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
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Fluxus
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Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
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Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
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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.
2012, English
Hardcover (cloth-bound), 172 pages, 25 x 20 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Standard Books / Oslo
$70.00 $50.00 - Out of stock
Profusely illustrated cloth-bound first edition of first major monograph on artist Fredrik Værslev, published by Standard (Oslo), with contributions by Nicolas Ceccaldi and Gertrud Sandqvist. One of the most original and recognised voices in contemporary painting, Norwegian artist Fredrik Værslev navigates between different pictorial traditions. In his practice, he focuses on the process of painting, demonstrating the possibilities and relevance of the medium today. Texts in English.
2017, English
Softcover, 196 pages, 20 x 28 cm
Published by
Capricious / New York
$75.00 $50.00 - Out of stock
A dual catalogue and archival exposé that explores the pivotal exhibition, Coming to Power: 25 Years of Sexually X-Plicit Art By Women, originally curated by the late artist, Ellen Cantor, in 1993, along with its re-staging in 2016 by curator Pati Hertling and artist, Julie Tolentino.
The book also chronicles the unprecedented partnership amongst five New York City institutions. Exhibitions and programming of Cantor’s work were offered by 80WSWE, Maccarone, Foxy Productions, Participant Inc., Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), Skowhegan School of Painting, and MOMA—highlighting the lush, visionary, and audacious aspects of Cantor’s drawings, paintings, curatorial projects, sculpture, assemblage, video, film, and evocative writing. Another section features a reprint of an interview between Cantor and Cerith Wyn Evans, a conversation between Lia Gangitano/Jonathan Berger and Julie Tolentino/Pati Hertling, as well as archival material from Cantor’s diary entries and never-seen sketches from Cantor’s personal papers.
LIST OF ARTISTS:
PAINTING/SCULPTURE/PHOTOGRAPHS: Lynda Benglis, Judith Bernstein, Louise Bourgeois, Ellen Cantor, Patricia Cronin, Mary Beth Edelson, Nicole Eisenman, Nancy Fried, Nan Goldin, Nancy Grossman, Pnina Jalon, G.B. Jones, Doris Kloster, Joyce Kozloff, Zoe Leonard, Monica Majoli, Marilyn Minter, Alice Neel, Lorraine O’Grady, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, Joan Semmel, Cindy Sherman, Nancy Spero, and Hannah Wilke
VIDEO/FILM: Peggy Ahwesh, Maria Beatty, Lynda Benglis, Abigail Child, Cicciolina, Kate Dymond, Azian Nurudin, Barbara Hammer, Holly Hughes, Julia Kunin, Blush Productions, Annie Sprinkle, and Ona Zee
PERFORMANCES: FlucT, luciana achugar, Kia Labeija, Xandra Ibarra/La Chica Boom, Zackary Drucker & Orlando Tirado, Jim Fletcher, Narcissister, niv Acosta, and Jen Rosenblit and their collaborators
2015, English
Loose-leaf A4 material in stamped C4 envelope w. stickers, postcard, 7" vinyl record, 22.9 × 32.4 cm
Ed. of 100 copies,
Published by
Bunyip Trax / Melbourne
Endless Lonely Planet / Melbourne
$10.00 $5.00 - In stock -
Endless Lonely Planet is a yearly periodical, interested in the format of a year in time. With ongoing and new contributors having the loose deadline of a year to work within, mostly… Each issue explores a different binding, and accompany formatted recording.
Issue 4 includes a 7" record (BTX051) featuring tracks from Tim Coster, Alwayse, Mshing, Lucid Castration, Noematic Oblivion, Mouving, Porpoise Torture, Roman Nails, Papaphilia, and Psychward.
The printed components in this issue include contributions from Joshua Petherick, Virginia Overell, Y3K, Counterfeitness first, F K-X D, S.T. Lore, Aurelia Guo, some random pages, and stickers. These occupy a A4 postage envelope.
2017, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 10.8 x 11.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$56.00 $15.00 - In stock -
Contributions by Bart De Baere, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Boris Groys, Elena Shaposhnikova, Marina Simakova, Hito Steyerl, Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood, Arseny Zhilyaev, Esther Zonsheim
According to the nineteenth-century teachings of Nikolai Fedorov—librarian, religious philosopher, and progenitor of Russian cosmism—our ethical obligation to use reason and knowledge to care for the sick extends to curing the dead of their terminal status. The dead must be brought back to life using means of advanced technology—resurrected not as souls in heaven, but in material form, in this world, with all their memories and knowledge.
