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, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Ed. of 250,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Robert Jacks / New York
$200.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, very rare artist's book published by Australian artist Robert Jacks in 1974 whilst in New York in an edition of 250 copies to distribute to friends and acquaintances. The book (almost textless, apart from image captions and title page) is a crucial document of this important period in Jacks's career, comprising photographic documentation of all of the exhibition installations by Jacks during his time in New York and Toronto after 1968. As Ian Burn noted in his important 1970 essay ‘Conceptual art as art’, Jacks’s "recent work in New York has moved beyond painting into conceptualized presentation of numeral systems and serial techniques". Jacks’s first opportunity to present this new work was facilitated by Sol LeWitt, who selected him to inaugurate a rolling program of free exhibitions at the New York Cultural Centre in January 1971 – the ‘International Artist’s Invitational’ – with each exhibiting artist showing just a single work and selecting the artist to follow. Further exhibitions include the New York Cultural Centre, the Whitney Museum Artists Resource Centre, 112 Greene St. Gallery, and Resse Palley, all New York, plus A Space, Toronto, all documented herein.
Robert Jacks (1943—2014) was one of Australia’s most significant and accomplished abstract artists. Jacks studied sculpture at Prahran Technical College from 1958–1960 and painting at RMIT in 1961–62. His first solo exhibition, a sell-out at Gallery A in Melbourne, was held to great acclaim in 1966 and in 1968 his work was included in the landmark exhibition, The Field, at the National Gallery of Victoria. Jacks left Australia in 1968, spending ten years living and working in Canada and the United States. It was during this period, much of which was spent in New York's Soho, in which Jack was invited to exhibit by Sol LeWitt and Robert Rauschenberg at the New York Cultural Centre in 1971. When he returned to Australia in 1978, Jacks brought back a finely-tuned, mature visual language and experience that makes him a unique figure within the history and development of twentieth century Australian art. Over the subsequent decades, Jacks was collected by every state gallery, the subject of numerous monographs and honoured with a retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014. In 2001, the Bendigo Art Gallery established an art award in Jacks' honour.
Very Good, mild age/wear, mild rust to staples.
1973, English
Softcover (staple-bound),
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$240.00 - Out of stock
Extremely rare catalogue of the great OBJECT & IDEA exhibition, presented at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1973, curated by Brian Finemore (Curator of Australian Art and co-curator of The Field in 1968). With the assistance of Graeme Sturgeon (Exhibitions Officer 1970–1980), this important survey exhibition helped in defining radical new shifts in contemporary Australian art at the start of the 1970s by bringing together new work by 6 young Australian artists; John Armstrong, Tony Coleing, Aleks Danko, Nigel Lendon, Ti Parks and Imants Tillers, all of whom are profiled here in-depth with illustrations of many of their works, along with biographies, portraits, and notes. Introduction by Finemore and Sturgeon, with texts by Brian Finemore, Gregory Heath, Ian Millis and John Stringer. Designed by Graeme Sturgeon and Melbourne artist Peter Cripps. "This book records an exhibition and poses some questions for Australian Art in 1973. New Art? New Aesthetic? New Artist? New Museum?". One of the finest, yet seldom seen Australian art catalogues. Highly recommended.
“[...] The new art was to be a new reality. It was to be what Duchamp called a cervellite that is a "brainfact". It is from that stream of tradition with its influxions from the tributaries of De Stijl and the Russian Constructivists, this Australian exhibition and "Object and Idea" ultimately comes. I do not say that these six artists are disciples of Duchamp, or that their work is imitative of his art style. What l do say is that their work is in the stylistic and cultural tradition which developed from taking up the options his work proposed. This exhibition is not a manifesto, the artists are not group artists. But it is well to remember that a fundamental revision of collective sensibility, of attitudes to life, often finds its first expression in art and the philosophical disciplines. In the work of these men one may perhaps examine the tides which will direct the future. Their art is of the present yet hints of change.” — from Finemore’s “New Art?” essay.
Very Good, tightly bound copy. Light tanning.
1971, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 42 pages, 43 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
C.A.S. Gallery / Sydney
$400.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, important publication distributed on the occasion of the exhibition "The Situation Now: Object and Post-Object Art", 16 July—6 August 1971, Central Street Gallery, Sydney, NSW. Curated by Terry Smith and Donald Brook, The Situation Now: Object and Post-Object Art, was a survey exhibition of conceptual and experimental works in Australia, sponsored by the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) held at Central Street. Artists in the exhibition: David Aspden, Michael Johnson, Trevor Vickers, Guy Stuart, Aleksander Danko, Nigel Lendon, Tony Coleing, Ti Parks, Clive Murray-White, Bill Gregory, Robert Hunter, Optronic Kinetics (Bert Flugelman, Jim McDonnell, David Smith), Tim Johnson, Simon Close, Robert Rooney, Dale Hickey, Neil Evans, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden; with further contributions by Peter Kennedy, Mike Parr, Noel Hutchison, Bruce Pollard, Terry Smith, Donald Brook, Joel Fisher.
