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:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
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.
1977, English
Softcover, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$12.00 - Out of stock
First English edition of Vladimir Maksimov's The Seven Days of Creation, published by Penguin in 1977, a book that could not be published in the author's own country, Vladimir Maximov being expelled from the Soviet Union for allowing its publication in the West. For this book is a bleak revelation, comparing, as it does, the fate of one Russian working-class family with the pursuit of the Communist ideal over fifty years of suffering, corruption and oppression.
"A tragically coherent picture of these brave, stubborn, vodka-sodden citizens of a maniacally rubber-stamped society'—Daily Telegraph
"Maximov is everything implied by "proletarian writer"; in the context of his experience ... the term holds pathos, magnificence and enough crude ore to give at least some pertinence to Heinrich Boll's opinion that he is among the world's most important writers"—Guardian
Born Lev Samsonov, Moscow, 1930, Soviet and Russian writer, publicist, essayist and editor, Maksimov started writing poetry under the name of Vladimir Maximov. As a dissident, Maximov was twice forcibly admitted to psychiatric hospitals by the KGB. His case attracted international attention and in February 1974 Maximov was forced into political exile and stripped of his Soviet citizenship by Leonid Brezhnev's literary authorities, creating an international scandal. Maximov lived in Paris from then until his death in 1995.
Good with general wear.
1980, English
Hardcover, 424 pages, 17 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Progress Publishers / Moscow
$30.00 - In stock -
"Soviet cinema reflects the richness of contemporary life in all its complexity and variety and develops together with society and life itself. The best works in Soviet cinema tell of the deeds, thoughts, and hopes of those people for whom they are made."
First hardcover edition of Soviet cinematographer Yuri Vorontsov and film scholar Igor Rachuk's now classic study of the history of Soviet cinema, published in this English edition by Progress publications in Moscow in 1980. Tracing the history of Soviet cinema over 400 pages, with a comprehensive filmography and extensive film still imagery.
Very Good copy.
1985, French
Softcover, 239 pages, 21.7 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Henry Veyrier / Paris
$120.00 - In stock -
The essential Jane Birkin book, by Gérard Lenne and published by Editions Henry Veyrier, Paris, in 1985. The only French printing of this incredibly in-depth monograph on the great actress and singer, Jane Birkin. Scarce and very sought after today, this book, written by French film critic and writer Gérard Lenne, and made closely with Birkin herself, is both an intimate and revealing biography of her life and an important document capturing her diverse and challenging career as actress (working with Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jacques Doillon, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Rivette, to name a few), model, singer, and much more - through countless photographs, film-stills and profiles of each of her films and records. Includes a discography, bibliography and videography (from "Blow Up" to "le Pirate"). A great publication of English/French film history and a must for any Jane Birkin fan.
Very good copy, some age tanning, light wear. Long out-of-print.
2020, English
Softcover, 880 pages, 31 x 22.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Koenig Books / London
$800.00 - In stock -
The incredible Broodthaers book that was never available. Exhibition History 1964 – 1975 and Selected Works 1957 – 1975 is the most comprehensive account of Broodthaers' truely radical history of exhibition-making and catalogue of artworks that was immediately removed from market release the moment it was printed and pre-listed. An incredibly important and detailed reference on the artist like no other, this almost 900 page volume remains catalogued as 'not yet printed' to this day, shelved indefinitely. We have one available that escaped embargo. Still sealed.
In 1963, the writer Marcel Broodthaers decided to embark on a career in the visual arts. Yet he never severed his ties to poetry and language, whose systems of meaning make up an integral aspect of his work. Retaining a certain distance to the art world, he posed fundamental questions about art —its mediums, its conceptions of what constitutes an artwork, its representation in museums. To this day, his oeuvre takes a critical stand on art’s commercialization strategies. Exhibition-making itself was a key element of Broodthaers’ artistic approach. Documenting all of the artist’s solo exhibitions that took place during his lifetime, this major 880-page catalogue is the first ever to highlight that praxis. The extensive chronology and the accompanying detailed pictorial documentation of the most important works of every year together offer a systematic overview of his oeuvre. In addition to scholarly essays and many texts by Marcel Broodthaers himself, this major publication also features an extensive series of photographic views of the major retrospective at the iconic Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany.
As New, still sealed.