Fedorov’s call to redistribute vital forces is wildly imaginative in emancipatory ambition. Today, it might appear arcane in its mystical panpsychism or eccentric in its embrace of realities that exist only in science fiction or certain diabolical strains of Silicon Valley techno-utopian ideology. It can be difficult to grasp how it ended up influencing the thinking behind a generation of young revolutionary anarchists and Marxists who incorporated Fedorov’s ideas under their own brand of biocosmism before the 1917 Russian Revolution, even giving rise to the origins of the Soviet space program.
This book of interviews and conversations with today’s most compelling living and resurrected artists and thinkers seeks to address the relevance of Russian cosmism and biocosmism in light of its influence on the Russian artistic and political vanguard as well as on today’s art-historical apparatuses, weird materialisms, extinction narratives, and historical and temporal politics. This unprecedented collection of exchanges on cosmism asks how such an encompassing and imaginative, unapologetically humanist and anthropocentric strain of thinking could have been so historically and politically influential, especially when placed alongside the politically inconsequential—but in some sense equally encompassing—apocalypticism of contemporary realist imaginaries.
Published in parallel with the eponymous exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Kaye Cain-Nielsen, Stephen Squibb, Anton Vidokle
Design by Jeff Ramsey, front cover design by Liam Gillick
2013, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 27.5 x 21.1 cm
Published by
Doingbird / Sydney
$14.00 $5.00 - Out of stock
Doingbird Seventeen, 2013
features Roe Ethridge, Walter Pfeiffer, Torbjørn Rødland, Shauna T, Fergadelic, Ryan Foerster, Max Doyle, Peter de Potter, Rene Vaile, Paul Wetherell, Ben Toms, Catherine Opie, Max Natkiel and much more.
2016, English
Hardcover, 384 pages, 26.7 x 21 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$99.00 $50.00 - In stock -
Lynn Hershman Leeson is one of the first and most influential media artists. During the past five decades she has done pioneering work in the fields of photography, video, film, performance, installation, and interactive and net-based media art. Hershman Leeson's major themes are the construction of identity, surveillance and control, and life in the age of genetic engineering. This is the first comprehensive monograph on an international star of media art. Hershman Leeson's most well-known series is Roberta Breitmore (1973-78): a fictional character embodied by her and three other women, in part simultaneously. A kind of clone of the artist, her life is staged in real time and space. In her most recent works, Hershman Leeson includes web applications and mass communication media such as smartphones, as well as the latest scientific developments in the field of genetics and regenerative medicine, including 3D bioprinters that create human body parts.
Edited by Peter Weibel and texts by Pamela Lee and Andreas Beitin.
2015, English
Softcover, 110 pages, 14 x 21.6 cm
Published by
A.P.E (Art Projects Era)
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$45.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Keren Cytter, Nora Schultz
Contributions by Ei Arakawa, Ilan Bachl, Keren Cytter, Matthew Dipple, Genoveva Filipovic, Dan Poston and David Zuckerman, Ulla Rossek, Nora Schultz, Sam Siwe
After Jennifer Lopez graced the 2000 Grammys red carpet in that now-iconic plunging Versace number, the Internet was so overloaded with search requests that Google had no choice but to invent a new function: image search. "At the time, it was the most popular search query we had ever seen," Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt wrote. "But we had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted—J.Lo wearing that dress. Google Image Search was born."
—New York Post, April 9, 2015
Terminal is an artist book conceived by Nora Schultz and Keren Cytter. Its title and logic follow Schultz’s latest performance,Terminal + at Tate Modern, London (2014), and the exhibition “I’m Honda” at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York (2015). Nora Schultz used Google’s image search on her own documentation to create an unexpected, ever-expanding narrative of digital associations. She then invited nine artists to contribute to this narrative. Together with the image search, Schultz’s own texts and drawings create a new tale that deals with ideas such as authorship, copyright, surveillance, and documentation. It kicks off with Ilan Bachl’s diary, continues with rippled text by Ulla Rossek, and ends with an item from the Daily Mail about a couple who share their home with a Bengal tiger.