"THIS EXHIBITION has been put together less as a display of merely good and/or interesting art (although we think it is that), but more as a series of statements which amount to an argument about the nature of the most recent changes in art."
The staple-bound, stamped publication acts as a catalogue and reader, consisting of of discussions, interviews and artist statements, providing a deeper understanding of the various conceptual operations of these contemporary Australian artists and contributors, and important projects they were associated with (Inhibodress, Pinacotheca, Tin Sheds Art Workshop, Art & Language, et al.).
Very Good copy with some tanning to the edges and light wear.
1978, English
Softcover folder, fold-out loose leaf 1.01 x 1.47 metres + additional loose leaf piece, 22 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Outback Press / Fitzroy
$200.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of late Australian artist/compositional linguist/raconteur Chris Mann's epic first published work, Words and Classes — On Having Words, published by Melbourne's Outbackl Press in 1978 in this elaborate artist's book/binder housing an enormous fold-out (approx 1 x 1.5 M unfurled) thick newsprint sheet printed both sides with Mann's experimental texts — poetry, stream-of-consciousness prose, commentaries, dialogues, even a small play — one of the finest examples of Mann's complex and witty exploration of linguistic composition. Includes an additional text work printed and folded inside along with the main work, possibly not originally included.
Chris Mann (1949—2018) was an Australian-American composer, poet and performer specializing in the emerging field of compositional linguistics, coined by Kenneth Gaburo and described by Mann as "the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do". Mann was the son of German Jewish refugees, Ruth and Peter Mann, who settled in Melbourne and founded the Discurio music store Score record label in the 1960s, producing some of Australia's first recordings of Australian folk music as well as jazz, classical and Aboriginal music. Mann studied Chinese and linguistics at the University of Melbourne, and his interest in language, systems, and philosophy is evident in his work. Mann founded the New Music Centre in 1972 and taught at the State College of Victoria in the mid-1970s. He then left teaching to work on research projects involving cultural ideas of information theory and has been recognized by UNESCO for his work in that field. Mann moved to New York in the 1980s and was an associate of American composers John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo. He has performed text in collaboration with artists such as Thomas Buckner, David Dunn, Annea Lockwood, Larry Polansky, and Robert Rauschenberg. Mann has recorded with the ensemble Machine For Making Sense with Amanda Stewart and others, Chris Mann and the Impediments (with two backup singers and Mann reading a text simultaneously while only being able to hear one another), and Chris Mann and The Use. His piece The Plato Songs, a collaboration with Holland Hopson and R. Luke DuBois, features realtime spectral analysis and parsing of the voice into multiple channels based on phonemes. Mann has also participated in the 60x60 project. Mann taught in the Media Studies Graduate program at The New School. He died in September 2018, survived by his wife and two children.
Very Good copy with some rubbing to folder and tanning to all stocks. Fold-out work As New with age tanning, folded as issued. Edge wear and spine crease to folder.
1986, English
Softcover (glue-bound), unpaginated, 14.5 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
NMA / Melbourne
$65.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of late Australian artist/compositional linguist/raconteur Chris Mann's 1986 “The Rationales” booklet/pad, the NMA published text version of the work recorded by Mann as contribution to NMA TAPES No. 5. This book, an analysis of the Australian conceptual tradition, takes the physical form of a tear-off memorandum pad. The Rationales explored, among other things, the importance in Australia of a tradition of 'making do' and of 'radical amateurism'. Each rationale is printed on a separate sheet.
Chris Mann (1949—2018) was an Australian-American composer, poet and performer specializing in the emerging field of compositional linguistics, coined by Kenneth Gaburo and described by Mann as "the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do". Mann was the son of German Jewish refugees, Ruth and Peter Mann, who settled in Melbourne and founded the Discurio music store Score record label in the 1960s, producing some of Australia's first recordings of Australian folk music as well as jazz, classical and Aboriginal music. Mann studied Chinese and linguistics at the University of Melbourne, and his interest in language, systems, and philosophy is evident in his work. Mann founded the New Music Centre in 1972 and taught at the State College of Victoria in the mid-1970s. He then left teaching to work on research projects involving cultural ideas of information theory and has been recognized by UNESCO for his work in that field. Mann moved to New York in the 1980s and was an associate of American composers John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo. He has performed text in collaboration with artists such as Thomas Buckner, David Dunn, Annea Lockwood, Larry Polansky, and Robert Rauschenberg. Mann has recorded with the ensemble Machine For Making Sense with Amanda Stewart and others, Chris Mann and the Impediments (with two backup singers and Mann reading a text simultaneously while only being able to hear one another), and Chris Mann and The Use. His piece The Plato Songs, a collaboration with Holland Hopson and R. Luke DuBois, features realtime spectral analysis and parsing of the voice into multiple channels based on phonemes. Mann has also participated in the 60x60 project. Mann taught in the Media Studies Graduate program at The New School. He died in September 2018, survived by his wife and two children.
