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:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
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.
2024, English
Softcover, 68 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$44.00 - In stock -
Self-published in 1968, Footprints, Poems, and Leaves collects dozens of poems written by Martin Wong between 1966 and 1968. Hand-written in a signature calligraphic style that he was just beginning to develop, the poems ebb and flow visually across the page, much like the fluctuating characters, scenes, and moods that inhabit them. This was Wong’s first book of poetry and it contains a double cover showcasing intricate drawings of skeletal angels and other tableaux, as well as a folded, looseleaf broadsheet containing two poems and a drawing of a boney leaf.
The poems were written during a relatively free period for the artist, shortly after he dropped out of Berkeley and began exploring San Francisco at the height of the hippy movement. The poems range from surrealist and pastoral descriptions of the urban subculture that surrounded him to downtrodden, travel-weary biographical entries that are both lonely and tender. Footprints, Poems, and Leaves functions like a journal capturing Wong’s tumultuous life in this period, which included being arrested at a queer, drug-fueled house party (along with Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn) and a stay in a mental institution in late 1967 and early 1968. Around the time of the book’s publication, Wong enrolled in Humboldt State University to finish his degree, beginning a new chapter for the artist.
Despite the dark backdrops of many of the works, the writing displays a playfulness with form and language and a sense of humor that can be seen throughout Wong’s later work as well. Altogether, Footprints, Poems, and Leaves creates a rich tapestry of visual poetry that is both a product of its time and the budding artistic mind of a young Martin Wong.
Martin Wong (1946-1999) was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in San Francisco, California. He studied ceramics at Humboldt State University, graduating in 1968. Wong was active in the performance art groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light before moving to New York in 1978. He exhibited for two decades at notable downtown galleries including EXIT ART, Semaphore, and P·P·O·W, among others, before his passing in San Francisco from an AIDS related illness. His work is represented in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, among others. Human Instamatic, a comprehensive retrospective, opened at the Bronx Museum of The Arts in November 2015, before traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2016 and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2017. In 2022, the first extensive, touring exhibition of Wong’s work in Europe, Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief, opened at Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid before traveling to KW Institute of Contemporary Art (Berlin), Camden Art Centre (London), and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam).
Managing Editor (2024): James Hoff
Managing Designer (2024): Rick Myers
2024, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 10.5 x 7 cm
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$22.00 - In stock -
Das Puke Book is a small chapbook self-published by Martin Wong in 1977. Written in the early 1970s, the publication contains thirteen chapters of handwritten micro-fictions filled with cringeworthy stories unfolding in San Francisco and beyond.
Subtitled Da Otto Biography of Otto Peach Fuzz, the publication is populated with a cadre of colorful characters, some of who are obscure underground figures such as George “Hibiscus” Harris from the Cockettes and Angels of Light and Rodney Price and Debra “Beaver” Bauer from Angels of Light, while others such as Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and God, are more well known. Although lighthearted, Wong paints unforgettably vivid scenes, such as Van Gogh attacking Gauguin with a razor, Beaver eating so many hot dogs she explodes, and God coming to San Francisco only to find a notebook that makes him so sick to his stomach that he vomits endlessly until the world ends. Written during his days working on the flyers and theatrical backdrops for the Angels of Light Free Theater and published just before his move to New York, these stories capture Wong’s playfulness and the absurdist, kaleidoscopic milieu of the moment in which they were written.
Many of these stories appeared before the book’s publication in Wong’s now-iconic calligraphic scrolls. Possessing a lifelong fascination with language and its representation, Wong began writing in a flickering, calligraphic style in the sixties that found a natural home in the psychedelic movement. During the period that Das Puke Book was written, the artist traveled to Nepal, India, and Afghanistan (which makes an appearance in chapter twelve) to take a mosaic workshop in Herat and study calligraphy and tantric painting. Upon his return, he referred to himself as a tantric set designer until concluding his work with the Angels of Light in 1973–the same year that he finished the work in this book.
