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.
1974, Japanese
Softcover, 210 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bunken Shiryo Kankokai / Tokyo
$55.00 $35.00 - Out of stock
April 1974 issue of Fuzoku Kitan, an important Japanese SM magazine was published between 1960—1974, and edited by Hajime Takakura. Filled with SM stories and illustrations, along with colour and b/w gravure photographic kitan and fetish photoshoots and art galleries, the magazine published a wild array of subjects on sexual customs, especially a significant amount of queer and transgender sexuality, lots of cross-dressing, masochism, torture, sodomy, sadophelia and fem-dom material. Includes artwork by Tatsuji Okawa, Men's Naked Festival, artwork by Gene Bilbrew, Flowers In Full Bloom (Western SM photography and play), kinbaku photo gallery, fem-fem Western spanking photography, lots of stories from Japanese cross-dressers, readers confessions, a treasure-trove of illustrated transgressive fiction, almost all articles under nom de plumes! Also, excellent ads.
VG—Good copy, with light wear, tanning.
1962, Japanese
Softcover, 190 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bunken Shiryo Kankokai / Tokyo
$100.00 $80.00 - Out of stock
Very rare early special "Masochist Ecstasy" issue of Fuzoku Kitan, an important Japanese SM magazine was published between 1960-1974, and edited by Hajime Takakura. Filled with SM stories and illustrations, along with colour and b/w gravure photographic kitan and fetish photoshoots and art galleries, the magazine published a wild array of subjects on sexual customs, especially a significant amount of western SM artists and material introduced to Japanese audiences and a great deal of queer sexuality. This issue from 1962 is probably one of the finest examples of this, featuring photographic spreads of Japanese and western male physique models, Japanese cross-dressers, Japanese and western female kinbaku/bondage photography, the "man, man, man, man's world!" feature of queer western romanesque illustration from George Quaintance, Tom of Finland, and others, illustrated cover article on Masochism, stories from Japanese cross-dressers, illustrated fiction of gay and lesbian SM stories, as well as lots of fem-dom, sodomy and sadophelia. Almost all articles under nom de plumes! Cover art by Tom of Finland.
Good copy, with edge wear and tanning from age. Binding great.
1969, Japanese
Softcover, 242 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bunken Shiryo Kankokai / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
March 1969 issue of Fuzoku Kitan, an important Japanese SM magazine was published between 1960—1974, and edited by Hajime Takakura. Filled with SM stories and illustrations, along with colour and b/w gravure photographic kitan and fetish photoshoots and art galleries, the magazine published a wild array of subjects on sexual customs, especially a significant amount of queer and transgender sexuality, lots of cross-dressing, masochism, torture, sodomy, sadophelia and fem-dom material. Includes documentation of performance of author Isamu Kurita's "Aikyo" (Tadanori Yokoo, Akira Uno collaborator), fetish artworks by Gene Bilbrew and Eric Stanton, female equestrianism photography, fem-fem Western spanking photography, lots of stories from Japanese cross-dressers, readers confessions, a treasure-trove of illustrated transgressive fiction, almost all articles under nom de plumes! Also, excellent ads.
VG—Good copy, with light wear, tanning.
1972, Japanese
Softcover, 190 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bunken Shiryo Kankokai / Tokyo
$45.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
March 1972 issue of Fuzoku Kitan, an important Japanese SM magazine was published between 1960—1974, and edited by Hajime Takakura. Filled with SM stories and illustrations, along with colour and b/w gravure photographic kitan and fetish photoshoots and art galleries, the magazine published a wild array of subjects on sexual customs, especially a significant amount of queer and transgender sexuality, lots of cross-dressing, masochism, torture, sodomy, sadophelia and fem-dom material. Art gallery by master of kinbaku illustration Yoko Ozuma, equestrianism photography, lots of stories from Japanese cross-dressers, readers confessions, a treasure-trove of illustrated transgressive fiction, almost all articles under nom de plumes! Also, excellent ads.