Very Good with some light wear/marks to outer "cover" pages and extremities.
1977, English
Softcover, 222 pages, 19 x 11.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Seven Seas Books / Berlin
$45.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1977 English edition of this collection of important essays by German novelist and essayist Christa Wolf (1929—2011) first published in German in 1973. Translated here by Joan Becker.
"The Reader and the Writer consists of a number of essays and prose pieces by a leading writer of the German Democratic Republic and a concluding portrait of the author by biogeneticist, Hans Stubbe. "Writing," says Christa Wolf in the title essay, "is only one operation in a more complex process to which we give the splendid name of living." Her concern for literature's function within the context of life is a theme that runs through all her pieces. Whether she is describing the simple heroism of people she has encountered or reminiscences of a darker past or a visit to a biogeneticist at his research center her sense of vitality, honest quest for answers and warmth of personality are always present. Essays on other writers include those on Bertolt Brecht, Vera Inber, Ingeborg Bachmann, Fred Wander and Anna Seghers who come alive first as people and as writers whose works express the profound commitment of their lives. Another is a sketch that recalls a date in 1948 when she read her first Marxist book, Engels on Feuerbach, in which she underlined: "In the place of moribund reality comes a new viable reality. That was the process which was to fill my life..."—publisher's blurb
Christa Wolf (1929—2011) was German novelist and essayist. She is considered one of the most important writers to emerge from the former East Germany. Wolf was a German writer of rare purity and sensitivity who grew up under nazism and became an adult under communism. Her work records the impact of these ideologies on individual lives. She was, as one critic put it, "a writer of scrupulous 'touchstone' honesty", and it is the pursuit and uncovering of truth, under the most beleaguered circumstances, that defines her.
Good—VG copy. Clear laminate peeling with age at cover edges, repaired by some pieces of tape, cover in tact with only light edge wear. Binding and interior VG throughout., a well preserved copy.
1995, English
Softcover, 396 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$70.00 - In stock -
First 1995 edition.
The realistic spirit, a nonmetaphysical approach to philosophical thought concerned with the character of philosophy itself, informs all of the discussions in these essays by philosopher Cora Diamond. Diamond explains Wittgenstein's notoriously elusive later writings, explores the background to his thought in the work of Frege, and discusses ethics in a way that reflects his influence. Diamond's new reading of Wittgenstein challenges currently accepted interpretations and shows what it means to look without mythology at the coherence, commitments, and connections that are distinctive of the mind.
"This is the most important book on Wittgenstein in over a decade, but it is also much more than that. These essays range widely over issues in the philosophy of language, ethics, and literature, and they illuminate everything they touch. They show the full range and power of one of the best philosophical minds I know."—Hillary Putnam, Harvard University
Cora Diamond is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia.
NF—VG copy.
1996, English
Softcover, 410 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Polity / US
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1996 edition of Bourdieu's long-awaited study of Flaubert and the formation of the modern literary field.
It was in the nineteenth century that the literary universe as we know it today took shape, as a space set apart from the approved academies of the state. No one could any longer dictate with authority what ought to be written, or decree the canons of good taste: recognition and consecration were produced in and through the struggle in which writers, critics and publishers confronted one another.
The aesthetic project of Gustave Flaubert was formed at the very moment when the literary field became autonomous. Through a careful analysis of the genesis and structure of the literary field, Bourdieu is able to show how the work of Flaubert was shaped by the different currents, movements, schools and authors of the time - how, in other words, Flaubert was the product of the very field that he helped to produce.
By uncovering the rules of art, the logic which writers and literary institutions obey and which expressed itself in a sublimated form in their works, Pierre Bourdieu shatters the illusion of the all-powerful creative genius. At the same time, he lays the foundations for a sociological analysis of literary works which would be concerned not only with the material production of the work itself, but also with the production of its value.
Widely praised in France, where the book was compared with Sartre's classic work on Flaubert, "The Rules of Art "will be extensively discussed in the English-speaking world. It will be recognized as one of the most important contributions of the last decade to the study of the social and historical conditions of literary works.
Very Good copy.
