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
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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.
2017, English
Softcover, 312 pages, 21 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
LOOP / Barcelona
$58.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Eugeni Bonet
With texts by Stephen Beck, AA Bronson, Peter Campus, Peter d’Agostino, Douglas Davis, Jon Dovey, Juan Downey, Jean-Paul Fargier, Hermine Freed, Frank Gillette, David Hall, Takahiko Iimura, Les Levine, Mary Lucier, Muntadas, Nam June Paik, Ulrike Rosenbach, Martha Rosler, Paul Ryan, Francesc Torres, Woody Vasulka & Scott Nygren, Bill Viola, and Peter Weibel
Writings by artists have always played a crucial role in art theory. For the practitioners, they are a way to illustrate and explain their own ideas around their trajectory and working methods, identify trends they feel close to, articulate a broader reflection on a given medium, and perhaps challenge preconceived ideas. Just as film theory has incorporated essays, manifestos, and other written thoughts by filmmakers into a body of work that also includes the voices of critics studying the “new cinematic object,” this publication gathers together a number of artists’ writings—which were previously scattered in different publications—in order to revisit and reevaluate the early days of video art (up to 1990, a not entirely arbitrary time span). It adds a critical layer to LOOP Barcelona’s 15th edition, Winding the Clock Back: A Contemporary Archaeology of Video.
This title is now out of print.
2017, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 22 x 29 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
Sculpture Centre / New York
Kölnischer Kunstverein / Köln
$57.00 - Out of stock
This publication accompanies two distinct exhibitions presenting the work of American artist Sam Anderson. The first opened in May 2017 at SculptureCenter in New York City and the second opened later in July at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne. This catalogue is a co-production between both museums on the occasion of these two exhibitions, and it brings together a selection of images and texts related to both shows. The overlapping exhibitions were the first solo museum presentations of Anderson’s work and each highlighted different aspects of her practice. Her exhibition at SculptureCenter comprised new commissions while her exhibition at Kölnischer Kunstverein brought together existing works spanning several years. Working on the two shows simultaneously allowed for Anderson to consider her practice through new and existing objects and installations, while articulating particular narratives and connections between her works. This book presents a wide range of objects and concerns running throughout the two exhibitions.
Edited by Ruba Katrib and Moritz Wesseler
Texts by Ruba Katrib and Moritz Wesseler
Conversation between Sam Anderson and Lia Gangitano
2017, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 16 x 24 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$54.00 - Out of stock
Cash for Gold is the most comprehensive monograph on the work of Nina Beier, copublished with the Kunstverein in Hamburg, in conjunction with Kunsthaus Glarus. Nina Beier’s art presents a particular challenge to critics, Alexander Scrimgeour outlines in the introduction to this catalogue— indeed, an anthology of eight different essays: a textual bounty that proved necessary. The conventional functions of the art writer: interpretation, judgement, critique, contextualisation, etc., stand in an uneasy relationship, not to say opposition, to the explorations of openness, assignations of value, and unspoken cultural codes in her work. The development of this catalogue, and the fact that it does not coalesce into a single, authoritative voice, can perhaps best be seen as a reflection of the work itself, and what makes or lets it carry meaning for different people in different ways. For all the specificity of its materials and forms, it draws its energy from the emotional valence of culturally embedded desires, pressures, norms and glitches within what Rosalind Krauss called, after Fredric Jameson, “the total saturation of cultural space by the image.” The sprawl and partiality of this catalogue is itself a mirror of a crisis of representation that is itself the ground occupied by the images, confused objects, and art-historical references in Beier’s work to date.
Bettina Steinbrügge, Alexander Scrimgeour, eds.
Texts by Karen Archey, Laura McLean-Ferris, John Miller, Post Brothers, Dieter Roelstraete, Chris Sharp, Bettina Steinbrügge, Alexander Scrimgeour, Ana Texeira Pinto
2017, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 24 × 19 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
Editions Lebeer Hossmann / Brussels
M HKA / Antwerp
$75.00 - In stock -
Foreword by Anders Kreuger, essay by Irmeline Lebeer, translated transcript of conversation between Robert Filliou and Irmeline Lebeer
“The absolute secret of permanent creation: not deciding, not choosing, not wanting, not owning, aware of self, wide awake. SITTING QUIETLY DOING NOTHING.” — Robert Filliou.