VG—Good copy, with light cover/spine wear, tanning.
1972, Japanese
Softcover, 190 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bunken Shiryo Kankokai / Tokyo
$45.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
December 1972 issue of Fuzoku Kitan, an important Japanese SM magazine was published between 1960—1974, and edited by Hajime Takakura. Filled with SM stories and illustrations, along with colour and b/w gravure photographic kitan and fetish photoshoots and art galleries, the magazine published a wild array of subjects on sexual customs, especially a significant amount of queer and transgender sexuality, lots of cross-dressing, masochism, torture, sodomy, sadophelia and fem-dom material. Photo features of Rope and Ecstasy and Sadist Breeding Male Slaves, studies on corporal punishment, stories from Japanese cross-dressers, readers confessions, a treasure-trove of illustrated transgressive fiction, almost all articles under nom de plumes! Also, excellent ads.
VG—Good copy, with light cover/spine wear, tanning.
1975, Japanese
Softcover, 272 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$70.00 - In stock -
February 1975 issue of S&M AbuHunter, the legendary cult pioneering Japanese kinbaku magazine published monthly by Sun Publishing from 1974—1975, before being re-titled SM Kitan to carry on the magazine's highest quality of bondage arts publishing. Founded by Yutaka Nohara (also of SM Kitan), the short-lived S&M AbuHunter featured the vibrant cover paintings of Japanese illustrator Ao Fujimoto (b. 1947) and major contributing roles from masters of SM culture Toshiyuki Suma (Reiko Kita) and Dan Oniroku, Tadao Chigusa, Yoko Ozuma, Namio Harukawa, Shoji Ishizuka, Wataru Oki, Shiro Kasamatsu, Bill Ward, Joji Fukushima, Iku Fujimi, Akira Kito, and so many more. One of the finest examples of SM publishing in Japan in the 1970s, carried on by SM Kitan, each issue of S&M AbuHunter included a perfect combination of colour and b/w bondage photo features, fetish fiction illustrated with hundreds of artworks, manga stories, articles and a stunning selection of the most talented bondage artwork galleries. Beautifully designed with printing on many various paper-stocks, finishes, and fold-out spreads. This issue includes a special bound-in 4-page booklet of early Namio Harukawa colour illustrations you'll never see anywhere else.
Very Good copy.
1974, Japanese
Softcover, 275 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$70.00 - In stock -
November 1974 issue of S&M AbuHunter, the legendary cult pioneering Japanese kinbaku magazine published monthly by Sun Publishing from 1974—1975, before being re-titled SM Kitan to carry on the magazine's highest quality of bondage arts publishing. Founded by Yutaka Nohara (also of SM Kitan), the short-lived S&M AbuHunter featured the vibrant cover paintings of Japanese illustrator Ao Fujimoto (b. 1947) and major contributing roles from masters of SM culture Toshiyuki Suma (Reiko Kita) and Dan Oniroku, Tadao Chigusa, Yoko Ozuma, Namio Harukawa, Shoji Ishizuka, Wataru Oki, Shiro Kasamatsu, Bill Ward, Joji Fukushima, Iku Fujimi, Akira Kito, and so many more. One of the finest examples of SM publishing in Japan in the 1970s, carried on by SM Kitan, each issue of S&M AbuHunter included a perfect combination of colour and b/w bondage photo features, fetish fiction illustrated with hundreds of artworks, manga stories, articles and a stunning selection of the most talented bondage artwork galleries. Beautifully designed with printing on many various paper-stocks, finishes, and fold-out spreads. This issue includes a special feature of readers submitted fetish illustrations you'll never see anywhere else.
Very Good copy.
2021, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 640 pages, 23 x 18.5 cm
Published by
Karma / New York
$145.00 - In stock -
A handsome and hefty clothbound compendium of Lozano’s explorations of gender through drawing,
this 640-page volume comprises drawings from a critical six-year period in the development of American painter and conceptual artist Lee Lozano’s (1930-99) practice. Her daring, facetious sketches investigate issues of gender and the body through the erogenous anthropomorphization of tools.