1978, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 192 pages, 22 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Vision / London
$35.00 - In stock -
First 1973 hardcover edition of WYNDHAM LEWIS : FICTIONS AND SATIRES by Robert T. Chapman.
Wyndham Lewis played a leading part in the cultural life of England at the beginning of this century. Setting himself up as 'The Enemy', he vociferously opposed Establishment art and received opinion, and for fifty years iconoclastically attacked modish dilettantism and falsity. Novelist, painter, editor, poet, dramatist, critic, philosopher — Lewis was the most versatile of the 'men of 1914', yet his reputation has long been overshadowed by Pound, Eliot and Joyce, and he is only just beginning to be accepted as one of the major figures in twentieth-century literature.
This study concentrates on Lewis as an imaginative writer, and, whilst his philosophy, polemics and paint ing are considered whenever relevant, the major novels are given central importance. The approach is chronological and aims to reveal the development of Lewis's art from the Bergsonian physical comedy of the early stories, through the Vorticist period, the social satires of the Thirties, to the late non-fiction stories and the new mythology of
The Human Age. Formerly a post-graduate assistant in the Department of English at the New University of Ulster, Robert Chapman is at present completing his doctoral thesis on aesthetics in the modern novel and working for the Open University.
VG copy in G dust jacket with closed tears and rubbing wear.
2007, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 220 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
Special private edition,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
The Edwin Mellen Press / Wales
$140.00 - In stock -
Special private issue edition of this seldom seen hardcover collection of academic essays in antipodean identity through architecture, edited by Michael J. Ostwald & Steven Fleming, awarded the Adele Mellen Prize for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship. Preface by architect Lindsay Johnston. Texts by Stephen Frith, Philip Goad, Harriet Edquist, Michael Linzey, William Taylor, Ali Mozaffari, Naomi Stead, Mike Austin, Davina Jackson, Michael J. Ostwald and Steven Fleming.
In the years since the completion of Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House countries throughout the South Pacific have displayed a particular fascination with the possibility that architecture may be able to embody regional cultural identity. This book examines a number of major museums, art galleries and cultural centers that have been constructed in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific regions. The majority of these buildings, landscapes or structures have been completed in the last few years and all have employed different architectural strategies to shape their designs. This collection of nine critical essays by leading scholars of contemporary architecture provides an important survey and assessment of Antipodean cultural architecture. Emphasizing common traits, the introduction to the text asks how this phenomenon might be understood and why it may be relevant in different regions around the world. Acknowledging the pluralistic nature of Antipodean architecture, the conclusion offers an alternative hermeneutical framework, one that accepts the fragmentary nature of the contemporary cultural landscape.
“There is, in fact, a hint of mild amusement amongst the architects of the Antipodes that the world has discovered that their other [hemisphere] is so interesting. There is a reassurance that maybe the real truth is being ‘dug with the other foot’. Irish poet Seamus Heaney speaks of his writing as “digging with the pen” and the essays that follow are turning over the sods of the cultural soil of Antipodean architecture in a way that may reveal new comprehensions, comprehensions beyond the scale of the domestic.”—Professor Lindsay Johnston, Head of the School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland
“The depth and breadth of the authors’ writings reflects the multi-valence of a region that defies generalization. Through their attention to buildings and their attendant theoretical concerns, each author opens our eyes to another facet of this vast region of the world, revealing more of its rich cultural and intellectual heritage as the volume unfolds.”—Dr. Mark A. Reynolds, Instructor in Geometry, Academy of Art University
“This book, edited by Michael J. Ostwald and Steven Fleming, is a much-needed and engaging collection of essays from a group of pre-eminent Australasian architectural writers and thinkers ... The volume deals with museums, cultural centers, gardens, art galleries and public space and as such it is likely to be of interest to not only architects, urban designers and architectural teachers and students but also to art historians, cultural theorists and those engaged in museum practice.”—Dr. Sarah Treadwell, Deputy Head of School, University of Auckland
Dr. Michael J. Ostwald is Professor of Architectural Analytics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney (Australia) where he was previously Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture and in the Faculty of the Built Environment.
As New, light cloth wear.
1986—1987, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 36 pages/40 pages/24 pages, , 21 x 15 cm
Ed. of 250 copies,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
IMA / Brisbane
$100.00 - Out of stock
Complete set of three volumes published in a series by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, in 1986—1987. These now scarce, historical publications, initiated and handsomely designed by (then) IMA director Peter Cripps and typeset by Ian Hodgkiss, were produced in an edition of only 250 copies each. The series consists of : Interviews with nine Queensland artists (edited by IMA president Bob Lingard); Peter Cripps interviews nine exhibiting artists at the Institute (edited by IMA director Peter Cripps); Art Criticism in Queensland: Forum Papers (edited by Graham Coulter-Smith).