Published to document the recent Filliou retrospective at M HKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, this book centres on the transcript of an extensive conversation between the French artist and the Brussels-based art critic Irmeline Lebeer, recorded on seven cassette tapes in August 1976 in Flayosc in Southern France. This conversation is structured as an abécédaire and touches on a variety of topics to do with Filliou’s art and thinking, from amitié (friendship) to zen. It was supposed to become an extensive monograph but was never published until now.
Robert Filliou: The Secret of Permanent Creation gives today’s reader direct insight into the mind and the practice of this extraordinary artist, whose influence on subsequent generations cannot be overestimated. Now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, is the time to realise that Robert Filliou was one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, apart from being a significant playwright and poet. This book helps contemporary readers grasp his significance. It contains many black-and-white illustrations and colour plates of nearly all the 192 works in the exhibition at M HKA.
Designed by Sara De Bondt
Copublished with M HKA, Antwerp, and Editions Lebeer Hossmann, Brussels
2011, English
Hardcover (Clothbound), 80 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
Out of print title / as new
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$50.00 $30.00 - Out of stock
What does it mean to be both a painter and a sculptor in their most traditional guises, as well as an artist tied to transcribing reality at a moment in which the production and distribution of images has become so immediate and so intimately bound up with the way we live through our daily lives?
This now long out of print, first monographic book on Sinsel, designed in close collaboration with the artist, was published to coincide with Daniel Sinsel’s first solo exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, London, the first in a public institution. Produced by Mousse in association with Sadie Coles HQ, London, and with support from The Breeder, Athens, Office Baroque, Antwerp, and Galerie Micky Schubert, Berlin.
Out of print.
2015, English
Softcover, 294 pages, 24 x 31.7 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$63.00 - Out of stock
Alessandro Rabottini, Andrea Bellini, Martin Clark, eds.
Texts by Andrea Bellini, Martin Clark, Robin Clark, Alison M. Gingeras, Terry R. Myers, Alessandro Rabottini
Despite a prolific and diverse practice, Robert Overby (1935–93) remains one of the best-kept secrets in post-war American art. While rarely exhibiting during his lifetime, he nonetheless built up an extraordinary, multifaceted body of work encompassing sculpture, installation, painting, photography, print and collage.
This monograph is published on the occasion of “Robert Overby: Works 1969-1987”, the first survey exhibition of the artist’s work to be organized in Europe. Edited by Alessandro Rabottini —in collaboration with Andrea Bellini and Martin Clark—it has been conceived, from the outset, as a joint project of four partner institutions: Centre d’Art Contemporain, Genève; GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo; Bergen Kunsthall, and Le Consortium, Dijon.
2014, English / Italian
Hardcover (plus softcover booklet with italian translations), 80 pages, 23.5 x 34 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$50.00 - Out of stock
Alessandro Rabottini, ed.
Texts by Jörg Heiser, Elad Lassry, Aram Moshayedi, and Alessandro Rabottini
Elad Lassry’s multi-media practice explores the current status of images as the point where multiple modes of production and reception merge. In just a few years Lassry (b. 1977, Tel Aviv; lives and works in Los Angeles) has established himself as one of the most original artists of his generation, through photographs, films, sculptures, performances and installations that are both visually seductive and conceptually challenging. This book – edited by exhibition curator Alessandro Rabottini – documents Elad Lassry’s solo exhibition at the PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan, Italy; the first and most comprehensive monographic show held at an Italian institution. With an essay by Aram Moshayedi (Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles) and a conversation between the artist and Jörg Heiser (co-editor of frieze magazine), the book provides an in-depth critical examination of Lassry’s work since the beginning of his career.
2014, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 14.5 x 25 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$30.00 - Out of stock
Artist's book designed by Åbäke, based on Danish artist Marie Lund's first institutional solo exhibition.
Drums, which follows Marie Lund's exhibition at Museo Marino Marini in Florence, is acutely attentive to things that aren't present. A spectrum of materials is employed to evoke, represent, and reflect these missing objects—concrete, plasters, and acrylic glass are cast after, wrapped around, shaped along them. The act of modeling and copying is a craft, and the human imprint in such activities is intentionally betrayed: signs left by the working hands are visible. The works bears the signs of their own process through little, telling imperfections on their skin. Not unlike fossils, these works look like memory drivers.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Museo Marino Marini, Florence, in 2014.