2021, English
Hardcover, 400 pages, 23.5 x 28.5 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
WIELS / Brussels
$110.00 - In stock -
Marcel Broodthaers's work is characterized by a complex exploration of the relationship of text and image. This catalog raisonne, prepared by WIELS and developed in close collaboration with the Marcel Broodthaers Succession, is the first to include all of the Belgian conceptual artist's industrial poems created between 1968 and 1972. Borrowing from the aesthetics of industrially manufactured plastic signs, Broodthaers's multi-layered, often enigmatic pictorial poems testify to his interest in the entanglements of language, punctuation, and symbols. In blurring the boundaries between word and image, painting and object, new levels of meaning are made visible. The index is supplemented by a collection of Broodthaers's drawings, writings and "open letters" as well as scholarly contributions that position the poems as a crucial group of works within the artist's oeuvre.
Text by Manuel Borja-Villel
1992, German
Softcover, 68 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Ed. of 1000,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Kunstraum München / Münich
Raum für Kunst / Hamburg
$35.00 - In stock -
First edition of this Broodthaers catalogue, published on the occasion of an exhibition of Broodthaers' "Objects, Printmaking, Drawings, Books" held in 1992 at Kunstraum München and Raum für Kunst, Hamburg. Heavily illustrated with works in black and white throughout (with extended captions/descriptions), portrait of Broodthaers with Magritte, and accompanying text by a Dorothea Zwirner. Texts in German.
As New copy.
Edition of 1000.
1970/1971, French
Softcover, 2 volumes, unpaginated, 28.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Marie Concorde / Paris
$380.00 - Out of stock
Both of the only volumes ever produced of this wonderful French avant-garde journal, published in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s. A visual manifesto against the prudishness of the times, KITSCH presented hundreds of illustrations of mostly erotic, fetish and fantastic/grotesque artwork by artists from all over the world, and spanning generations, with both issues wrapped in the most striking Tom Wesselmann covers. KITSCH 1 includes Toshio Saeki, Guido Crepax, Richard Linder, Robert Crumb, Guy Bourdin, Petr Herel, Hannes Jahn, Roman Cieślewicz, Ben Vautier, Christian Bour, Jacques Sternberg, Roland Topor, Jim, Allen Jones, Thomas Weir, alongside photo essays on upskirt polaroids, Satanik, Diabolik, fashion and more. KITSCH 2 includes Aslan, Roy Lichtenstein, Virgil Finlay, Jim Osborne, Ronald Lipking, Greg Irons, George Grosz, Egon Schiele, Mel Ramos, alongside photo essays on subjects such as "Pop Art", "Human Concern" and Paris' "Pigalle" district, further featuring work by H.C.Westermann, Paul Thek, Edward Keinholz, William Tunberg, Christian Schad, William Weegee, James Rosenquist, Frank Gallo, Tom Wesselmann, and many more.
Very good copies both, light wear.
1994, English / German
Softcover, 72 pages, 15.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Cantz Verlag / Berlin
$65.00 - Out of stock
Excellent, long out-of-print Rosemarie Trockel book, published in 1994 on the occasion of an exhibition at MAK Vienna. Designed by the artist herself, this publication focuses primarily on her video works of the nineties. Rosemarie Trockel began working with the medium of film in 1993, pursuing the line of development that had begun with her sculptures and objects. Her videos are concerned with people and animals, as in the slow-motion video entitled Out of the kitchen into the fire (1993), in which a female nude viewed from the rear lays an egg filled with black ink. Bizarre constellations and sequences reveal a certain irony in these works. Rosemarie Trockel's precise observations of natural processes, her use of materials, which she alters, reinterprets and places in unusual and surprising contexts, make her a very interesting contemporary artist. Rather than producing new "images" herself, she has the capacity to generate new images in the mind of the viewer.
As New copy.
1991, German
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 24 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunstraum München / Münich
$18.00 - In stock -
Catalogue for Rosemarie Trockel’s 1991 exhibition at the Kunstraum München. Lightly illustrated essay on the artist's work by Mario Diacono.
Very Good copy.