Copublished with A.P.E (Art Projects Era)
Design by Keren Cytter
2020, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 19.3 x 25.9 cm
Published by
Humanoids Inc. / Los Angeles
$48.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
From Milo Manara, one of comics' most acclaimed illustrators the world over, comes a collection of three of his most famous and sought after works—a lighthearted twist on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, an edge-of-your-seat thriller in collaboration with Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami (Life is Beautiful), and a uniquely Manarian adaptation of the Roman classic The Golden Ass of Apuleius—all of which highlight the artist's ever-titillating and masterful style of storytelling. A definitive collection, here translated to the English-language from their original Italian.
"Manara is a comics artist of uncommon ability, a master of linework and layout, whose storytelling chops deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as those of Kirby, Crumb, Toth, Moebius." — ComicsAlliance.com
Maurilio Manaro (b. 1945), known professionally as Milo Manara, is an Italian comic book writer and artist. His first work appeared in the 'Genius' pocket books in 1969, and in magazines like Terror, Telerompo, and the French magazines Alter-Linus and Charlie Mensuel. He also worked for various children's magazines, collaborating with Milo Milani. Manara illustrated five issues of the collection 'L'Histoire de France en Bandes Dessinées' for the French publisher Larousse between 1976 and 1978, and continued to work illustrating similar educational publications, such as 'La Découverte du Monde en Bandes Dessinées' (Larousse, 1979), 'L'Histoire de la Chine' (1980) and 'La Storia d'Italia a Fumetti' (Mondadori, 1978). Also in 1978, he cooperated with Alfredo Castelli on 'L'Uomo delle Nevi' for Cepim and he started with the series 'Giuseppe Bergman', the anti-hero graphic novels which are an ironic deconstruction of adventure stories and comic books as a medium. Manara briefly ventured into westerns with 'Quatre Doigts, L'Homme de Papier' in Pilote (1982), before establishing himself as one of the greatest creators of erotic comics. Manara's book 'Déclic' ('Il Cioco' or 'Click' in English, 1983), initially published in Playmen in Italy and L'Écho des Savanes in France, remains one of the most iconic, notorious and widely published erotic stories of our time. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Manara created a vast collection of erotic comic books, however he also kept on working in other genres. With the great Italian comic book artist Hugo Pratt, Manara worked on 'L'Été Indien' (in Corto Maltese) and 'El Gaucho' (in Il Grifo). Manara also worked with the film director Federico Fellini on 'Voyage à Tulum' (Corriere della Serra, 1986) and 'Le Voyage de G. Mastorna dit Fernet' (Il Grifo, 1992). In the 1990s-2000s Manara made books for Les Humanoïdes Associés, DC/Vertigo, Marvel Comics and teamed up with writer, film director Alejandro Jodorowsky.
2020, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$56.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Creativity has been hailed as the driving force and most important skill of the twenty-first century–a power to be taught, understood and deployed on all levels of society. Debate concerning the origins and potential of creativity is mostly confined to the realms of the natural and social sciences, with insights ranging from neurology to theoretical physics to psychology and educational sciences. Here, using insights from these fields, and also delving into the ideas of Parmenides, Spinoza, Goethe, Emerson, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Bergson, Deleuze, Spivak, and many others, Jeroen Lutters argues that creativity should be explicitly enforced in education and society, to open up new perspectives. Creative Theories of (Just About) Everything explores and defines a ‘possible world’ in which creativity is part of everything in nature. Knowing and using this creative source should be a formative force, not only in the arts and in education, but in rethinking our society at large.
2010, English / German
Softcover, spiral-bound, 182 pages, 17.8 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Kölnischer Kunstverein / Köln
Walther König / Köln
$55.00 $20.00 - In stock -
With statements from Judith Barry, Joseph Beuys, Paul Chan, Mel Chin and the GALA Committee, Jaime Davidovich, Simon Denny, Kalup Linzy, Christoph Schlingensief, Ryan Trecartin, Francesco Vezzoli, Andy Warhol.
"Forbidden Love: art in the wake of television" observes television's methods of seduction, with its "garish mannerisms" and describes it as a world of experience with the most varied of formats. The catalogue does not aim to analyse the content or morals of television, rather it is interested in an aesthetic, "camp" approach-as described in Susan Sontag's essay Notes on "Camp"-to the medium of television and its affects.