Born 1976 in Hundested, Denmark, Marie Lund lives and works in London. Her work has been shown extensively, in solo shows among other at Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City, Croy Nielsen, Berlin, Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, and IMO Projects, Copenhagen, and in group shows at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Sorø Kunstmuseum, Denmark, CCA Wattis, San Francisco, Cologne Kunstverein, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, etc.
2013, English
Softcover, 96 page, 20 x 27 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$40.00 - Out of stock
The first artist book by Benedict, Bonjour Tourist is a demure compilation of the themes, the people, and the nuances dear to the LA-born artist. A conversation with Martin Guttmann—text messages exchanged over a five-month period—sheds some light on it all.
For the past several years Will Benedict has been working professionally as a photographer, painter, and tourist. Bonjour Tourist is a series of works relying on various combinations of gouache paintings and cut-out studio portraits, mounted in customized aluminium and foamcore frames. Organized in distinct series, they fulfil the nominal categories of newscasters, postcards, flags, couples having dinner and nations peeking in through windows. Compared to the kind of aesthetic stimulation experienced while watching TV the works are like watching two, maybe three channels at the same time.
In Benedict's works the buzzing clamor of things, places, foods and people are fossilized in lavishly painted waxed foamcore passepartout, freezing the sadness of the tourist and audience (the same thing) into an ever so slight hypomanic mixture of euphoria and irritability. Frozen along with everyone and everything in these passepartouts are paintings on canvas depicting a tits and penis nationalism that sells food at restaurants, plane ticket to exotic locals, walls or stamps.
2013, English / Italian
Softcover (newspaper), 37 x 26 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
TALKING ABOUT - Museum of Malware by John Menick
LAURA POITRAS - Primary Documents by Lauren Cornell
TALKING ABOUT - The Resistance to Symbols by Jennifer Allen
TALKING ABOUT - Outside In by Chris Wiley
TALKING ABOUT - Outside Art. After Venice by Dieter Roelstraete
MATT WOLF - Dreaming Documentary by Stuart Comer
TALKING ABOUT - Excuse My Dust by Jennifer Bornstein
TALKING ABOUT - Thinking Contemporary Exhibitions by Terry Smith and Jens Hoffmann
RACHEL ROSE - A State of Constant Becoming by Laura McLean-Ferris
ADRIANO COSTA - Materials Love to Find Me... by Gigiotto Del Vecchio
GAVIN KENYON - Sculptural Bondage by Cecilia Alemani
TALKING ABOUT - After Effects: Art and Technology, Then and Now by João Ribas
LUCIEN SMITH - History Repeating by Chelsea Haines
PARIS - MATI DIOP - Provoking Colours by Filipa Ramos
LOS ANGELES - SCOLI ACOSTA - Percussive Paintings and Quixotic Cadences: The Travels and Travails of Scoli Acosta by Andrew Berardini
LONDON - RICHARD SIDES - Social Spaces by Pavel S. Pys´
NEW YORK - JOSH KLINE - New Objects of Common Pictures by Christopher Y. Lew
ARIANA REINES - ABRACADABRA by Stuart Shave
VANESSA PLACE - The Frictionless Witness or Us, Keeping Us Real by Quinn Latimer
TALKING ABOUT - Artists and Workers by Julian Myers-Szupinska
TALKING ABOUT - May Your Children Turn Their Faces from You by Doug Ashford
and much more...
2012, English / German
Softcover, 100 pages, 31 x 24 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
Neuer Aachener Kunstverein / Aachen
$50.00 $20.00 - In stock -
Flipping and turning the pages of the actual reading material, the shiny surfaces of the heavily coated paper, shimmering with revealing, staged pictures of works, for the duration of a zapping sucking glance, while one's gaze shifted to coveting the goods, one found other stuff one was looking for, but one already know in detail what one would be wearing for the catalog launch event." (From the essay by Christian Egger).
PS. No particular dress code is actually required to flip through this publication, realized to accompany the first institutional solo shows of Lena Henke at NAK —
Neuer Aachener Kunstverein and Kunstverein Oldenburg.
