur, plus further "new music" news and reviews, illustrated throughout.
Good—Very Good copy.
1979, English
Softcover (staple bound), 30 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Impetus Publications / London
$120.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of Impetus magazine issue 10, 1979. Impetus was an important British magazine of "new music", avant-garde, experimental and improvised musics, edited by Kenneth Ansell. This special issue is devoted to The Swedish Alternative Music Movement, tracing the networks, politics, teaching projects, philosophies and discographies centred around the artist-led record label and collective Ett Minne För Livet, including articles and interviews with Archimedes Badkar, Marie Selander, Spjärnsvallet, Iskra, Vargavinter, plus further "new music" news and reviews, illustrated throughout.
Good copy.
1989, Japanese
Softcover, 288 pages, 18.5 x 12.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Random Sketch / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1989 edition of this gorgeous book document of the life and work of legendary Japanese avant-garde alto saxophonist Kaoru Abe, compiled by Kaoru Abe Memorandum Editing Committee and published by Random Sketch, Tokyo. Only available in a limited run in Japan and long long out-of-print, this chronicle traces the prolific, but tragically short, biography and discography of one of the world's most ferocious free jazz saxophonists, who died at age 29. Illustrated with photographs of his live performances, press images, concert posters, advertisements and record jackets, including his collaborations with Motoharu Yoshizawa, Takehisa Kosugi, Yosuke Yamashita, Derek Bailey, Milford Graves, and others. Includes texts by and credits to his many creative associates and collaborators, including by his once wife, science fiction author Izumi Suzuki, Teruhito Soejima, Maki Asakawa, Yasuaki Sawai, Hidetoshi Matsuzawa, Akiko Sakurai, Tatsuo Nagao, and many others. All texts in Japanese. A stunning little pocket book printed with natural, course-pulped cover stock. A must for any Abe or Japanese free jazz fan!
Kaoru Abe (1949—1978) was a Japanese avant-garde alto saxophonist. Self-taught at a young age, Abe dropped out of high school in 1967 and started performing live the following year. Abe performed with notables such as Motoharu Yoshizawa, Takehisa Kosugi, Yosuke Yamashita, Derek Bailey, and Milford Graves, although he generally performed solo. Abe was a prolific as he was wild, appearing almost every day to jazz spots and concerts, many of his highly coveted recordings taken directly from his explosive live sets. Kaoru Abe was married to writer and actress Izumi Suzuki, known for her science fiction stories and essays on Japanese pop culture, and for her association with photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. In 1976, they had a daughter. Abe's debaucherous and dangerous lifestyle led to their divorce in 1977. Abe died from Bromisoval overdose in 1978.
Very Good, some foxing to first pages, light tanning/wear with age.
1973, Japanese
Softcover, 106 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jazz People Sha / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of Tokyo's Jazz magazine, No. 18, Summer 1973. At the forefront of the Jazz scene, edited by Japanese photojournalist and famous jazz critic Seiichi Sugita,, Jazz is packed with rare gravure photography, interviews, scene reports, reviews, articles by leading artists, authors and critics, record labels and jazz coffee shop advertisements, this issue including special features on Cecil Taylor with loads or rare photographs, Cecil Taylor live at Carnegie Hall, a complete illustrated Cecil Taylor discography, article and catalogue on new solo piano recordings (heavy ECM, etc.), West Coast Now!, Izumi Suzuki, Billy Holiday, extensive illustrated live and record reviews, and much more...
Very Good copy.
1973, Japanese
Softcover, 114 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jazz People Sha / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of Tokyo's Jazz magazine, No. 20, Autumn 1973, with Don Cherry cover. At the forefront of the Jazz scene, edited by Japanese photojournalist and famous jazz critic Seiichi Sugita, Jazz is packed with rare gravure photography, interviews, scene reports, reviews, articles by leading artists, authors and critics, record labels and jazz coffee shop advertisements, this issue including special features on Sonny Rollins at the Village Vangaurd (photography by Seiichi Sugita), the Newport Jazz Festival New York — Archie Shepp, Milford Graves, Don Cherry, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Ella Fitzgerald, Keith Jarrett, etc. (photography by Seiichi Sugita), Montreux Jazz Festival Summer 1973 (photography by Aoki), a message to Japanese music friends from Chick Corea (about Scientology!), articles on narcotics, improvisation, natural foods, extensive illustrated live and record reviews, and much more...