Out-of-print.
2021, English
Softcover, 84 pages, 28 x 22 cm
Published by
Secession / Vienna
$58.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
The artist's book to accompany the exhibition at Secession, Vienna, Austria (08.12.2020-07.02.2021), interweaving Megerle's graphic art with videos. The drawings are made in the solitude of the studio; the videos, by contrast, are the fruit of collaborations with friends. In both media, the artist tells stories of the dynamics of the body and society and raises the question: how does one live (together)?
2007, English / German / Dutch
Softcover, 206 pages, 22.8 x 17 cm
Published by
Witte de With / Rotterdam
$46.00 $15.00 - In stock -
Essays by Alexander Alberro & Nora M. Alter, Tom Holert
Foreword by Nicolaus Schafhausen
Introduction by Matthias Michalka
Mathias Poledna’s artistic practice is informed by historical research, by archives and collections. In his work, he develops his interest in the histories of avant-garde cinema, of modernism in architecture and design, and of the crossovers between popular culture and high art. In recent years, his projects have taken the form of highly formal filmic reconstructions that suggest ephemeral moments from 20th century culture, often popular culture.
In the 16mm film installation Western Recording (2003) we see a young man rehearsing the song City Life (1969) by singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson. This song was originally recorded in the famous Western Recording studio in Los Angeles, where the Beach Boys recorded their seminal album Pet Sounds.
Instead of simply recreating this historical moment, Poledna singles out every element from its background. Rather than adopting a nostalgic attitude towards this fragment of pop culture, he puts it formally under the microscope. Western Recording is an unusual representation of music history in that it depicts the rehearsal process, with all its flaws and repetitions, and not the polished end result that we have come to expect from cultural production.
English, German and Dutch text.
2016, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket) 188 pages, 14.5 x 21 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$64.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
John Douglas Millar’s Brutalist Readings: Essays on Literature is a significant intervention into recent debates on the place of literature and writing in the context of contemporary art. Featuring essays on the highs and lows of the conceptual turn in poetics, avant-garde literary genealogies, and monographic pieces on Paul B. Preciado, Chris Kraus, and Pierre Guyotat, among others, Brutalist Readings explores the radical histories of writing, as well as its potential now.
Design by Present Perfect
2016, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 13 x 21 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$64.00 $5.00 - In stock -
Traction argues that contemporary art is defined by a moral economy of indeterminacy that allows curators and artists to imagine themselves on the other side of power. This self-positioning, in turn, leaves us politically bankrupt, intellectually stagnant, and aesthetically predictable. In his memoir-polemic, curator and writer Tirdad Zolghadr candidly reflects on his own experiences and the work of others. He also drafts possibilities for a logic and a support structure that can offer some purchase of their own, beyond the gravitational pull of business as usual. Ultimately, Traction calls for a renewed sense of profession, somewhere within the corridors of power where, for better or worse, contemporary art has long arrived.
Design by Aude Lehmann, Zurich
2020, English
Softcover (cloth), 284 pages, 16.5 x 10.4 cm
Published by
Office / Melbourne
$27.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
The Politics of Public Space is a quarterly publication of transcripts that speak directly to the city and the way we read it.
The second volume addresses the effects of COVID-19, including the sudden changes in the way we interact and view our public spaces. It contains excerpts from Myria Georgiou, Saskia Sassen, Jack Self, Brooke Holmes, Ian Strange and Alfredo Brillembourg.
This publication curates a series of global perspectives as we all come to terms with a new way of life due to the virus. Myria Georgiou observes the emergence of digital solidarity groups throughout the UK as inequalities and vulnerabilities are foregrounded. World-renowned sociologist Saskia Sassen reveals the pervasiveness of power as the fragility of our global connectedness is further disclosed. The true publicness of our cities is revealed in Jack Self’s account of protest and opposition to the political structures. Brooke Holmes depicts an interconnectedness between the health of the city and it’s citizens traced back to antiquity. Australian artist Ian Strange unpacks his understanding of the home as he recounts a decade of practice into the subject. And Venezuelan architect Alfredo Brillembourg calls to arms the architecture profession to deal directly with issues of injustice within the built environment.