1972, German
Softcover, 54 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Kunstmuseum Basel / Basel
$50.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of Dedans - Dehors, Dehors - Dedans, published in 1972 by Kunstmuseum Basel on the occasion of a solo exhibition of Swiss conceptual artist Rémy Zaugg (1943—2005). Rémy Zaugg was one of the most radical Swiss artists of his time. He played an important role as both a critic and observer of contemporary culture, especially with regards to the perception of space and architecture. A lovely and detailed catalogue profusely illustrated with Zaugg's artworks spanning 1968—1972, including two fold-out spreads, largely a pictorial survey with a small exhibition note by Dieter Koepplin and chronology. Texts in German.
Good—Average copy with some cover wear, bumping, spine pinching, internally very good, light tanning.
1993, Japanese / French
Softcover (w. french folds), 190 pages, 22 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yomiuri Shimbun / Tokyo
$90.00 $70.00 - Out of stock
Scarce and visually rich monograph on Supports/Surfaces, the radical painting movement that began in the South of France in the late-1960s, published in Japan on the occasion of a rare major exhibition that toured throughout 1993—1994. This definitive catalogue gives a generous overview of the many works of the artists of Supports/Surfaces from 1966—1974 through colour and black and white photographs. It also provides texts (in Japanese and French), interviews, historical photos of the group and their installations, work list, a chronology, a biography and many essays. One of the few major publications on the work of Supports/Surfaces. Comes with original 1993 illustrated exhibition flyer inserted.
Supports/Surfaces developed away from Paris, in the south of France, with the first major exhibition held in 1969 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. In June 1969, during an exhibition at the Havre Museum entitled “La peinture en question”, Vincent Bioulès, Louis Cane, Marc Devade, Daniel Dezeuze, Noël Dolla, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Patrick Saytour, André Valensi, Bernard Pagès and Claude Viallat write in the catalog: “The subject of the painting is the painting itself and paintings on display refer only to themselves. They make no appeal to an “elsewhere” (the personality of the artist, his biography, history of art, for example). Early exhibtions took place in towns like Coaraze, Montpellier, Nimes and Nice in the mid-1960s. After the student revolts of 1968, the movement ratcheted up its activities, exploding in such exhibitions as “Supports/Surfaces,” which took place at ARC in Paris in September 1970. These shows occurred at or around the same time as those of other French artist groups like GRAV and BMPT (Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni). Like them, Supports/Surfaces questioned the role of painting as both an art object and a social one.
As its name suggests, Supports/Surfaces was interested in articulating what its artists felt were all too readily ignored aspects of painting: basic concepts like ‘support’ and ‘surface,’ for example, and the presence of painting as a product of individual labor. At the same time, these artists were very much interested in painting and its own peculiar history. Daniel Dezeuze points out that he was looking for a means of “revolting against the art world and the world in general without having to make anti-art.” (Raphael Rubinstein, Polychrome Profusion: Selected Art Criticism: 1990 – 2002.) In fact, those involved with Supports/Surfaces, as Rubinstein also notes, were some of the few French artists of the period to engage directly with American Painting from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field, albeit doing so within the context of their Maoist discourse.
Very Good copy with light wear/age/foxing. Comes with original 1993 illustrated exhibition flyer inserted.
1967, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 18 x 21cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie Rive Gauche / Rome
$80.00 - In stock -
Lovely 1967 Fèlix Labisse catalogue published on the occasion of a solo exhibition at Galerie Rive Gauche, Roma. Illustrated in black and white with a work list and text by Patrick Waldberg.
Félix Labisse (1905 – 1982) was a French Surrealist painter, illustrator, and designer. He was born in Marchiennes. He divided his time between Paris and the Belgian coast from 1927. In Ostend he met James Ensor, who influenced his work. Beginning in 1931 he designed for the theatre and illustrated many books, including those by Robert Desnos and Marcel Schwob. His paintings often depict fantastical hybrid creatures, often erotic in nature. He painted the first of a series of his famed blue women in 1960; among them is the Bain Turquoise. He was the subject of a film by Alain Resnais, Visite à Félix Labisse (1947). In 1966 he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1973 his paintings were shown in a retrospective exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1982.
Very Good copy.
2008, English
Softcover (w. die-cut type and french-folds, 136 pages, 29 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$140.00 - In stock -
Now very rare monographic catalogue by curator and writer Kelly Gellatly devoted to the poetic assemblages of the New Zealand born-Australian sculptor Rosalie Gascoigne, published on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition at NGV Ian Potter Centre, 19 December 2008—15 March 2009. Profusely illustrated in colour with Gascoigne's many works spanning her entire artistic career, accompanied by text contributions from Kelly Gellatly, Deborah Clark and Martin Gascoigne, plus chronology, bibliography, exhibition history, exhibition checklist, and more. One of the finest reference books on the artist.