Very Good copy.
1974, Japanese
Softcover, 130 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jazz People Sha / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of Tokyo's Jazz magazine, No. 24, August 1974, a special John Coltrane issue. At the forefront of the Jazz scene, edited by Japanese photojournalist and famous jazz critic Seiichi Sugita, Jazz is packed with rare gravure photography, interviews, scene reports, reviews, articles by leading artists, authors and critics, record labels and jazz coffee shop advertisements, this issue including special feature and homage to John Coltrane with a huge Coltrane interview, rare photographs, articles, a complete illustrated discography, a photo-report and interview with Japanese saxophonist Kosuke Mine in New York (photography by Seiichi Sugita), Duke Ellington, Eric Dolphy, Celestial Music, extensive illustrated live and record reviews, and much more...
Very Good copy.
1974, Japanese
Softcover, 130 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jazz People Sha / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of Tokyo's Jazz magazine, September 1974. At the forefront of the Jazz scene, edited by Japanese photojournalist and famous jazz critic Seiichi Sugita, Jazz is packed with rare gravure photography, interviews, scene reports, reviews, articles by leading artists, authors and critics, record labels and jazz coffee shop advertisements, this issue including special features on Herbie Hancock with a full chronology and discography, Montreux Jazz Festival 1974 w. Sonny Rollins, Johm McLaughlin, Gil Evans, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Jean-Luc Ponty, Rufus Harley, Don Moyer, Alphonse Mouzon, etc. (photography by Seiichi Sugita), interview with jazz pianist Mikio Masuda, Duke Ellington, Eric Dolphy, Celestial Music, extensive illustrated live and record reviews, and much more...
Very Good copy.
1975, Japanese
Softcover, 120 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jazz People Sha / Tokyo
$160.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of Tokyo's Jazz magazine, January 1975. At the forefront of the Jazz scene, edited by Japanese photojournalist and famous jazz critic Seiichi Sugita, Jazz is packed with rare gravure photography, interviews, scene reports, reviews, articles by leading artists, authors and critics, record labels and jazz coffee shop advertisements, this issue including special features on Miles Davis with loads of rare photographs (inc. Miles Davis at the Newport Festival 1969 shot by Seiichi Sugita), article on Miles, complete Mile Davis discography, Japanese jazz pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi in New York (photography by Seiichi Sugita), European Jazz report, Eric Dolphy, Celestial Music, extensive illustrated live and record reviews, and much more...
Very Good copy.
1996—2000, English
Softcover (staple-bound w. inserted photographs), 20—70 pages each, 17.7 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Omni Press / Millbrae
$320.00 - In stock -
Scarce lot of 11 issues of Sun Ra Research and it’s predecessor Sun Ra Quarterly, an exceptional fanzine project edited by Sun Ra devotee Peter Hinds, founded in 1995 to publish extensive, illuminating interviews and conversations with Sun Ra and members of his Arkestra, spanning the 1970's to Sun Ra’s passing in 1993. With each issue featuring exclusive insights from Sun Ra and the Arkestra themselves, plus transcriptions of rehearsals, radio shows, articles, Sun Ra declarations and poetry, and rare, unpublished Arkestra images by many photographers, all risographed on different paper stocks, hand-bound, and independently published by Omni Press in Millbrae, California, Sun Ra Research forms a valuable "product of a lunatic obsession and deranged scholarship" in homage to the cosmic jazz philosopher.
Issues range from years 1996—2000, 3 of which are Sun Ra Quarterly (of which only 5 issues were made), with promotional original live concert photograph inserted by the publisher. Please contact if in need of specific issue numbers.
Very Good copies all.