Lee Lozano: Drawings 1958-64 includes two newly commissioned essays by Helen Molesworth and Tamar Garb. “What I love about Lozano—besides the crazy, ham-fisted quality of her drawn line, pictures made with pencils that appear to have been held with a fist—is how her demonstration of the word 'connection' is not bound to any of the anodyne ways we currently use it,” writes Molesworth. “There’s nothing about 'listening' or 'building community' or 'empathy' in any of these drawings. For Lozano, connection is fraught and hairy. Connection is dangerous.”
2018, English
Hardcover, 192 pages, 17.8 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$89.00 - Out of stock
This is the first in-depth study of the idiosyncratic ten-year career of Lee Lozano (1930-1999), assuring this important artist a key place in histories of post-war art. The book charts the entirety of Lozano's production in 1960s New York, from her raucous drawings and paintings depicting broken tools, genitalia, and other body parts to the final exhibition of her spectacular series of abstract "Wave Paintings" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970. Highly regarded at the time, Lozano is now perhaps best known for Dropout Piece (1970), a conceptual artwork and dramatic gesture with which she quit the art world. Shortly afterwards she announced she would have no further contact with other women. Her "dropout" and "boycott of women" lasted until her death, by which time she was all but forgotten. This book tackles head-on the challenges that Lozano poses to art history-and especially to feminist art history-attending to her failures as well as her successes, and arguing that through dead ends and impasses she struggled to forge an alternative mode of living. Lee Lozano: Not Working looks for the means to think about complex figures like Lozano whose radical, politically ambiguous gestures test our assumptions about feminism and the "right way" to live and work.
2023, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 20.1 x 13.6 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$35.00 - Out of stock
The first complete edition of this notorious novel which maps the 1980s anarchic underground of Los Angeles.
Published in excerpts over almost four decades, Jack Skelley's "secretly legendary" novel is at once an homage to the thrillingly inventive spirit of Kathy Acker's cut-up novels and a definitive history of LA's underground culture of the mid-1980s.
Composed in bursts, Fear of Kathy Acker depicts Los Angeles through the eyes of a self-mocking narrator. Shifting styles and personae as he moves between Venice and Torrance, punk clubs and shopping malls, Disneyland and Dodger Stadium, Jack Skelley pushes the limits of language and identity while pursuing-like Kathy Acker-a quixotic literary mix of discipline and anarchy. In this adrenalized, cosmic, and comic chronicle of Los Angeles, Skelley's "real life" friends make cameo appearances alongside pop archetypes from Madonna to Billy Idol.
This first-ever complete edition of the book includes new essays, playlists, and a map of the 1980s Los Angeles in which its manic protagonist lives and loves.
"Fear of Kathy Acker is one of the great lost masterpieces of '80s experimental fiction. That it's no longer an inaccessible legend is huge."—Dennis Cooper
"Jack Skelley pours it on like sometimes blam blam blam like the riff in "Death Valley '69" but mostly with a surfer's rhythm like the cool throb of his guitar, his writing the poetics of pink love and punk pool splash action, the sound I adore."—Thurston Moore
"Despite the dislike of seeing my own name, you're really a good writer—never what's expected."—Kathy Acker
"Deft, deadpan, dreadful, deliberate, delirious. Perfect adult bedtime reading."—Jane Rankin-Reid, White Hot Magazine
1967, English
Softcover, 100 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
North Atlantic Books / Vermont
$55.00 - In stock -
First edition of 20,000 A.D., a collection of poetry from the 1960s—70s by founder of Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, and the Fugs, Ed Sanders, published by North Atlantic Books, Vermont, in 1976. Deeply influenced by the work of Dylan Thomas, Ezra Pound, and Allen Ginsberg, Sanders helped bridge the concerns of Beat poetry and the countercultural movement of the 1960s. Sanders discussed his approach to investigative poetry: “Nonfiction is a kind of map of fragments of information sequenced together, like an elegant baklava with layers of meaning,” he alleged. “You have to think of different arrays of sequencing information … You have to make an apt choice, or an artistic choice, or an aesthetic choice about what you put in—and what you leave out. It’s an art form when to say no. Especially in investigative poetry, it’s a mission.”