Interviews with nine Queensland artists (Edited by Bob Lingard) features Michelle Andringa interviewed by Robert Whyte; Eugene Carchesio interviewed by Peter Bellas and Steven Grainger; Marian Drew interviewed by Graham Coulter-Smith; Jeanelle Hurst interviewed by Allan Furlong; Wayne Smith interviewed by Graham Coulter-Smith; John Stafford interviewed by Graham Coulter-Smith; Ross Thompson interviewed by Bob Lingard; Adam Wolter interviewed by Marta Troland; Jay Younger interviewed by Graham Coulter-Smith.
Peter Cripps Interviews... (edited by Peter Cripps) comprises nine short interviews with eight artists (Robert MacPherson, Peter Tyndall, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Tim Johnson, Geoff Lowe, Bronwyn Clark-Coolee, Scott Redford, Mark Webb) who had all exhibited at the IMA, and one with curator Robyn McKenzie, whose exhibition "The Gothic: Perversity and Its Pleasure" was held at the institute in 1986. Includes source references.
Art Criticism in Queensland: Forum Papers (edited by Graham Coulter-Smith) comprises the papers from the second in a series of three forums held at the IMA in 1985—1986, under the directorship of Cripps. Art Criticism in Queensland consists of : Peter Anderson Introduction: Art Criticism In Queensland; Sarah Follent — The Double Cringe; Keith Bradbury — Art Criticism in Brisbane Newspapers 1930-1940; Graham Coulter-Smith — Contemporary Art Versus Criticism: Criticism and the IMA; Kate Collins — Criticism and Censorship.
Fine—almost As New copies, only light tanning.
1986, English
Softcover, 40 pages, 21 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
IMA / Brisbane
$140.00 - Out of stock
Rare and historic publication produced by the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane on the occasion of the exhibition "Q SPACE + Q SPACE ANNEX 1980 + 1981", curated by Peter Cripps in 1986.
"In 1981+82 Q SPACE and Q SPACE ANNEX, directed by John Nixon, operated in Brisbane as part of a series of strategies by artists involved in the reorientation and remodelling of contemporary art practice. Over the two years that Q SPACE and Q SPACE ANNEX operated, seventy seven exhibitions were held. Q SPACE, as with the earlier V SPACE, derived its meaning from the state in which it operated ― Q standing for Queensland. Works by the following artists and groups were shown at these spaces: Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, Imants Tillers, Hilary Boscott, John Davis, Robert MacPherson, John Nixon, John Smith and Anti-Music. This exhibition and catalogue have been compiled from the Q SPACE archives. Where possible we have attempted to maintain the original method and feeling of this documentation." — Peter Cripps, Brisbane, June 1986
Includes texts by Peter Cripps and John Nixon, as well as an interview between the two artists, alongside exhibition photography of each exhibition held, shot by John Nixon and Robert MacPherson, and a complete exhibition history.
An important piece of Australian contemporary art history. Highly recommended.
Fine—As New copy.
2018, English
Softcover (2 volumes w. die-cut covers in plastic jacket), 144 / 96 pages, 32.8 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$140.00 - In stock -
The fast out-of-print two-volume publication published to accompany 'The Field Revisited' 50th anniversary exhibition at The Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia, 27 April - 26 August, 2018. Housed in a transparent plastic jacket, the publication includes a complete facsimile of the rare and highly collectable original 1968 'The Field' exhibition publication and a new publication for 'The Field Revisited', which reflects on the importance of this exhibition over the past fifty years through new essays, colour documentation of the exhibited (and related) works and archival photographs of the 1968 exhibit. Designed by Stuart Geddes, with typography by Vincent Chan.
The National Gallery of Victoria’s inaugural exhibition at its new premises on St Kilda Road in 1968 was The Field, the first comprehensive display of colour field painting and abstract sculpture in Australia. Regarded as a landmark exhibition in Australian art history, The Field was a radical presentation of 74 works by 40 artists who practised hard-edge, geometric, colour and flat abstraction, many of which were influenced by American stylistic tendencies of the time. With its silver foil–covered walls and geometric light fittings, The Field opened to much controversy and helped launch the careers of a generation of Australian artists, including Sydney Ball, Peter Booth, Janet Dawson and Robert Jacks. Eighteen of the exhibiting artists were under the age of thirty, with Robert Hunter the youngest at twenty-one years of age.
The Field Revisited recreated The Field exhibition for its fifty-year anniversary. By reassembling as many of the original 74 paintings and sculptures as possible, this restaging re-examined the exhibition’s impact and significance for Australian art history and allow a new generation to experience it for themselves. Because some works included in The Field are known to have been destroyed, the NGV has commissioned a number of artists, including Normana Wight and Col Jordan, to recreate their original works for The Field Revisited.