Rosalie Norah King Gascoigne AM (1917—1999) was a New Zealand-born Australian sculptor and assemblage artist who shot to late fame at the age of 57. Gascoigne is renowned for her sculptural assemblages of great clarity, simplicity and poetic power. Using natural or manufactured objects, sourced from collecting forays, that evoke the lyrical beauty of the Monaro region of New South Wales, her work radically reformulated the ways in which the Australian landscape is perceived. She showed at the Venice Biennale in 1982, becoming the first female artist to represent Australia there. In 1994, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her services to the arts.
Out-of-print, As New copy.
1997, English
Softcover, 276 pages, 17.7 x 11.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$160.00 - In stock -
Scarce first 1997 edition of Chris Kraus' modern cult classic I Love Dick, published by Semiotext(e) in their Native Agents book series. Blurring the lines of fiction, essay and memoir, Chris Kraus's novel was a literary sensation when it was first published in 1997.
"Oh Dick, I want to be an intellectual like you."
In I Love Dick, published in 1997, Chris Kraus, author of Aliens & Anorexia, Torpor, and Video Green, boldly tore away the veil that separates fiction from reality and privacy from self-expression. It’s no wonder that I Love Dick instantly elicited violent controversies and attracted a host of passionate admirers.
The story is gripping enough: in 1994 a married, failed independent filmmaker, turning forty, falls in love with a well-known theorist and endeavors to seduce him with the help of her husband. But when the theorist refuses to answer her letters, the husband and wife continue the correspondence for each other instead, imagining the fling the wife wishes to have with Dick. What follows is a breathless pursuit that takes the woman across America and away from her husband—and far beyond her original infatuation into a discovery of the transformative power of first person narrative.
I Love Dick is a manifesto for a new kind of feminist who isn’t afraid to burn through her own narcissism in order to assume responsibility for herself and for all the injustice in world—and it’s a book you won’t put down until the author’s final, heroic acts of self-revelation and transformation.
Chris Kraus is a filmmaker and the author of I Love Dick and Aliens & Anorexia, and coeditor of Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader. Index called her “one of the most subversive voices in American fiction.” Her work has been praised for its damning intelligence, vulnerability and dazzling speed.
Very Good copy, wear to cover.
2022, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 500 pages, 23.5 x 32 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Lenz Press / Milan
$400.00 - In stock -
Sealed As New copy of the immediately out-of-print lavish and monumental 500 page collection of works and exhibitions of Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad from 2007–2021, accompanied by newly commissioned texts and a conversation between Ida Ekblad and Agnes Moraux. The most comprehensive book ever published on the artist.
In 500 pages with 398 illustrations, three essays and a conversation with the artist, this long-awaited first monograph on the work of Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad introduces her extensive oeuvre and documents her career from 2007 to 2021, focusing on her art and how she continually challenges it through her own exhibitions. With contributions by Daniel Baumann, Stian Grøgaard, Martha Kirszenbaum and Agnes Moraux.
Published following Ida Ekblad's exhibition FRA ÅRE TIL OVN at Kunsthalle Zürich in 2019.
Ida Ekblad (born 1980) is a Norwegian painter, sculptor, publisher, music producer, curator, and designer. She also writes. Her sources of inspiration include folk art, fashion, garbage, Samuel Beckett, youth culture, the natural forces of the elements, Gena Rowlands, traditional crafts, and so on. Everyday life is central to her work—as an imposition, but also conveying grace; as a voracious monster and a source of happiness; as a disaster and a glimmer of hope—for in Ekblad's view, everything is full of promise, including art.
Ida Ekblad studied at Central Saints Martins in London, the National Academy of Art in Oslo, and at the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles. She participated in the Venice Biennale (2011, 2017) as well as in numerous international group exhibitions. Ekblad has presented solo exhibitions at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2021); Kunsthalle Zürich (2019); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2019); Kunstverein Braunschweig (2018); Kunsthaus Hamburg (2017); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2010); and Bergen Kunsthall (2010), among others.
Edited by Daniel Baumann.
Texts by Daniel Baumann, Stian Grøgaard, Martha Kirszeunbaum, Agnes Moraux.