2007, Englosh
Softcover, 160 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$35.00 - In stock -
The Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida’s most sustained consideration of religion, explores questions first introduced in his book Given Time about the limits of the rational and responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide. Derrida analyzes Czech philosopher Jan Patocka’s Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History and develops and compares his ideas to the works of Heidegger, Lévinas, and Kierkegaard. One of Derrida’s major works, The Gift of Death resonates with much of his earlier writing, and this highly anticipated second edition is greatly enhanced by David Wills’s updated translation. This new edition also features the first-ever English translation of Derrida’s Literature in Secret. In it, Derrida continues his discussion of the sacrifice of Isaac, which leads to bracing meditations on secrecy, forgiveness, literature, and democracy. He also offers a reading of Kafka’s Letter to His Father and uses the story of the flood in Genesis as an embarkation point for a consideration of divine sovereignty. “An important contribution to the critical study of ethics that commends itself to philosophers, social scientists, scholars of religion . . . [and those] made curious by the controversy that so often attends Derrida.”—Booklist, on the first edition
VG copy.
1996, English
Softcover, 274 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$25.00 - In stock -
First 1996 edition, second print. In this illuminating book, a prominent art historian explores the links between avant-garde art and modern mass culture, showing that the connections between the two have always been strong, and even necessary to both. The author recounts vivid episodes involving Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Christopher Williams, and many others, arriving at fresh and original insights into modern art and its place in late twentieth-century culture.
Thomas E. Crow is an American art historian and art critic who is best known for his influential writing on the role of art in modern society and culture. Since 2007, Crow has served as the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.
Very Good copy, light wear.
1985, English / German
Softcover, 96 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Daadgalerie / Berlin
$45.00 - Out of stock
Excellent catalogue published on the occasion of an exhibition of Five Australian artists exhibiting at Daadgalerie, Berlin, Sep 2—Oct 6, 1985, organised by René Block with Mike Parr. Extensive and heavily illustrated chapters on each artist, Richard Dunn, John Lethbridge, Mike Parr, Peter Tyndall, and Ken Unsworth, alongside illustrated texts by curators René Block and Anthony Bond, and independent artist texts by George Alexander, Bernice Murphy, John Barbour, and more, in both English and German. Installation photographs and all works in colour and b/w, plus biographies, and much more. Catalogue by René Block.
Very Good copy, light wear.
2024, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 26.7 x 35.6 cm
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$44.00 - Out of stock
The Fluxus Newspaper collects all eleven newspapers published by the Fluxus art collective between January 1964 and March 1979. The newspapers were edited by an ever-changing team of artists known as the Fluxus Editorial Council for Fluxus and every issue, except the last two, was designed by Fluxus founder George Maciunas.
Although published irregularly, the newspapers were used to promote Fluxus events and publications, especially the group’s famous multiples and Fluxkits, with advertising materials, order forms, and pricelists interspersed throughout. More than just a space for promotion and information, the Fluxus newspapers featured the work of over sixty artists as well as appropriated newspaper headlines, advertisements, articles, and comic strips that are indicative of the group’s anti-art sensibility and characteristic humour.
The Fluxus Newspaper is exemplative of the 'do-it-yourself' creative attitude characteristic of Fluxus – an approach that is collaborative, interdisciplinary, anti-commercial, humorous, and open to anyone. The periodical is also an early example of the artist newspaper, a medium which grew out of the underground press movement and flourished in the late 60s and 70s as artists began to seek new mediums for presenting and distributing their work.
Artists featured in The Fluxus Newspaper include: Ay-O, Carol Bergé, Joseph Beuys, Elaine Bloedow, George Brecht, Christo, Philip Corner, Walter De Maria, Willem de Ridder, Bern Erismann, Nye Ffarrabas [participating as Bici Forbes], Robert Filliou, Henry Flynt, Ken Friedman, Carolyn Krumm, Heinz Gappmayr, Eugen Gomringer, Raymond Hains, Dick Higgins, Geoffrey Hendricks, Jon Hendricks, Alice Hutchins, Tatsu Izumi, Ray Johnson, Joe Jones, Allan Kaprow, Milan Knížak, Alison Knowles, Arthur Köpcke, Takehisa Kosugi, Ruth Krauss, Philip Krumm, György Ligeti, George Maciunas, Angus MacLise, Jackson Mac Low, Larry Miller, Peter Moore, Hans Nordenström, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Benjamin Patterson, James Riddle, Dieter Roth, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Tomas Schmit, Daniel Spoerri, Christer Strömholm, Yasunao Tone, Stan VanDerBeek, Ben Vautier, Jacques Villeglé, Wolf Vostell, Yoshimasa Wada, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, William S. Wilson, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela.