Martin Wong (1946-1999) was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in San Francisco, California. He studied ceramics at Humboldt State University, graduating in 1968. Wong was active in the performance art groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light Free Theater before moving to New York in 1978. He exhibited for two decades at notable downtown galleries including EXIT ART, Semaphore, and P·P·O·W, among others, before his passing in San Francisco from an AIDS related illness. His work is represented in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, among others. Human Instamatic, a comprehensive retrospective, opened at the Bronx Museum of The Arts in November 2015, before traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2016 and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2017. In 2022, the first extensive, touring exhibition of Wong’s work in Europe, Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief, opened at Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid before traveling to KW Institute of Contemporary Art (Berlin), Camden Art Centre (London), and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam).
Managing Editor (2024): James Hoff
Managing Designer (2024): Rick Myers
2023, English
Softcover, 180 pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Uh Books / Amsterdam
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin
$25.00 - In stock -
Riffing off the title, this volume includes Catherine Damman interviewing Carolyn Lazard – an artist whose conceptual and often spare videos, sculptures, installations, and performances explore the full amplitude of relation, in addition a feature on contemporary artist Tishan Hsu, whose practice examines the “embodiment of technology”, plus contributions by time-based media artist Silvia Kolbowski, for whom political resistance, the unconscious, and structures of spectatorship are a central concern of all her projects; choreographer and dancer Yvonne Rainer; and science fiction author Octavia Butler. [...] Lee Lozano, Sturtevant, Margarethe Raspé, Jef Geys, Martin Wong, Bernadette Mayer, Louise Lawler, Sarah Rapson, Ketty La Rocca, Stanley Brouwn, Lutz Bacher, Hanne Darboven, Pope L., Silvia Kolbowski, Ilmari Kalkkinen, Henrik Olesen, Otto Wagner...
2022, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin
$99.00 - Out of stock
New major publication published to accompany the first extensive European exhibition of the work of the US-Chinese artist Martin Wong (b. 1946, Portland, US, d. 1999, San Francisco), ‘Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief’, initiated by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, and produced in collaboration with Camden Art Centre, Stedelijk Museum and Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Malicious Mischief is the result of exhaustive research into the life’s work of Wong from his early creations on the US East Coast to his work in the late-1990s before he died due to an VIH/AIDS-related illness.
Martin Wong is recognized for his depictions of social, sexual, and political scenographies from the US in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Poetically weaving together narratives of queer existence, marginal communities, and urban gentrification, Wong stands out as an important countercultural voice at odds with the art establishment’s reactionary discourse at the time. Heavily influenced by his immediate surroundings, the artist’s practice merges the visual languages of Chinese iconography, urban poetry, graffiti, carceral aesthetics, and sign language. His work offers rare insight into decisive periods of recent US American history as told through its changing urban landscapes, unfolding hidden desires, and complexities.
Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief presents a vast survey of Wong’s works, encompassing early paintings and sculptures made in the euphoric environments of San Francisco and Eureka, California, in the late 1960s and early 1970s; Wong’s iconic 1980s and 1990s paintings from his time as a citizen of a dilapidated New York City; lastly, his reminiscences on the imagery of Chinatowns on the East and West Coast, made prior to his premature death from an HIV/AIDS-related illness.
Edited by curators Krist Gruijthuijsen and Agustín Pérez Rubío.
Contributions by Julie Ault, Sofie Krogh Christensen, David J. Getsy, Heinz Peter Knes, Marci Kwon, Agustín Pérez Rubio, Danh Vo.
Co-published by Walther Koenig with KW Berlin.
1988, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 21.5 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Exit Art / New York
$220.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, extremely rare 1988 catalogue published to accompany the important solo exhibition of US-Chinese artist Martin Wong (b. 1946, Portland, US, d. 1999, San Francisco) at Exit Art, New York, November 5—December 23, 1988, curated by Jeanette Ingberman. Illustrated throughout with Wong's paintings accompanied by text by John Yau. Includes gorgeous portrait and biography.