Very Good copy, light tanning.
2022, English / French
Softcover, 224 pages, 22.4 x 14 cm
Published by
Editions Lutanie / Paris
$55.00 - In stock -
The collection of poems by American artist Rene Ricard, written between 1979 and 1982.
God with Revolver is the re-issue of Rene Ricard's second volume of poetry, originally published in 1989 as part of the Hanuman Books series. Dedicated to the dramatic experience of heartbreak, this collection assembled from poems composed over several years, seems to be written in a single breath. With its raw sincerity and wit, God with Revolver is a vibrant testament to 1980s New York that still speaks to its readers in all its intensity, poignancy, and emotional vulnerability.
Rene Ricard was an American painter, poet, and art critic born in 1946 in Acushnet (Massachussetts). At age 18, he moved to New York and joined the underground art scene. He wrote many articles (notably, for Artforum and Art in America, among others), and published several poetry books. In his paintings, developed in parralel to his poetry, writing features prominently . He lived in New York until his untimely death in 2014.
Edited by Manon Lutanie and Rachel Valinsky.
Introduction by Raymond Foye, afterword by Patrick Fox.
Graphic design: Manon Lutanie.
1994—1997, Japanese
Softcover, various page count, 29.7 x 22.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
SDI nets / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
Rare lot of eight issues of the short-lived and now seldom seen 1990's Shibuya-kei / art subculture magazine from Japan, FREAKOUT, published between 1994—1997. Like a hysterical teenage pop fanzine version of Raygun, FREAKOUT ("The Art Magazine for the New Edge"), packed as much sugar-coated 90's nihilism into the little-known magazine's short life-span as possible. Showcasing a new generation of provocative international artists alongside their Japanese pop (counter)culture counterparts, filled with illustrations, manga, and early vector-art kitsch psychedelia — in short, a demonic embodiment of Shibuya-kei aesthetics — these issues include exclusive interviews and artist features, galleries and articles on Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Suehiro Maruo, Richard Prince, Jenny Holzer, Kyoji Takahashi, Janine Antoni, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Matthew Barney, Nakamura Tetsuya, Manuel Ocampo, Miyamae Masaki, Akira, Junichiro Take, Nancy Burson, Makoto Aida, Jean-Michel Basquiat, KAORUKO, Richard Nonas, and much more... from doll-house TV gore to restroom portraiture.
Includes issue 4, 5, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 (1994—1997)
All Very Good copies, light cover wear.
1982, English / Japanese
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Genko-sha / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
First printing of the first ever book on the work of queer American illustrator Mel Odom (b. 1950), published in Japan in 1982. Profusely illustrated throughout with Odom's dreamy, highly-stylised, erotically-charged fantasy illustrations, made famous adorning the paperback covers of novels by Patrick White and in the pages of Blue Boy and through Odom's award-winning and still lauded tenure at Playboy. Odom's delicate and dreamy men struck a chord with the viewing public. They were finally seeing male figures of lust depicted lovingly, softly, in the sea of aggressive hyper-masculinity that dominated gay aesthetics of the time. Alongside his many masterful works (that owe much to art deco, the silver screen, and pre-Raphaelite sensuality) reproduced together for the first time, First Eyes also includes Odom's childhood drawings, photographic portraits, his sculptural painted masks, and much more. All texts in English and Japanese.
Very Good copy with light tan/wear.