2012, English / Italian
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
Mousse 35:
Lars Bang Larsen, Albert Serra, John D’Agata, Adam kleinman, Peter Watkins, Jens Hoffmann, Tim Griffin, Kathy Noble, Oscar Murillo, Catherine Wood, Claire Bishop, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jérôme Bel, Elisabeth Lebovici, Zachary Cahill, Camille Henrot, Cecilia Alemani, Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Mariana Caló & Francisco Queimadela, Filipa Ramos, Davina Semo, Bob Nickas, Stefano Cernuschi, Aaron Flint Jamison, Lauren Cornell, Darren Bader, Peter Eleey, David Douard, Thomas Boutoux, Samara Golden, Andrew Berardini, Benedict Drew, Michael Portnoy, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Charlotte Prodger, Bonnie Camplin, Lucy Reynolds.... and much more!
2012, English
Softcover, 171 pages, 11.5 x 18 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$22.00 - Out of stock
The Object Lessons – Nina Beier & Marie Lund by Francesco Pedraglio, published by Mousse Publishing.
The Object Lessons is an exhibition.
The Object Lessons is a story inspired by an exhibition, considered through three parallel accounts told in the first, second and third person.
The Object Lessons is an exhibition inspired by the narratives, characters and artworks features in a short story.
2012, English
Softcover, 366 pages, 16 x 22 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$42.00 - Out of stock
The Equation of Desire is the outcome of Mexican artist Martin Soto Climent’s efforts to recognise, name and organise all the relevant and substantial aspects of his own life. Starting from this very personal standpoint, the research soon became an investigation into universal questions of life; it became a series of diagrams about the human condition and also a series of 366 photographs.
All of the photographs emerge from a similar process: Soto Climent rolls-up different pages of vintage photographic yearbooks in such a way that a new and surprising image arises. Being a combination of a number of pictures, the result is reminiscent of a collage, but with one essential distinction: the original pictures are neither damaged nor destroyed by being cut up, but just unravel back into their original shape after the shot. The whole process thus results in an ephemeral picture that will disappear again and only remains in the picture taken by the artist.
At the same time the photographs become samples of hidden and unseen pictures that are contained in what surrounds us, pictures that can come to life by a minimal and reversible human act. They are indeed ciphers for the existence of vast potential in the world, a potential that can be harnessed by human creativity.
This artist’s book was published on the occasion of the show at Kunsthalle Winterthur, where The Equation of Desire was shown the first time.
2012, English
Softcover, spiral-bound adhesive sticker sheets, 21 x 15 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$20.00 - In stock -
A project for INDEPENDENT proposed by Matthew Higgs
For the 2012 edition of INDEPENDENT we approached each of the participating galleries, project spaces, and publishers to each invite one artist they either represent or who they have worked with in the past to design a new logo for them.
Of course galleries, for the most part, don’t have logos, and the few that have tried – the now shuttered Deitch Projects for example – always stood out like a sore thumb.
Instead a gallery’s ‘public face’, its ‘look’ is often little more than a carefully and discretely chosen font, which over time – it is hoped – will become as recognizable as the work of the artists the gallery represents.
Working in collaboration with MOUSSE the new, artist-designed logos for the participants of INDEPENDENT have been printed as stickers, which you are encouraged to distribute and disseminate in any way that feels appropriate.
2012, English
Hardcover, 80 pages (colour ill.), 22.5 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
The Henry Moore Foundation / Leeds
$19.00 - Out of stock
Michael Dean: Selected Writings is published on the occasion of Michael Dean’s solo exhibition "Government" at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
Co-published by The Henry Moore Foundation and Mousse Publishing, this book presents a carefully chosen group of texts by the artist alongside documentation of his work in exhibitions and two essays, by Lisa Le Feuvre and Pavel S. Pyś, discussing Dean’s artistic practice.
Over the past decade Dean has produced a number of publications distributing his texts and inviting responses to his work. Selected Writings is the first book on Michael Dean that has not been produced by the artist. This book functions like an exhibition: it puts Dean’s work into a realm of thought outside of the artist’s control.
2011, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 13.2 x 21.9 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$37.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Mousse and American artist Matthew Brannon have conceived and published this monograph entitled Hyena’s Are… Traversing Brannon’s entire oeuvre, this compact volume is structured around an intricate and illuminating essay by Jan Tumlir. Accompanied by a vast repertoire of image reproductions of artworks, including other reference images, Tumlir’s chapters provide a deeper understanding of the complexity of Brannon’s work and practice to date.