Martin Wong is recognized for his depictions of social, sexual, and political scenographies from the US in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Poetically weaving together narratives of queer existence, marginal communities, and urban gentrification, Wong stands out as an important countercultural voice at odds with the art establishment’s reactionary discourse at the time. Heavily influenced by his immediate surroundings, the artist’s practice merges the visual languages of Chinese iconography, urban poetry, graffiti, carceral aesthetics, and sign language. His work offers rare insight into decisive periods of recent US American history as told through its changing urban landscapes, unfolding hidden desires, and complexities.
Very good copy with only light creasing and tanning.
2013, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 17.8 x 22.8 cm
Ed. of 800,
Published by
Galerie Buchholz / Köln
$90.00 - Out of stock
Gorgeous book published on the occasion of the exhibition “Neptune Society, San Francisco Columbarium, 4th Fl., Dome Room, South Wall, Tier 4, Niche 2” organised by Danh Vo at Galerie Buchholz, Berlin, 2012. Edited by Julie Ault, Heinz Peter Knes, Danh Vo, Christopher Müller & Daniel Buchholz.
In this exhibition and publication Danh Vo, Julie Ault and Heinz Peter Knes enter into a dialogue with the work of Martin Wong whose estate and collection was at the time (2012) stored and administered by Martin Wong’s mother Florence Wong Fie in the Wong family house in San Francisco.
Martin Wong (1946-1999) was born in Portland Oregon as the only son of Chinese immigrants Benjamin Fie and Florence Wong Fie. An important representative of the art scene in New York's lower East side in the 80s Martin Wong's house, as pictured in this publication, is a unique document of his life's work. In a variety of ways the contents of the house on the one hand reflects the wealth of reference in Martin Wong’s works, and over and above that the unique relationship between Martin Wong and his parents with all the necessarily complicated projections and possible misunderstandings such relationships entail.
This catalogue documents the collection of the artist Martin Wong. In numerous colour illustrations, photographs that Heinz Peter Knes took together with Danh Vo, the book depicts the interiors of the Wong Fie family residency in San Francisco filled with paintings, sculptures, and multifaceted objects from very specific and diverse fields of interest such as asian antiques and americana that Martin Wong followed and collected together with his parents throughout is life. Accompanied by a text by Julie Ault who recalls the congruity of Martin owning a Piet Mondrian and storing it "close to splashing water in his sixth-floor walk-up apartment in a run-down building on New York's pre-gentrification Lower East Side...".
2016, English
Hardcover, 280 pages, 31.6 x 3.1 x 26 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$120.00 - Out of stock
The resurgent interest in contemporary painting in recent years has coincided with an explosion of new digital media and technologies. Contrary to canonical accounts premised on medium-specificity, painting’s most advanced positions since the 1960s have developed in productive friction with contemporaneous forms of mass media and culture. From the rise of television and computers to the Internet revolution, painting has assimilated precisely those cultural and technological developments that were held responsible for its presumed “death.” Moving far beyond its technical definition as “oil on canvas,” painting during the information age has consistently offered a site for negotiating the challenges of a mediated life-world.
Featuring over 230 works by 107 artists, Painting 2.0 is one of the largest and most comprehensive exhibitions of contemporary painting in recent years.