1999, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 115 pages, 22.3 x 22.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Galerie Jacques Lacoste / Paris
$300.00 - In stock -
Important, very rare hardcover catalogue produced by the Galerie Jacques Lacoste for the first major retrospective exhibition of one of the most audacious, free-spirited decorators of the twentieth century, Jean Royère, held in 1999. Lavishly illustrated overview featuring Royère's furniture (chairs, tables, consoles,...), light fittings and lamps, interior design, and more, all recorded in colour and monochrome photographic documentation, accompanied by descriptions, history and various texts throughout in French. An incredible resource published by Galerie Jacques Lacoste, specialist in twentieth-century French decorative arts and home to Royère's archives.
Jean Royère (French, 1902—1981) was a French interior designer known for his bright, plush, and playful furniture. Born in Paris, France in 1902 into a wealthy family, he initially worked as a banker before leaving in 1931 to apprentice with Pierre Gouff under whom he learned the meticulous craftsmanship of cabinetmaking. Royère won a prestigious competition in 1934 to design the restaurant of the luxurious Hotel Carlton on the Champs-Élysées, garnering widespread acclaim and launching his career overnight. He founded his own company in 1944 and began building a global clientele, opening offices in Cairo, Beirut, Tehran, and São Paulo, with famed customers that included King Farouk, the King Hussein of Jordan, and the Shah of Iran. In 1947 the French designer redecorated his mother’s Paris apartment, including a rotund sofa called Boule, covered in a deliciously fuzzy velvet that would later inspire the design’s charming nickname, Ours Polaire—“polar bear”, one of his most iconic designs. He died in 1981 in New York, NY just one year after moving there. The Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris held a museum show of his work in 1999, and in 2008, was the subject of a major posthumous retrospective at Sonnabend Gallery in New York.
Fine copy.
1996, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 13.2 x 20.3 cm
Published by
New Directions / New York
$38.00 - In stock -
Proper Name collects for the first time the inimitable stories of Bernadette Mayer—"one of the most original writers of her generation" (The Washington Post).
The nineteen narratives of Proper Name include "My Excellent Novel," "Ice Cube Epigrams," "Essay: How Carefully Do We Tend?" and "Juan Gave Nora a Pomegranate." Mayer's structural inventions are terrific and unique. As Fanny Howe remarked in The American Book Review, "In a language made up of idiom and lyricism, Mayer cancels the boundaries between prose and poetry."
1978, English
Softcover, 54 pages, 17.5 x 12.5 cm
Ed. of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
This Press / San Francisco
$80.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of the only edition of Quartz Hearts by poet Clark Coolidge, published by This Press, San Francisco, California, in 1978; typeset by Barrett Watten and printed at The West Coast Print Center. "Quartz Hearts (a long grouping of aggregate works?) [...] meditations on the state(s) of things in other words words...".—C.C. Poetry book published in edition of 500 copies by jazz drummer Coolidge (b. 1939), associated with the Second Generation New York School and the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets during the 1960's, and celebrated author of written works on the weather, bebop, surrealism...
Good copy with small chip to bottom left cover corner, previous owner (Australia-based composer composer, instrument builder, sound poet, film-maker, Warren Burt — b. 1949) dated "April '87".
1997 , Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 20 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bunkasha / Japan
$100.00 - In stock -
Rare first edition of Japanese photographer Hiroshi Maruyama's BACKS collection, published by Bunkasha in 1997. Cover-to-cover sultry studio fetish photography of female nudes and semi-nudes photographed from behind in beautiful heavy-grain colour and b/w photography, at times reminiscent of the work of Carlo Mollino, Araki, or even Irina Ionesco with a heavy crushed velvet 1990s erotic thriller atmosphere. A must for any bottom or leg enthusiast, or even women's garment fetishist (lots of stockings, socks, and heels). A very little known and rare Japanese title.
Very Good with dust jacket and obi-strip.
1998, English
Paperback, 320 pages, 12.9 x 19.8 cm
Published by
HarperCollins Publishers / London
$28.00 - Out of stock
A highly contentious, very readable and totally up-to-the-minute investigation of women's natural relationship with modern technology, an association which, Plant argues, will trigger a new sexual revolution.