Graphic design: Dan Solbach.
2012, English / Croatian
Softcover, 136 pages, 16.2 x 23.5 cm
Ed. of 600,
Published by
Galerija Zuccato / Poreč
$35.00 - Out of stock
Book published to accompany the exhibition "Bijeli radovi / White Works", at Galerija Zuccato, Poreč, in 2012, by Croatian conceptual artist Mladen Stilinović. Heavily illustrated throughout with his works and installations revolving around the history of his white works (absence, silence...), this catalogue also features texts by Branka Stipančić (including an interview with Stilinović), Mladenka Solman, József Mélyi, and a biography, and bibliography.
Published in an edition of 600 copies.
Mladen Stilinović (April 10, 1947 - July 18, 2016) was one of the leading figures of the so-called "New Art Practice" in Croatia and a founding member of the informal neo-avantgarde, Group of Six Artists (1975-1979), together with Vladimir Martek, Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović and Fedomir Vučemilović. He lived and worked in Zagreb, Croatia.
2024, English / German
Hardcover, 315 pages, 30 x 30.2 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
König Galerie / Berlin
$95.00 - In stock -
A pioneering figure of 1980s neo-expressionism and an important inspiration for the Neue Wilde painters, K.H. Hödicke, who die in February 2024, was best known for his variegated depictions of Berlin, where people, landscapes, and architecture take on an almost folkloric quality. This lavish over-sized hardcover catalogue comprises is profusely illustrated with paintings and sculptures produced between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s, including works in which Hödicke portrays West Berlin during the division of Germany. Foreword by Timon Karl Kaleyta, text by Andrew Hunt, and an Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist. All text in English and German.
Karl Horst Hödicke (1938–2024) was a contemporary German artist known for his Neo-Expressionist paintings. The artist’s broad brushstrokes and specific colour palette provide his works with a sense of seeing a place through memory – specifically Berlin with its ever-changing cityscape was a central motif in his work. Having moved to Berlin in 1957, Hödicke became one of the spokespeople for a small group of impetuous young lateral thinkers who wanted to revolutionise painting. No sooner had German post-war modernism rejoined the international artistic trend towards the abstract than they revolted against this new doctrine with a revival of figurative painting, which had been declared obsolete. Hödicke was subsequently a pioneer of German Neo-Expressionism and New Figuration with Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorf, and A.R. Penck. He was one of the main protagonists and drivers of the New Savages or Junge Wilde movement in 1978, which arose in the German-speaking world in opposition to established minimal and conceptual strategies.
1985, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 60 pages, 26 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakutokan / Japan
$180.00 - In stock -
Beautiful 1985 Japanese edition of Georges Bataille's Madame Edwarda, illustrated throughout with all the original illustrations by Hans Bellmer. Madame Edwarda first appeared in Paris under Georges Bataille's pseudonym Pierre Angelique in two small underground editions in 1941 and 1945. It was finally published under Bataille's own name by the publishing house of Jacques Pauvert in 1956. Translated here by Kosaku Ikuta, all illustrations by German artist Hans Bellmer, complete with inserted preface booklet by Georges Bataille and additional insert of publisher's catalogue.
In Madame Edwarda, a man becomes erotically obsessed with an old whore who turns out to be God. Bataille's erotic prose fuses elements of sex and spirituality in a highly personal vision of the flesh. A world of sensation in which only the vaulting demands of disruptive excess and the anguish of heightened awareness can combat the stultifying world of reason and social order. Intoxication and insanity are so carefully delineated by the author that it seems to infect the reader.
"Madame Edwarda's truth consists in confronting us with an obvious scandal that we wouldn't even know where to place. We could incriminate her words: there have never been such rigorous ones; or the circumstances, the fact that Madame Edwarda is a brothel whore, but this, indeed, it could be reassuring; or even that certain details, which must be said to be obscene, are so with a necessity that ennobles them and makes them inevitable, not so much in the name of art, but for a perhaps moral, perhaps fundamental need. (...) That the most incongruous of books, as Georges Bataille defines it in his preface, is also the most beautiful book, and perhaps the most tender, is above all scandalous."—Maurice Blanchot
Very Good copy throughout, only light cover wear/tanning.