Artists include:
Kai Althoff, Ei Arakawa/Shimon Minamikawa, Monika Baer, Nairy Baghramian, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lynda Benglis, Sadie Benning, Judith Bernstein, Joseph Beuys, Ashley Bickerton, Cosima von Bonin, KAYA (Debo Eilers & Kerstin Brätsch), Günter Brus, Daniel Buren, Merlin Carpenter, Leidy Churchman, William Copley, René Daniëls, Guy Debord/Asger Jorn, Carroll Dunham, Mary Beth Edelson, Thomas Eggerer, Michaela Eichwald, Nicole Eisenman, Jana Euler, Louise Fishman, Andrea Fraser, Isa Genzken, Mary Grigoriadis, Philip Guston, Wade Guyton, Guyton/Walker, Raymond Hains, Harmony Hammond, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Rachel Harrison, Mary Heilmann, Eva Hesse, Charline von Heyl, Ull Hohn, Jacqueline Humphries, Jörg Immendorff, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Yves Klein, Jutta Koether, Michael Krebber, Manfred Kuttner, Maria Lassnig, Sherrie Levine, Glenn Ligon, Lee Lozano, Konrad Lueg, Michel Majerus, Piero Manzoni, Kerry James Marshall, Hans-Jörg Mayer, John Miller, Joan Mitchell, Ree Morton, Ulrike Müller, Matt Mullican, Elisabeth Murray, Cady Noland, Hilka Nordhausen, Albert Oehlen, Laura Owens, Steven Parrino, Ed Paschke, Howardena Pindell, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price, Stephen Prina, R.H. Quaytman, Robert Rauschenberg, David Reed, Gerhard Richter, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, Mario Schifano, Amy Sillman, Sylvia Sleigh, Josh Smith, Joan Snyder, Reena Spaulings, Nancy Spero, Gruppe SPUR, Frank Stella, Walter Swennen, Paul Thek, Rosemarie Trockel, Cy Twombly, Jacques de la Villeglé, Kelley Walker, Andy Warhol, Sue Williams, Karl Wirsum, Martin Wong, Christopher Wool, Heimo Zobernig, u.a.
2016, English / Italian
Softcover (w. French-folds and inserted booklets), 200 pages, 19.5 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Marsilio / Venice
$85.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Danh Vo, Caroline Bourgeois, Julie Ault, Heinz Peter Knez, Stefan A. Peterson.
Exhibition curated by Danh Vo and Caroline Bourgeois
Texts by Patricia Falguieres, Elisabeth Lebovici, and Amy Zion
Photography by Heinz Peter Knes
Danh Vo’s conceptual artworks and installations often draw upon elements of personal lived experience (his own, the lives of his parents and other family members) to explore broader historical, social or political themes, particularly those relating to the history of Vietnam at the close of the twentieth century. The works shown in this book—closely related to an exhibition at the Pinault Foundation in Venice—in addition to Vo’s site-specific installations, include some curious old works of art from Venetian museums and collections, provocatively chosen by Vo to establish an unprecedented dialogue between past and present.
Beautifully designed, comprehensive exhibition catalogue with two inserted booklets (text book with words by Patricia Falguieres, Elisabeth Lebovici, and Amy Zion; and exhibition guide/artist profile book and work list), with the main book entirely made up of elegant colour photographic imagery by Heinz Peter Knez of the exhibition itself and the wonderful collection of works assembled. Profusely illustrated with installation views, works and details, featuring the work of Leonor Antunes, Nairy Baghramian, Giovanni Bellini, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Broodthaers, Giovanni Buonconsigliodetto Il Marescalco, Hubert Duprat, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Luciano Fabro, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Petrit Halilaj, David Hammons, Roni Horn, Peter Hujar, Tetsumi Kudo, Bertrand Lavier, Zoe Leonard, Francesco Lo Savio, Lee Lozano, Robert Manson, Piero Manzoni, Sadamasa Motonaga, Jean-Luc Moulène, Henrik Olesen, Pablo Picasso, Sigmar Polke, Carol Rama, Charles Ray, Auguste Rodin, Cameron Rowland, Andres Serrano, Nancy Spero, Sturtevant, Alina Szapocznikow, Paul Thek, Harald Thys & Jos Degruyter, Danh Vo, David Wojnarowicz, Martin Wong.