2016, English
Hardcover, 248 pages, 23.8 x 29.2 cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
$65.00 $50.00 - In stock -
Associated with the Nouveaux Réalistes and Zero, Swiss painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely (1925–91) is best known for his whirring, jangling meta-mechanic sculptures, which take up Dada’s mantle in their use of discarded materials and their wit, humor and irony. But this perception of Tinguely as merely a playful kinetic sculptor neglects the more topical, critical, theoretical and interdisciplinary aspects of Tinguely’s work.
An extensive monograph on this chronically underpublished artist, Jean Tinguely: Retrospective is the first publication to explore the artist’s work from this perspective.
Tinguely’s machines are built to malfunction or self-destruct, expressing a pessimistic view of human existence and death--and yet they are infectiously cheerful. His meta-mechanics suggest a hobbyist’s enthusiasm for technology, but made out of junk, they also suggest the artist’s skepticism regarding technological advance. Tinguely loved art history, and yet he launched savage attacks on the museum with pieces that are now seminal works of institutional critique.
With contributions from Kaira Cabañas, Hans-Christian von Herrmann, Dominik Müller, Johan Pas, Margriet Schavemaker, Barbara Til and Beat Wismer, this volume presents Tinguely as an artist whose work sustained contradictions and courted ambiguity.
A fantastic and visually-rich book! Now out-of-print.
2017, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 21 x 29.7 cm
Published by
David Pestorius / Brisbane
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$69.00 $2.00 - Out of stock
CityCat Project 2006–2016 is the record of an extraordinary collaboration between American artist Dave Hullfish Bailey and senior Aboriginal writer and activist Sam Watson. The collaboration is structured around Maiwar Performance, in which the CityCat ferries that ply the Brisbane River (Maiwar) execute unannounced maneuvers near a site of significance to the Aboriginal people who lived on the lands around Brisbane before British colonization in the early nineteenth century.
After its first iteration in 2006, Watson designated the event a “Dreaming,” which meant that it should be periodically repeated. The performance has since been restaged in 2009, 2012, and 2016, with Watson seeing it as an important act of Indigenous empowerment: a way of restoring agency to the local Aboriginal people in bringing their past alive and allowing them to think that the future has not been definitively determined.
Parallel to this recurring event is an evolving body of works in diverse media. At its core is Bailey’s lateral research-based process, which combines a highly reflexive approach to language with granular descriptions of material and cultural systems. The call-and-response collaboration between Watson and Bailey and the many irreducibilities within it, generates an articulation of place that is playfully extrapolative, yet politically and intellectually resistant.
This publication includes an introduction by its editor, Rex Butler, and an essay and detailed timeline by CityCat Project curator, David Pestorius, which covers the activities of Bailey and Watson both before and throughout their work together. In addition, art historian Sally Butler reflects upon Watson’s literary production, while curator Michele Helmrich sheds light on the local historical context that significantly informs the collaboration.
Edited by Rex Butler
Texts by Rex Butler, David Pestorius, Sally Butler, Michele Helmrich
Graphic concept by Heimo Zobernig
Design by Michael Phillips
Copublished with Australian Fine Arts/David Pestorius, Brisbane
2018, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 22.5 x 29 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
IMA / Brisbane
$75.00 $5.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Aileen Burns & Johan Lundh, Carolin Köchling, Rafael Ortega, Filipa Ramos, Volker Sommer, Eugenio Viola
The catalogue please listen hurry others speak better accompanies solo exhibitions by Amalia Pica at three venues: “ears to speak” at The Power Plant in Toronto and “please open hurry” at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. Two threads in Pica’s practice are brought together: communication between humans and exchange between species. The artist raises questions of mutual understanding through constructing forums that address shared experience. Illustrations of primate and human social models and interpersonal communication in the publication are accompanied by documentation of performances that enact social hierarchies and animal-language studies. Volker Sommer writes about his work on animal rights and the initiative to establish a “community of equals,” and Filipa Ramos reflects on primate anthropologists Jane Goodall and Gregory Bateson. A conversation between Carolin Köchling and Pica considers her artistic practice, and Eugenio Viola and Pica discuss the performative element of the artworks.