2012, English / Italian
Softcover Newspaper, 270 pages (clour and b&w ill.), 26.5 x 37.5 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$15.00 - Out of stock
2011, English
Softcover, 52 pages (colour and b&w ill.), 250 x 150 mm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$22.00 - Out of stock
This monograph on the artist Marie Lund comprises a two-sided reflection – the first mute, iconographic; the second speculative, text-based – on how we approach sculpture when it is reproduced on paper, or rather, how we approach an image of three-dimensional reality when we are offered a single, flat vantage point. It is the very act of “paging through” sculpture after sculpture, in this publication, that powerfully accentuates the texture of the materials, ranging from alabaster to steatite. Materials that have been transubstantiated into images, conceived by the artist to make our gaze wander over the stone surfaces and our mind wander through the disorienting awareness of a disallowed spatiality.
Designed by Åbäke
2012, English
Soft plastic cover, 56 pages, 30.5 x 21.5 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$30.00 - Out of stock
This publication documents the monumental, collaborative work that Liam Gillick and Lawrence Weiner produced for the Antwerp museum of contemporary art MuHKA in the spring of 2011. Poignantly titled "A Syntax of Dependency:, the project could be viewed as the outcome of a twenty-year dialogue between the artists, their respective artistic practices and separate generations. This giant floor piece, consisting of an abstract linoleum pattern containing an array of phrases, took up the museum’s entire first floor - its site specifically meant that the end of the exhibition also entailed the work’s irreversible destruction. This photo novella - complete with fragments of a conversation between both artists and a short text by exhibition curator Dieter Roelstraete - captures the work in its unique desolate splendor.
2011, English
Softcover, 49 pages, 11 x 17 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
BACK IN STOCK!
Author: Manuela Ribadeneira, Vincent Honoré (Eds.)
Made of words and exchanges, with no images, Drawing Room Confessions is open to diverse practices and voices. It is named after a game played at the end of the nineteenth century in England and France, which consisted of a fixed questionnaire answered by players to reveal their tastes, aspirations and personalities. For every issue of the journal, we invite one artist to play the serious and playful game of conversation. Each section follows a set of rules, only the players change, as interviewers from a wide range of fields contribute to a portrait of the artist at a certain time.
2009, English / German / Italian
Softcover, 24 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Edition of 800,
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$8.00 - Out of stock
The first in a series of small-format publications connected to the shows at ar/ge kunst, the William E. Jones fanzine presents images of various works by this US artist, who is known for videos that reinterpret archival materials, police recordings, porn sequences, surveillance footage, etc., to trace a cultural history of sexuality, highlighting the ideologies of power and strategies of social control that are bound to it. The text by Luigi Fassi tells the story of this artistic adventure. The booklet contains a loose color print of a still from Tearoom (2006).
2011, English
Softcover, newspaper, 275 pages, 265 x 375 mm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$15.00 - Out of stock
In this issue:
Starring
by Federico Florian, Antonio Scoccimarro
GEOFFREY FARMER
Characters and Characteristics of the Work
by Monika Szewczyk
TALKING ABOUT
Is That All There Is to a Circus?
by Dieter Roelstraete
PHYLLIDA BARLOW
The Work Is Never Finished
by Nicholas Cullinan
PART OF THE PROCESS - DAVID LEVINE
Rothko’s Ruins
by Ana Teixeira Pinto
TALKING ABOUT
Criticism Hurts
by Jan Verwoert
PORTFOLIO - GEORGE KUCHAR
Carnivalesque George Kuchar
by Juan A. Suárez
LOST AND FOUND - LLYN FOULKES
The Lost Frontier: Llyn Foulkes
by Andrew Berardini
TALKING ABOUT
Melete (“The Society Islands”)
by Mark von Schlegell
NICE TO MEET YOU - DAN FINSEL
Art Therapy
by Cecilia Alemani
NICE TO MEET YOU - BEN SCHUMACHER
Things That Look Like Other Things
by Bob Nickas
NICE TO MEET YOU - JOHN HENDERSON
Absorption & Theatricality
by Barbara Casavecchia
NICE TO MEET YOU - WU TSANG
Wu Tsang: Body Quotations, Back-Breaking Sparkle and the Dissemination of Wildness
by Kevin McGarry
TEN FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF CURATING
Chapter 6: What Is an Exhibition?