Zeros and Ones is an intelligent, provocative and accessible investigation of the intersection between women, feminism, machines and in particular, information technology. Arguing that the computer is rewriting the old conceptions of man and his world, it suggests that the telecoms revolution is also a sexual revolution which undermines the fundamental assumptions crucial to patriarchal culture. Historical, contemporary and future developments in telecommunications and in IT are interwoven with the past, present and future of feminism, women and sexual difference, and a wealth of connections, parallels and affinities between machines and women are uncovered as a result. Challenging the belief that man was ever in control of either his own agency, the planet, or his machines, this book argues it is seriously undermined by the new scientific paradigms emergent from theories of chaos, complexity and connectionism, all of which suggest that the old distinctions between man, woman, nature and technology need to be radically reassessed.
1988, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Toho / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
The original Japanese film brochure for the 1988 anime movie release of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, published by TOHO EIGA in Tokyo. Only available in Japan in the cinema merchandise stands upon the film's release, this glossy booklet is heavily illustrated throughout with stills and production imagery, featuring an introduction to the world of Neo-Tokyo, profile on Akira's creator Otomo, timeline of the complex narrative events and all the characters in the film, cast, sound information (Shōji Yamashiro, Geinoh Yamashirogumi collective, etc.), film staff, voices, and many other productions details. Also catalogues for Akira merchandise, posters, books, models, and more... Tremendously thorough for its size! All texts in native Japanese. A wonderful piece of printed history to Otomo's dystopian cyber-punk masterpiece.
Akira was released in 1988 in Japan and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, produced by Ryōhei Suzuki and Shunzō Katō, and written by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on Otomo's 1982 manga of the same name. It is widely regarded by critics as one of the greatest films ever made, especially in the animation, action and science fiction genres, as well as a landmark in Japanese anime.
Very Good copy, with only light wear.
1993, English / Japanese
Softcover, 126 pages, 26 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Galerie Watari / Tokyo
$180.00 - Out of stock
Rare first full book study of this major work of the great Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, Villa "Palazzetto", the 10-year restoration of a 17th century villa at Monselice left unfinished at the time of Scarpa's death in 1978. Published in 1993 on the occasion of a major exhibition of the Villa "Palazzetto" in Tokyo, this first edition of this long out-of-print volume is profusely illustrated with colour and b/w beautiful and intimate documentation, portraits, drawings, plans, remembrances, plus an illustrated career overview documenting all of Scarpa's other major architectural works and design objects 1955—1978. Texts in both English / Japanese by Shizuko Watari, Aldo Businaro, Arata Isozaki, Guido Pietropoli, Louis Kahn, plus biography,
Carlo Scarpa (1906, Venice—1978, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan) was an Italian architect, influenced by the materials, landscape and the history of Venetian culture, and by Japan. Scarpa translated his interests in history, regionalism, invention, and the techniques of the artist and craftsman into ingenious glass and furniture design.
Near Fine copy.
1980, Italian
Hardcover, 50 pages, 32 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Casa Vogue / Milan
Edizioni Condé Nast / Milan
$80.00 - In stock -
First edition, published in 1980 by Edizioni Condé Nast / Casa Vogue (Milan), of this little known furniture book, edited by Casa Vogue editor Isa Vercelloni, who brought us the 1985 classic “Styles of Living: The Best of Casa Vogue”.
This fantastic hardcover book, the first in Casa Vogue's book library, is dedicated entirely to showcasing furniture by (amongst many other deisgners) Aldo Rossi, Gaetano Pesce, Andrea Branzi, Ettore Sottsass, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Toshiyuki Kita, Achille Castiglioni, Alchimia, Paolo Nava, Antonio Citterio, Enzo Mari, Alessandro Mendini, B&B Italia, Cassina, Flos, Poltronova, Vico Magistretti, Artemide, Stilnovo, Mario Bellini, Josef Hoffman, Studio Driade, Poltronova, Carlo Scarpa, Gae Aulenti, Angelo Mangiarotti, Eileen Grey, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Gerrit T. Rietveld, Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, , Pierre Jeanneret, C&B Italia, Mario Ceroli, Cini Boeri, Arflex, Zanotta, Superstudio, Archizoom, Knoll, Meret Oppenheim, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Jonathan de Pas, De. Pas + D'urbino + Lomazzi, Donato d'Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi, Gufram, Giani Ruffi, Piero Gilardi, Joe Columbo, Sergio Asti, Hans Hollein...