Copublished with The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
Design by Lotte Lara Schröder
1973, English
Softcover (soft boards), 204 pages, 29.6 x 21.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Harry N. Abrams / New York
Thames and Hudson / London
$25.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
English edition wide ranging and comprehensive survey of conceptual and other contemporary art movements circa 1973—1974, profiling 53 contemporary artists from 18 countries, edited and designed by the legendary Dutch typographer and museum curator, Willem Sandberg, with associates including Jean-Christophe Ammann, Harald Szeemann, Achille Bonito Oliva, Yona Fischer and many others. Original cover by Alighiero Boetti. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with collected works by each artist or original pieces made for the publication, aside from the occasional accompanying artist's text it is entirely made up of visuals. Artists featured include : Sergi Aguilar, Gilles Aillaud, Keith Arnatt, Gábor Attalai, Lothar Baumgarten, Ola Billgren, Alighiero Boetti, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Boris Budan, Luciano Castelli, Mary Corse, William Crozier, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Braco Dimitrijević, Gino De Dominicis, Benni Efrat, Luciano Fabro, Robert Filliou, John-E Franzen, Hamish Fulton, Tibor Gayor, Avital Geva, Zbigniew Gostomski, Allan V. Harrison, Jeroen Henneman, Martha Jungwirth, Zdzislaw Jurkiewicz, Per Kirkeby, Christof Kohlhöfer, Harriet Korman, Piotr Kowalski, Richard Long, Urs Lüthi, Inge Mahn, Richard Nonas, Lev Nusberg, Panamarenko, Antonio Soler Pedret, Ireneusz Pierzgalski, Vettor Pisani, Joan Hernández Pijuan, Carl J. Plackrnan, Markus Raetz, Franz Ringel, Salvador Sauna, Kjartan Slettemark, Hugo Suter, Endre Tot, Jerzy Treliński, Carel Visser, Rolf Winnewisser...
Average—Poor copy, contents and interior in good shape and complete, cover and edges with decent wear and marking, spine 75% torn away, although all still thread-bound.
2022, English
Softcover, 400 pages, 20 x 26 cm
Published by
gta Verlag / Zürich
$132.00 $80.00 - Out of stock
Our time is an urban age. More people than ever before are living in cities, cities are becoming bigger and denser than ever, and urbanity has reached an unprecedented level of complexity. This urbanization boom, which can be observed around the globe today, began at the turn of the 20th century, when technical progress and the extraction of seemingly unlimited natural resources drove urban development. With the steady growth of urban populations, architects and planners not only had to deal with the design of living space and public space, but also new social challenges such as (geo-) political tensions, the reconstruction after two world wars, decolonization, economic crises, responding to growing climatic problems and cultural changes. By analyzing more than one hundred richly illustrated urban planning projects and initiatives, the book offers the first comprehensive story of how these challenges have continuously generated new attitudes and approaches in the urban planning discipline since the early 20th century.
2017, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 22 x 31.5 cm
Published by
Galerie Buchholz / Köln
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
Walther König / Köln
$54.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
This now out-of-print publication features several series, such as Recently Deleted and film stills of Two A.M., Loretta Fahrenholz's most recent work. Loretta Fahrenholz is an experimental filmmaker, often working closely with the actors and extras who perform in her work. Her films document the contemporary reality that is shaped by collective fictions, staging, and media communication.
Texts by Gili Tal and Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven.
2020, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 15 x 24 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$62.00 $30.00 - In stock -
Forces of Art investigates the way in which artists, artworks and cultural organizations affect people and their social environments, and explores how cases of creative practice have been operational in empowering people, communities, and societies in their given contexts. It is a dense, multi-layered, polyvocal compendium of current thinking about the impact of art on civil society and social change, and contains a large number of essays and case studies located all over the world, from Central Asia to Meso and Latin America, from Africa to Central Europe, from South and South-East Asia to the Middle East. The driving force is the shared concern and responsibility for societies worldwide, with regards to culture and the well-being of its communities. Considering the question of how art can be consequential, the book challenges the reader to think beyond art as representation, as merely aesthetical, or as simply an object or commodity. Instead, it stirs thinking of art in terms of a force that has the ability to transform.