80 pages, 26.7 x 35.6cm, softcover, Primary Information (New York).
1995, English
Softcover, 432 pages, 22 x 27.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
MIY (Mind In You) Publishing Ltd / UK
$160.00 - In stock -
First and only edition of this enormous definitive history of House Music, self-published in Britain in 1995. Spanning Ambient, Techno, Jungle, Acid; from the DJ's to the raves; this huge book documents a cultural music and dance movement first-hand through the experiences and words of all the major DJ’s from the scene at the time including Larry Heard, Frankie Knuckles, Adonis, Norman Jay, Carl Cox, Fat Tony, Pete Tong, Alfredo, Fabio, Jesse Saunders, Grooverider, Juan Atkins, Sasha, Dimitri, Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, Derrick May, Andy Weatherall, Jamie Principal, about 80 interviews and profiles in total, plus extensive reviews, reflections and photography of the scenes in Ibiza, Great Britain, Italy, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, etc., spanning all the major clubs and festivals of the time. The book's design also embodies the aesthetic of the movement at the time, with every page immersed in an insane sea of psychedelic, early CG graphic design, complete with a never-ending collection of rave flyers.
A true labor of love, this one-of-a-kind historical time-capsule is a must for any dance music collector.
1999, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 17 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Black Dog Publishing Ltd / London
$290.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first 1999 edition of this definitive resource on the work of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle.
"These people are the wreckers of civilisation", exclaimed the Conservative Member of Parliament Nicholas Fairbairn in 1976. His outburst was meant to describe four artists and musicians: Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter - members of the seminal band Throbbing Gristle. What "these people" had done to deserve such an epithet, and what they were about to do, is the subject of this book.
Throbbing Gristle are widely lauded as the band that invented industrial music, and their influence can be observed across today's musical landscape: from house and techno to industrial death metal. Wherever experimental electronic music is being made, Throbbing Gristle's influence can be felt.
"Wreckers of Civilisation recalls a time which despite volumes of print remains occluded, obdurate, even intimidating: that moment before the conservative reconstruction. To be awake in London in the late 1970s was to be plunged into turmoil: externally manifest in riot, internally within various forms of damage and depression and, if one felt brave or driven, extreme aesthetics. COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle mark the furthest reach of that impulse: even more so than Punk, they plunged into a technological and personal examination of the dark side - the forbidden, the taboo, the dystopian future on the doorstep. Today this might seem like science fiction or deliberate shock tactics, but then it seemed like reportage, front line dispatches from a convulsed country."
Heavily illustrated and complete with a chronological list of actions, concerts and exhibitions, discography, filmography, bibliography and much more, this heavy volume has become an invaluable and sought after resource on TG, COUM Transmissions, and Industrial Records.
Simon Ford is a freelance writer and art historian. He was previously Research Associate in Craft and Design and Curator of the Design Council Slide Collection at Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as being a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He received his PhD in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2000. He is the author of Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle (1999, 2017, Black Dog Publishing). His most recent book is The Situationist International: A User's Guide (2006, Black Dog).
Very Good copy.
1999, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 18.5 x 18.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Charta / Milan
$100.00 - Out of stock
The great Propo artist's book by Paul McCarthy, published by Charta in 1999. Comprised entirely of photos of everyday objects, soiled, dirtied and ruined, shot against colourful backdrops that contrast with the mysterious nature of the decontextualized objects. Children's toys, condiment bottles, latex masks, dolls ... these objects are in fact props from McCarthy's legendary performances, and their visual inventory here reads like a book of modernity's detritus. A photo book document of residual sculptural objects of performance. One of his best books, like no other!
Born in Salt Lake City in 1945, Paul McCarthy has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area since 1970. Originally formally trained as a painter, McCarthy's main interest lies in everyday activities and the mess created by them. Much of his work in the late 1960s, such as Mountain Bowling (1969) and Hold an Apple in Your Armpit (1970), are similar to the work of Happenings founder Allan Kaprow, with whom McCarthy had a professional relationship. From 1982 to 2002 he taught performance, video, installation, and performance art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. McCarthy currently works mainly in video and sculpture. His work has been widely exhibited throughout Europe and the U.S. including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Very Good copy with only light wear.