Artists : Sydney Ball, Peter Booth, Janet Dawson, Robert Jacks, James Doolin, David Aspden, Tony Bishop, Ian Burn, Gunter Christmann, Tony Coleing, Noel Dunn, Garry Foulkes, Dale Hickey, Michael Johnson, Col Jordan, Michael Kitching, Alun Leach-Jones, Nigel Lendon, Tony McGillick, Clement Meadmore, Michael Nicholson, Harald Noritis, Alan Oldfield, Wendy Paramor, Paul Partos, John Peart, Emanuel Raft, Melvyn Ramsden, R.C. Robertson-Swann, Robert Rooney, Rollin Schlicht, Udo Sellbach, Eric Shirley, Joseph Szabo, Vernon Treweeke, Trevor Vickers, Dick Watkins, John White, Normana Wight.
Out-of-print, As New copy.
2014, English
Hardcover, 202 pages, 30 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$250.00 - In stock -
First edition of this fast out-of-print, important hardcover survey of Australian Mid-Century furniture design, edited by Kirsty Grant and published on the occasion of the exhibition, Mid-Century Modern, Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square, 30 May–19 October, 2014. Covering the 1940s to 1970s, Mid-Century Modern comprises the first major survey of Australian furniture and designers, including Grant Featherston, Douglas Snelling, Fred Lowen, George Korody, Clement Meadmore, and Michael Hirst. Profusely illustrated with photographic documentation of the iconic pieces, this volume included essays by prominent collectors, academics, architects and designers provide in-depth analysis of this uniquely innovative and influential period in Australian design. Contributors include Denise Whitehouse, writing on Grant Featherston, and Peter Atkins reflecting on the careers of Clement Meadmore and Michael Hirst. Neil Clerehan, Mary Featherston, Suzanna Shaw, and Dean Keep each examine the subject from a different perspective — that of the architect, designer, conservator, and collector respectively. Complete with time-line and bibliographical references.
Near Fine copy.
2002, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket) in slipcase, 600 pages, 25 x 19 cm
Signed and numbered edition of 300,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Getsuyosha / Tokyo
$580.00 - In stock -
"There is no place for which words such as "melting pot" or "purgatory" are more suited than the town of Shinjuku...."—Daido Moriyama
Signed and numbered very first, limited edition, first Japanese printing of Daido Moriyama's 'Shinjuku', his collection of stark b/w, full-bleed photographs shot in Tokyo's shinjuku district, one of the photographer's most famous, and published in this incredible 600 page volume in 2002 by Getsuyosha, Tokyo. Re-printed in many various editions, this is the true 2002 first premium print-run of only 300 copies and published in Japan. This special edition was followed by the regular Japanese edition w/o slipcase/sign, then followed by the Nazraeli Press US re-print of 500 copies mimicking this edition that is often considered the first appearance. Numbered on the slipcase (this copy being no. "51 / 300") and signed by Daido Moriyama with his characteristic silver ink to the first photographic endpaper, this copy also includes the preserved fold-out poster / booklet insert (50 x 36 cm) with text by Moriyama in Japanese and English. One of his finest.
"The current town of Shinjuku shows sign of becoming a near future city. The real and virtual, pleasure and pathos are entangled night and day, and this becomes a huge stadium where the gathering crowds wander, holding their raggle taggle desires. There is no place for which words such as "melting pot" or "purgatory" are more suited than the town of Shinjuku.... When we try lining up in a row cheap words stained with finger marks such as chaos, deluge, greed, vulgarity, vice, indecency, etc., every single one of them epitomizes Shinjuku, and I unintentionally start laughing. This is also an impressive point, as no matter how or where you search in the world, you wouldn't be able to find a city that is this weird. From the eastern JR train line, in other word this side where it seems like a stew in simmering and boiling, to the phantom landscape of high rise buildings that seem like a mirage over the west side, Shinjuku vividly exhibits all the shadiness, toughness, and considerable disconsolateness that a city has, like a truly unfathomable mathematical functional relationship, like a modern Babylon. I and Shinjuku, as well as my attraction to it and shooting photos of it, must have some kind of similar character somewhere."—Daido Moriyama
Very Good copy in Good slipcase. Well preserved book in DJ, with a single spine crease, binding solid, crisp book. Slipcase with light wear and marking, closed splitting.