Scarce, wonderfully compiled Italian title of 1970's-1980's furniture design and its influences.
Very Good copy.
1985, English
Hardcover (w. dustjacket), 224 pages, 30 x 22.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rizzoli / New York
$200.00 - Out of stock
First edition, published by Rizzoli in 1985, of this classic interior design book, "Styles of Living: The Best of Casa Vogue"
Making appearances in these rooms: Gae Aulenti, Man Ray, Enzo Mari, Carlo Scarpa, Pablo Picasso, Josef Hoffman, Cinzia Ruggeri, Max Ernst, Wols, Matteo Thun, Ettore Sottsass, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Lucio Fontana, Eileen Grey, Daniel Buren, Gaetano Pesce, Charles Eames, Verner Panton, Massimo Vignelli, Andy Warhol, Frank Lloyd Wright, Antoni Tàpies, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alver Aalto.....
"Ever since the end of the Second World War, Italian style, design and decoration have maintained an unprecedented predominance in the Western World. It was in the early 1950s that a great surge of decorative talent welled up in Italy, and this resulted in the 'Italian look' in clothes and in homes - a new standard of chic inventiveness.
The Italian view of interior design has been most enterprisingly expressed in the magazine Casa Vogue, which was founded in 1968 and has consistently been one of the most admired publications of Condé Nast International.
This book, garnered from the many issues of Casa Vogue, has been written and produced under the guidance of Isa Vercellonim who has been its editor ever since its inception. The choice of picture-stories is intended to reflect the unusual and distinctive diversity of the magazine - ranging from traditional decoration to the more advance examples of minimal design, most the most significant of contemporary buildings to the spectacular reconstructions and reconversions of old palazzi and coachhouses, from the 'post modern' to the 'anti-modern' and any other 'moderns' that may have been advocated recently. Italian trends naturally provide the main focus, but Casa Vogue also includes developments in the United States, France, Switzerland - indeed, wherever unusual and meaningful designs are being created."
Very good copy in Good dust-jacket, protected under mylar wrap.
1992, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 14.6 x 22.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gay Men's Press / London
$160.00 - In stock -
Very rare 1992 Gay Men's Press first printing of this pioneering historical study — the first comprehensive chronicle of the English gay community at its 18th-century roots, sporting for the first time a distinctive subculture with its "molly houses", "sodomites' walks", "maiden names" and gay slang. Rictor Norton's research into trial records and contemporary documents establishes a vital cornerstone for the reconstruction of gay history. Challenging in its demonstration that the molly subculture was primarily a working-class community of blacksmiths, milkmen, publicans and shopkeepers, Mother Clap's Molly House also records the exuberant lives of personalities such as Charles Hitchin the "thief-taker", the dramatists Samuel Foote and Isaac Bickerstaff, William Beckford of Fonthill, and Rev. John Church, prosecuted for his blessing of gay marriages. All these are set against a backdrop of persecution, blackmail and the pillory. And yes, "Mother Clap's" actually was the name of a prominent molly house!
Rictor Norton earned his Ph.D. from Florida State University for a study of homosexual themes in English Renaissance Literature, the basis for his book The Homosexual Literary Tradition, and he edited a highly-acclaimed issue of College English devoted to The Homosexual Imagination. He moved to London in 1973, and was an editor for Gay News from 1974-1978.
VG—Good copy with some light wear, tiny closed tear to cover right edge, foxing to endpapers and block edge, otherwise Very Good copy throughout, uncreased spine.