Editors: Carin Kuoni, Jordi Baltà Portolés, Nora N. Khan & Serubiri Moses
Contributors: Mariam Abou Ghazi, Kobina Ankomah-Graham, Jordi Baltà Portolés, Ilka Eickhof, Fernando Escobar Neira, Fatin Farhat Maya Indira Ganesh, Rocca Holly-Nambi, Miranda Jeanne Marie Iossifidis, Nuraini Juliastuti, Nora N. Khan, Višnja Kisić, Diana T. Kudaibergenova, Carin Kuoni, Kabelo Malatsie, Jenny Mbaye, Zayd Minty, Nadia Moreno Moya, Serubiri Moses Judith Naeff, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, Arnout van Ree, Naomi Roux, Vaughn Sadie, Anna Selmeczi Nishant Shah, Lenneke Sipkes, Rike Sitas, Cristiana Strava, Goran Tomka, Kasper Tromp, Minna Valjakka, Paulina E. Varas Mark R. Westmoreland, Kitty Zijlmans
Design: Lu Liang
2021, English
Softcover (cloth), 266 pages, 16.5 x 10.4 cm
Published by
Office / Melbourne
$27.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
In July, Melbourne experienced a second wave of the virus and the introduction of further restrictions forced the city to a standstill. Workplaces, student accommodation and universities remained empty as local businesses were also required to close their premises. The structures of the state, city and its residents were again laid bare. This third volume of the quarterly publication addresses many of these issues by gathering talks held prior to the pandemic alongside recent interviews. Kate Shaw shows how the recent lockdown of the housing towers in Flemington and North Melbourne reveals the government’s underlying attitude towards public housing tenants. Tony Birch used the Shrine of Remembrance as the site for his talk on the Indigenous protest movement Camp Sovereignty and the significance of monuments in shaping collective values. Nicole Kalms outlines the experiences of women in Melbourne’s public spaces through data gathered by XYX Lab. Sarah Lynn Rees discusses the complexities of engaging and working respectfully with Traditional Owners when intervening in the built environment. Andy Fergus & Brighid Sammon expose the failings of planning in the modern development of Melbourne, and Philip Brophy declares the general failings of the built environment profession at large.
2021, English
Softcover, 128 Pages, 27 x 35 cm
1st Edition, 1000 copies,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Baron / UK
$80.00 $50.00 - In stock -
For the seventh instalment of Baron photographer Richard Kern explores the dichotomy between girl and woman, between the nude and the dressed, and between playfulness and seriousness.
Kern does not ask his subjects to pose for him, nor does he direct them. He doesn’t even contact or cast them. Rather, the subjects contact him, and pose for him in any way they are comfortable. They sometimes choose to be portrayed in the nude and they have full control of the way their bodies are photographed. Therefore, the work is a collaboration between the model and the photographer, as they both construct the image.
This process plays out an interesting power dynamic, as the photographer is an older man and the subject is a young woman. Yet, by being seemingly opposed, the photographs are shaped by the male gaze, but simultaneously express the subjects’ agency over their sexuality and their bodies. However, how far is the performance of these young women a true expression of their new-found sexuality? Or is that performance rather shaped by the patriarchy and influenced by the endless stream of pop culture on what it is to be a woman?
Kern explains that he wanted this series of portraits to be about the last stage of innocence, the phase where a girl is leaving childhood and is slowly but surely entering adulthood. The many uncertainties that come from being in between age groups, in a place where it’s unclear what society is expecting of being a woman, are visible through the insecurity and agitation on the girls’ faces.
It’s so scary for a girl to leave her old, but safe, life behind, yet so exciting to be introduced into the thrilling, but possibly threatening world of womanhood. There is a sense of safety, but also danger here. The photographs are layered on top of each other, veiling and unveiling the female body. In doing so, Kern creates a hallucinating image of a feminine subject that is neither a girl, nor yet a woman. Both sides are emphasized through the translucency of the pictures. These girls are about to become women; in their eyes, you can see both the doubts and the joys that come with this new-found social position, role and sexual power.
Richard Kern (1954, USA) is a filmmaker and photographer from New York. He was a vivid member of the late ‘70’s ‘no-wave’ scene and the underground cult genre ‘Cinema of Transgression’. His cinematographic work is characterised by subversive elements such as violence and sex. Throughout his career, he has worked with musicians such as Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers. His book, New York Girls, from 1997, features punk queens and sub-cultural heroines portrayed in the nude. More recently, Kern investigated youthfulness in his work. His book, Medicated (2020), features photographs and interviews of girls on prescribed drugs. Baron Issue 7 is a continuation of Kern’s ongoing research on the portrayal of girlhood.
Art Direction Sam Boxer