1999, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 28 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hermès / Paris
$150.00 - Out of stock
Very rare English edition of the iconic in-house magazine of the French fashion house, Hermès, highlighting the Fall-Winter 1999-2000 collection designed by Martin Margiela. This very special early MM/Hermès photo collection is comprised of portraits of women in Hermès photographed by Mark Borthwick, Joanna Van Mulder, Tim Richmond, Luc Perenom, and others.
Very Good copy with light corner creases.
1990, English
Softcover, 362 pages, 21.6 x 24 cm
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$35.00 - In stock -
"Apocalypse Culture is compulsory reading for all those concerned with the crisis of our times. An extraordinary collection unlike anything I have ever encountered. These are the terminal documents of the twentieth century."—J.G. Ballard
Two thousand years have passed since the death of Christ and the world is going mad. Nihilist prophets, born-again pornographers, transcendental schizophrenics and just plain folks are united in their belief in an imminent global catastrophe. What are the forces lurking behind this mass delirium?
APOCALYPSE CULTURE is a startling, absorbing and exhaustive tour through the nether regions of today’s psychotic brainscape.
First published in 1987, APOCALYPSE CULTURE immediately touched a nerve. Alternately excoriated and lauded as “epochal”, “the most important book of the decade,” APOCALYPSE CULTURE had begun to articulate what many inwardly sensed — the-fear inspired irrationalism and faith, the clash of irreconcilable forces, and the ever-looming specter of fin de race. In its present incarnation for Feral House, APOCALYPSE CULTURE has significantly increased in size, taking on new perspectives on our current crisis, with pertinent revisions of many articles from the original edition.—burb from this expanded and revised 1990 edition.
As New.
2010, English
Softcover, 542 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$59.00 - Out of stock
Thee Apocryphal Sciptures ov Genesis Breyer P-Orrige and Thee Third Mind ov Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) will be remembered for its crucial influence on youth culture throughout the 1980s, popularizing tattooing, body piercing, "acid house" raves, and other ahead-of-the-curve cultic flirtations and investigations. Its leader was Genesis P-Orridge, co-founder of Psychick TV and Throbbing Gristle, the band that created the industrial music genre.
The limited signed cloth edition of Thee Psychick Bible quickly sold out, creating demand for any edition of this 544-page book, here available in the deluxe paperback edition with flaps and quality paperstock.
According to author Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, "this is the most profound new manual on practical magick, taking it from its Crowleyan empowerment of the Individual to a next level of realization to evolve our species."
1998, Japanese
Softcover (staple bound), 80 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
Rare very early issue of FRUiTS, the Legendary Japanese Street Style Magazine. Founded in 1997 by photographer and publisher of STREET magazine, Shoichi Aoki, the photographer spent two decades documenting Tokyo’s cool kids and the constantly evolving experimental styles that blossomed on the curbs of the youthful Harajuku district, until after 20 years and 233 issues Aoki ceased publication, declaring there were “no more fashionable kids to photograph”. Harajuku is now a moribund, globalised shadow of the parade of self-expression it once was, and FRUiTS has become an even more essential time-capsule of a cultural phenomenon like no other. Made up entirely of full-bleed photographs by Aoki exclusively documenting the kaleidoscope of playful and devoted fashions of the Harajuku girls, and guys, each issue of FRUiTS was the antithesis of high fashion luxury. The magazine primarily focused on individual styles found outside the fashion-industry mainstream, as well as subcultures specific to Japan, such as lolita and ganguro, and local interpretations of larger subcultures like punk, rave and goth. Made for the local market only, FRUiTS became a treasure in the West and an enormous influence on alternative culture the world over. Like Aoki's STREET, FRUiTS has become an essential style goldmine, creating a immensely valuable photographic document of the times like no other magazine of our times.
Good copy with some edge wear and a closed tear to cover/masthead.
1998, Japanese
Softcover (staple bound), 80 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
Rare very early issue of FRUiTS, the Legendary Japanese Street Style Magazine. Founded in 1997 by photographer and publisher of STREET magazine, Shoichi Aoki, the photographer spent two decades documenting Tokyo’s cool kids and the constantly evolving experimental styles that blossomed on the curbs of the youthful Harajuku district, until after 20 years and 233 issues Aoki ceased publication, declaring there were “no more fashionable kids to photograph”. Harajuku is now a moribund, globalised shadow of the parade of self-expression it once was, and FRUiTS has become an even more essential time-capsule of a cultural phenomenon like no other. Made up entirely of full-bleed photographs by Aoki exclusively documenting the kaleidoscope of playful and devoted fashions of the Harajuku girls, and guys, each issue of FRUiTS was the antithesis of high fashion luxury. The magazine primarily focused on individual styles found outside the fashion-industry mainstream, as well as subcultures specific to Japan, such as lolita and ganguro, and local interpretations of larger subcultures like punk, rave and goth. Made for the local market only, FRUiTS became a treasure in the West and an enormous influence on alternative culture the world over. Like Aoki's STREET, FRUiTS has become an essential style goldmine, creating a immensely valuable photographic document of the times like no other magazine of our times.