2024, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 29.8 x 24.8 cm
Published by
Silvana / Milan
Palais Lumière / Évian-les-Bains
$85.00 - Out of stock
Man Ray occupies a prominent place in the history of 20th-century art. A versatile artist, who lived mainly in Paris, he is best known as a photographer. Indeed, he was one of the first to use photography, not as a simple means of reproduction, but as a genuine creative medium, turning the technique into an art form. Some of his photographs, such as Le Violon d’Ingres (1924) and Noire et blanche (1926), have achieved iconic status.
Born in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) on 27 August 1890, Emmanuel Radnitsky, known as Man Ray (as in a ray of light), actively participated in the intellectual and artistic circles of New York. He discovered the European avant-gardes and befriended Marcel Duchamp who opened the doors of Dadaism to him and welcomed him to Paris in July 1921.
At the heart of Parisian artistic life, he participated in the innovative experiments of the Dadaists and Surrealists, met with painters, poets and intellectuals, and became famous for his portraits. He developed a career as a fashion photographer, notably for designers Paul Poiret and Elsa Schiaparelli. A tireless experimenter, he rediscovered the technique of “photograms” (abstract silhouettes of objects) that Tristan Tzara named “rayographs” and in 1929, with his new partner Lee Miller, developed the “solarization” technique. In 1940, after the fall of France, Man Ray left for the United States and met Juliet Browner, who became his wife and muse. He returned to Paris in 1951 and lived there until his death in 1976.
Man Ray is renowned for having revolutionized the art of photography, but he was also a painter, draughtsman, assembler of objects, sculptor, writer and filmmaker. It is this protean artist that we seek to discover or re-discover, through a true panorama of his works, which will enable us to comprehend Man Ray’s creative process and the importance of his art.
Edited by Robert Rocca, Pierre-Yves Butzbach.
Texts by Robert Rocca, Pierre-Yves Butzbach, Serge Sanchez, Man Ray, Sylvie Gonzalez, Laurence Benaïm, Marie-Pierre Ribère, Jean-Michel Bouhours.
1990, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jakcet), 114 pages, 19 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cutie / Tokyo
$150.00 - Out of stock
Very rare 1990 Japanese pocket bible to Hysteric Glamour! This, the original HG book, adorned with the Hysterics original "banana" logo and published by Cutie magazine in Tokyo, documents the iconic Tokyo label's history of garments and accessories, season by season from the very beginning, FW 1984 — SS 1990, alongside "Hysterical & Historical Photographs" from their archive, new 1990 photoshoots (shot by Kiyoshi Tatsukawa, Shoichi Aoki, styled by Nobuhiko Kitamura, Osamu Wataya...), "Hysteric Mini" overview, "We Love Hysteric", a Hysteric guide to Japanese shops, interviews with collaborators, behind-the-scenes, etc. 1990s Harajuku flashback at it's finest.
Hysteric Glamour is a cult Japanese fashion label created by artist Nobuhiko Kitamura in 1984. With a suggestive Warhol-esque logo of a banana and two oranges, it is not surprising that the Hysterics aesthetic was heavy with themes around 1960s mass media mod and pop culture, as well as comic books, pornography, psychedelia, bondage, acid, glam... Like 1970s Fiorucci for 1990s Harajuku. They regularly featured the work of pop artists, illustrators, music icons and photographers with visuals adorning T-shirts, denim, jackets, accessories... They also published highly acclaimed photography books, staged exhibitions, and have become synonymous with Tokyo street wear.
Near Fine copy in NF dust jacket.
2024, English
Softcover, 35 pages, 21.5 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Blurring Books / USA
$38.00 - In stock -
In an abandoned storage unit in Philadelphia, a collector discovered more than 150 works on paper by a presumably self-taught artist. The works fall into distinct groups—pencil drawings that are often sexual jokes, explicit watercolor scenes, and drawings on mimeograph paper.
Clues to the identity of the artist and the timeframe in which the works were made are embedded in the materials. The ledger paper and safety protocol forms that presumably he used as a support bear the letterhead of the well-known Philadelphia chemical manufacturing company Rohm & Haas, established in 1909. A partially affixed mailing label on the back of one of the drawings gives a Philadelphia address and indicates “foreman” as the addressee. The date 1955 is written on the back of another drawing. The clothing and hairstyles depicted seem to date from the 1940s and 1950s. A search in the company’s archives turns up a staff photograph from 1931 listing numerous foremen who might be the author of this erotic cache.