by Elena Filipovic, visual concept by Nairy Baghramian
TALKING ABOUT
A New Fruit
by Nick Currie
LONDON - CALLY SPOONER
The Wor(l)d Is a Stage
by Michele Robecchi
PARIS - JONATHAN BINET
The Way Things Go: a Conversation with Jonathan Binet
by Vincent Honoré
NEW YORK - TIM ROLLINS & JULIE AULT
Shakers
BERLIN
Starship
by Gigiotto Del Vecchio
ARTIST PROJECT - LUTZ BACHER
The Gift
by Fionn Meade
ENRICO DAVID & THOMAS HOUSEAGO
I’m Fucked Out of Your Mind
ALISON KNOWLES
The Future Will Be Fragrant Bean Fields
by Hans Ulrich Obrist
REPRINT
Time Warp
by Rob Giampietro
TALKING ABOUT
As Little Time on The Ground as Possible. First Attempt on the Possibility of Artistic Significance Beyond Philosophy of History
by Chus Martínez
Books
by Stefano Cernuschi
Diary
WHAT’S ALTERNATIVE? ALTERNATIVE TO WHAT? - ANDREA FRASER
"Alternative to what, exactly?"
by Vincenzo de Bellis
TAMAR GUIMARÃES
A Strange Ritual
by Andrea Lissoni
TALKING ABOUT
Moving Gods Aside
by Philippe Pirotte
JESSICA WARBOYS
Waves Wave
by Emilie Renard
2011, English / Italian
Softcover, 273 pages, 265 x 375 mm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$15.00 - Out of stock
Starring
by Antonio Scoccimarro
LUCY MCKENZIE AND MARC CAMILLE CHAIMOWICZ
Adventures Close To Home
by Michael Bracewell
THOMAS SCHÜTTE
Reality Production Part II
by Hans Ulrich Obrist
TALKING ABOUT
Etica Da Ginga A Letter from Rio De Janeiro
by Dieter Roelstraete
PART OF THE PROCESS – ALLORA & CALZADILLA
Gloria
by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy
CAREY YOUNG AND JILL MAGID
The Color of Law
by Introduction by Alessandro Rabottini
DAVID MEDALLA
A Stitch in Time
by Adam Nankervis
TALKING ABOUT
Entangled Positions
by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev with Barbara Casavecchia, Daniel Baumann, Anthony Huberman, Raimundas Malašauskas, João Ribas
TEN FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF CURATING
"Chapter 5: What Is the Public?" Juan A. Gaitán Images selected by Christodoulos Panayiotou
by edited by Jens Hoffmann
R.H. QUAYTMAN
I Modi
by David Joselit
FABIO MAURI
Starting From The End
by Elena Volpato
TALKING ABOUT
A Readymade Mystery in Three Parts
by Adam Kleinman
Agenda
KERSTIN BRÄTSCH AND AMY SILMAN
Chromophilia
ALLEN RUPPERSBERG
The Art and Ephemera of Allen Ruppersberg
by Andrew Berardini
After Marcel Broodthaers, on Relationism & Lost Articles
by Guillaume Désanges and Hélène Meisel
LOST AND FOUND
All That Jess
by Jens Hoffmann
HARK!
Now or Never
by Jennifer Allen
DANAI ANESIADOU
On “Poesivski”, Oblivion and Cinema
by Vincent Honoré
SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET
Rodney Graham
by Rachel Rosenfield Lafo
REPRINT
by Will Holder
Books
by Stefano Cernuschi
Diary
by Antonio Scoccimarro
DARIUS MIKŠYS
Who Is Darius Mikšys
by Jennifer Teets
NICE TO MEET YOU – ADRIÁN VILAR ROJAS
The Aching Whale
by Cecilia Alemani
PORTFOLIO – ELIAS HANSEN
Glass Magnifies Things
by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
WHAT’S ALTERNATIVE? ALTERNATIVE TO WHAT?
Stefan Kalmár and Tirdad Zolghadr
by Curated by Vincenzo de Bellis