Good copy with some edge wear.
2020, English
Hardcover, 200 pages, 26.7 x 33 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$120.00 - Out of stock
Featuring paintings from series that span from 1994 through 2009, this volume traces Mike Kelley's (1954–2012) engagement with the medium through bodies of work including The Thirteen Seasons (Heavy on the Winter), a series of oval-shaped paintings on wood; Timeless Painting, which marked Kelley's distinct return to painting in colour, and which he described as "mannerist take-offs on Hans Hofmann's compositional theory of ‘push and pull'"; and the Horizontal Tracking Shots series.
2003, English / Dutch
Hardcover, 228 pages, 26 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
MoMu / Antwerp
Ludion / Brussels
Ludion / Ghent
$150.00 - Out of stock
Seldom seen first limited edition copy of the hardcover catalogue, Patronen / Patterns, published in 2003 on the occasion of the unique exhibition on pattern-making curated by Kaat Debo at MoMu - ModeMuseum Antwerp, 24.04.2003—10.08.2003 — almost immediately out-of-print. Showcasing the work of Haider Ackermann, Azzedine Alaïa, Balenciaga, Véronique Branquinho, Pierre Cardin, Hussein Chalayan, Courrèges, Ann Demeulemeester, Dior Haute Couture, Sevin Doering, Angelo Figus, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Romeo Gigli, Hubert de Givenchy, Christian Lacroix, Martin Margiela, Issey Miyake, Josephus Thimister, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Van Saene, A.F. Vandevorst, Patrick Van Ommeslaeghe, Madeleine Vionnet, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto, and Yves Saint Laurent, along with the photographic work of artist Nicole Tran Ba Vang, this lavishly illustrated and well-researched volume gives rare insight into this fundamental, largely un-documented aspect of contemporary fashion design, illuminating the new avant-garde alongside the history of dress-making, most importantly reproducing the actual pattern designs of many of the featured designers.
"The pattern is traditionally seen as a technical drawing and therefore, in a museum context, only interesting for research or study. With regard to both purchasing and exhibition policies, fashion museums focus mainly on the end product – the garment – and in so doing rarely exhibit the pattern, let alone acquire or purchase it. "Patterns" aims to explore both the technical and the artistic and cultural philosophy aspects of a clothing pattern."
Includes bi-lingual texts in English/Dutch by Kaat Debo, Dirk Lauwaert, Linda Loppa, Frieda Sorber, Christoph De Boeck, Neeltje ten Westenend, Karin De Coster, and more.
Average—Good copy. Cloth covers well-worn with marks, general age/tanning to book extremities, some (erasable) pencil underlining to text by previous owner. No dust jacket (as issued).
2002, Japanese
Softcover, 29.4 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
relax / Tokyo
$70.00 - Out of stock
December 2002 issue of 'Relax' magazine from Tokyo, with cover feature on Japanese fashion label "Undercover". Includes fifteen pages of behind-the-scenes photos of designer Jun Takahashi and friends/colleagues in preparation for Undercover's 'Scab' runway show in Paris, 2002. Also has a rare interview with Jun, in Japanese. This issue also features Mark Gonzalez, Nike "Reconstruct", Steel drumming, and much more.
Relax was an iconic Japanese style magazine that primarily ran throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, becoming an important reference source for trends in graphic design, urban fashion, music, and lifestyle, both in and out of Japan.
Fine copy.
1995, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. obi strip), 80 pages, 21.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
Pan-Exotica / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
First 1995 hardcover edition of Hans Bellmer's surrealist masterpiece, The Doll, a beautiful photo book published only in Japan, comprised entirely of all of the known photographic images of "La Poupee" — Hans Bellmer's articulated, anatomically amorphous Surrealist doll, reconfigured and captured through Bellmer's intimate hand-painted photographic images. "La Poupee" acquired iconic status as perhaps the purest exemplification of the Surrealist ideal of "convulsive beauty." Bellmer constructed his first doll in the early 1930s. André Breton and Paul Eluard described it as "the first and only Surrealist object with a universal, provocative power". Wordless, this lovely volume is photographs-only, reproduced in colour and black and white. Designed by Jun Takechi.
German artist Hans Bellmer (1902—1975) was one of the most subversive artists associated with Surrealism, famous—notorious, even—for his erotic engravings, objects and photographs. Many of Bellmer's works were inspired by the literary works of Comte de Lautréamont and Georges Bataille, amongst others.
VG—Fine copy with obi.