Almost certainly made for his own personal amusement and titillation, the Philadelphia Foreman’s erotic drawings are a rare and fascinating time capsule of American folk porn.
Introduction by Alison M. Gingeras
2024, English
Hardcover, 208 pages, 24 x 30 cm
Published by
National Portrait Gallery / London
$75.00 - Out of stock
Enticing, ethereal photographs from two visionaries who used portraiture as an exploration of the “dream space”. Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In draws parallels between two of the most significant practitioners in the history of photography, presenting fresh research, rare vintage prints, and previously unseen archival works.
‘I feel that photographs can either document and record reality or they can offer images as an alternative to everyday life: places for the viewer to dream in.’ – Francesca Woodman, 1980
Living and working over a century apart, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) experienced vastly different ways of making and understanding images. Yet the two share more similarities than expected. Both artists had brief careers lasting less than 15 years; while neither enjoyed popularity and success during their lives, they have posthumously received widespread acclaim. Their portraits feature ethereal, experimental qualities that connect them soundly across time.
The beautifully illustrated catalog, accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, London, includes Woodman’s and Cameron’s best-known photographs as well as less familiar images. The book begins with three feature essays that consider Cameron and Woodman simultaneously and moves on to 10 thematic sections interspersing works by the two artists. Portraits to Dream In makes new connections between the work of two innovative photographers who pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium and experimented with ideas of beauty, symbolism, transformation and storytelling to produce some of art history’s most compelling and admired images.
Edited by Magdalene Keaney. Contributions by Helen Ennis, Katarina Jerinic.
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) took up photography in the 1860s and was soon elected to both the Photographic Society of London and the Photographic Society of Scotland. She photographed her friends and family as well as notable figures of Victorian England, including Charles Darwin, Ellen Terry and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Francesca Woodman (1958–81) worked in both the United States and Italy and made her first mature photograph at the age of 13. Her lifetime exhibitions include the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (1976); Galleria Ugo Ferrante, Rome (1978); and the Alternative Museum, New York (1980). Her artist’s book, Some Disordered Interior Geometries, was published by Synapse Press in 1981.
2016, English
Hardcover, 232 pages, 23.1 x 17.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Moderna Museet / Malmö
$75.00 - Out of stock
On Being an Angel takes its title from a caption the artist inscribed on two of her photographs—self-portraits with her head thrust back and her chest thrust forward. Typical of Woodman’s work in the way they cast the female body as simultaneously physical and immaterial, these photographs and the evocative title they share are apt choices to encapsulate the work of an artist whose legacy has been unavoidably colored by her tragic personal biography and her death, at age 22, by suicide. In less than a decade, Woodman produced a fascinating body of work—in black and white and in color—exploring gender, representation, sexuality and the body through the photographing of her own body and those of her friends. Since her death, Woodman’s influence continues to grow: her work has been the subject of numerous in-depth studies and exhibitions in recent years, and her photographs have inspired artists all over the world. Published to accompany a travelling exhibition of Woodman’s work, Francesca Woodman: On Being an Angel offers a comprehensive overview of Woodman’s oeuvre, organized chronologically, with texts by Anna Tellgren, Anna-Karin Palm and the artist’s father, George Woodman.
Francesca Woodman (1958–81) was born in Denver, Colorado, to an artistic family and began experimenting with photography as a teenager. In 1975 she attended the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 1979 she moved to New York to attempt to build a career in photography. Woodman’s working career was intense but brief, cut short by her death in 1981.
1995, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 32 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bunkasha / Japan
$140.00 - In stock -
First 1995 hardcover edition of "one, two, three", a gorgeous oversized hardcover collection of nude photography by master Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama of award-winning actress Saki Takaoka. Takaoka was born in Kanagawa in 1972 and has appeared in many films, TV dramas, commercials, and musicals. Composed of black-and-white and colour works, this book became a hot topic in society at the time of its publication and recorded an astounding circulation of approximately 470,000 copies, which is unthinkable today. The number of sales and topicality are certainly very high, but the beauty of the photographs, and above all, the beauty of Saki Takaoka, who does not wear a single thread, can be said to be a work of art from head to toe. The atmosphere of monochrome printing is also very wonderful. A stunning book with beautiful, modern, pared back typographic design.
Very Good copy of clothbound 1st edition with Good dust jacket with wear and some chipping to spine/extremities.