2006, English / Japanese
Softcover, 146 pages, 24 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yokohama Museum of Art / Yokohama
$120.00 - In stock -
Wonderful Isamu Noguchi monograph published on the occasion of a major Japanese travelling survey exhibition entitled "Connecting the World Through Sculpture" in 2006. This oversized catalogue is profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with Noguchi's sculptures, reliefs, models, furniture and landscape designs for parks and playgrounds. Includes many pages of his beautiful set designs for Martha Graham's School and Dance Company in New York in the 1940s. Introductory texts in Japanese and English, a chronology, bibliography and list of exhibited artworks.
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was a Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. He was one of the twentieth century’s most important and critically acclaimed sculptors. His varied work was informed by his extensive travels over his lifetime. He worked across many different mediums, including sculptural gardening, set designs and architecture.
Very Good copy with some cover/spine wear.
1971, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 325 pages, 23 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Andre De Rache / Brussels
$300.00 - In stock -
First edition of the best, most comprehensive reference book on the work of French—Belgian Surrealist artist Felix Labisse, and one of the only publications on the artist in the English language. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, including many photographs of Labisse's life and artistic circles, with extensive accompanying essays by the great Surrealist biographer and author Patrick Walberg, including chapters: Gayant's child; The Ostend clan; The Wizard of Families; Behind the Scenes of the Party; Devil's Transvestites. Highly recommended.
Félix Labisse (1905—1982) was a self-taught French Surrealist painter, illustrator, and designer. He was born in Marchiennes. He divided his time between Paris and the Belgian coast from 1927. In Ostend he met James Ensor, with whom he became friends for life. In 1927 he set up his own studio there, influenced by his contact with the Ostend artists Ensor, Constant Permeke and Léon Spilliaert. Labisse mainly worked with oil on canvas. Beginning in 1931 he designed extensively literature and for the theater. In 1951 he staged the play Le Diable et le Bon Dieu by Jean-Paul Sartre at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris and in 1954 he staged the play Les Mystères de Paris by Albert Vidalie under the direction of Georges Vitaly at the Theater La Bruyere in Paris. Labisse's work was also influenced by Paul Delvaux and René Magritte. Describing his own work as 'libidoscaphes', his paintings depict fantastical hybrid creatures, heavy with motifs of eroticism and Freudian themes. He painted the first of a series of his iconic blue women in 1960; among them is the Bain Turquoise. He was the subject of a film by Alain Resnais, Visite à Félix Labisse (1947). In 1966 he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1973 his paintings were shown in a retrospective exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1982.
Patrick Waldberg (1913—1985) was a Franco-American art critic known for his profiles of Surrealist artists. Born in Santa Monica, California, Waldberg moved to Paris as a child with his family. In 1932, and while still a student (age 19), he joined Boris Souvarine's Democratic Communist Circle. There he met Georges Bataille and his friends Michel Leiris and André Masson, and was initiated by them into a wild night life. 1937 saw him back in California to take care of "family matters", however, a letter from Georges Bataille reached him there, urging him to return to Paris in order to take part in a Nietzschean secret society Bataille was then forming, called Acéphale ("headless"). Waldberg heeded the call in September 1938, and he says this permanently changed his life. From 1938 to 1940 Waldberg would serve as the secretary of Bataille's "official" group, the College of Sacred Sociology. In 1959 he left Paris to move to the French village of Seillans, where his second wife Line Jubelin was from. Max Ernst and his own second wife Dorothea Tanning joined him there. Their houses are now a Max Ernst museum and a Maison Waldberg museum.
Very Good in VG dust jacket — copy, light wear/age only.
1981, English
Die cut folded exhibition card, 18 x 14.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Nigel Greenwood Inc. / London
$90.00 - In stock -
Rare die-cut folded exhibition card produced by Marc Camille Chaimowicz on the occasion of the exhibition Macquettes… at Nigel Greenwood Inc, London, 10 December, 1981—30 January, 1982.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Fine copy.
1981, English
Fold-out booklet, 20.4 x 22.6 cm (folded), 72 x 22.6 cm (unfolded)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
The Tate Gallery / London
$50.00 - In stock -
Rare 1981 fold-out booklet published to accompany Marc Camille Chaimowicz's performance of Partial Eclipse… at the Tate Gallery, London in September, 1981.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Fine copy.