2016, English
Hardcover (w. dustjacket), 160 pages, 25 x 25 cm
Published by
Black Dog Publishing Ltd / London
$58.00 - Out of stock
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic explores the work of Chinese American artist Martin Wong (1946-1999), tracing his transition from an introspective youth in San Francisco painting haunting self-portraits, to his subsequent engagements with communities in the Bay Area and later New York City.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Wong became an active participant in the thriving countercultural movement in California, where he collaborated with the radical queer performance groups Cockettes and Angels of Light. In 1978, Wong moved to New York where he could play a pivotal role in the arts scene throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Wong's unique paintings of that period captures the vibrancy of the Lower East Side: a resilient, multi-ethnic, bohemian community grappling with an advanced process of gentrification. Diagnosed with HIV in 1994, Wong returned to San Francisco where he lived under the care of his parents until he died in 1999.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic offers a comprehensive overview of Martin Wong's career through a number of scholarly essays, archival material, and an interview with Wong made accessible to the public for the first time. Martin Wong: Human Instamatic is in partnership with the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Contributors: Antonio Sergio Bessa, John Yau, Benjamin Binstock, Dan Cameron, Julie Ault, Yasmin Ramirez, and Sam Ashman.
2013, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 21 x 29 cm
Published by
Artists Space / New York
Culturgest / Lisbon
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
Museum für Gegenwartskunst / Basel
$85.00 - Out of stock
Julie Ault is an artist, curator, writer, and editor, whose work emphasizes and celebrates the complex interrelationships between cultural production and politics. Ault cofounded the New York artists' collaborative Group Material, which between 1979 and 1996 explored this relationship between art, activism and politics through socially themed exhibitions and publicly-sited projects. The collection of artworks Ault has assembled over the last 30 years speaks to her practice as one built on exchange, friendship and a critical notion of mutable histories.
Tell It To My Heart – Collected by Julie Ault is published by Hatje Cantz in collaboration with Artists Space, New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; and Culturgest, Lisbon, and accompanies a three-part exhibition staged around the artworks in Ault's possession. The exhibition was initiated by Nikola Dietrich and Scott Cameron Weaver at Museum für Gegenwartskunst, and was presented in Basel, Lisbon and New York between 2013 and 2014. The first volume of the publication was published to coincide with the exhibitions, and centers on an index of works along with detailed commentary on these works from the diverse voices of the book's editors – Julie Ault, Martin Beck, Nikola Dietrich, Heinz Peter Knes, Rasmus Røhling, Jason Simon, Scott Cameron Weaver, Danh Vo and Amy Zion. Over the course of her 35-plus years at the forefront of New York's art culture, Ault has amassed a superb collection of contemporary art, most of it given to her by artist friends and admirers. Almost more of an interiors book in the style of "Apartamento" magazine, "Tell It to My Heart" takes us through Ault's New York apartment, reproducing works by artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Andres Serrano, Nancy Spero and Danh Vo among many others. Together, and in situ, the artworks disclose a highly personal experience of an art community, initially centered in New York during Ault's formative years, but with a reach that has long since transcended regional classifications.
2016, English
Hardcover, 156 pages, 21 x 29 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$89.00 $60.00 - In stock -
Julie Ault is an artist, curator, writer, and editor, whose work emphasizes and celebrates the complex interrelationships between cultural production and politics. Ault cofounded the New York artists' collaborative Group Material, which between 1979 and 1996 explored this relationship between art, activism and politics through socially themed exhibitions and publicly-sited projects. The collection of artworks Ault has assembled over the last 30 years speaks to her practice as one built on exchange, friendship and a critical notion of mutable histories.
Tell It To My Heart – Collected by Julie Ault is published by Hatje Cantz in collaboration with Artists Space, New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; and Culturgest, Lisbon, and accompanies a three-part exhibition staged around the artworks in Ault's possession. The exhibition was initiated by Nikola Dietrich and Scott Cameron Weaver at Museum für Gegenwartskunst, and was presented in Basel, Lisbon and New York between 2013 and 2014. Over the course of her 35-plus years at the forefront of New York's art culture, Ault has amassed a superb collection of contemporary art, most of it given to her by artist friends and admirers. The "Tell It to My Heart" books take us through Ault's collection in different contexts, reproducing works by artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Andres Serrano, Nancy Spero and Danh Vo among many others. Together, and in situ, the artworks disclose a highly personal experience of an art community, initially centered in New York during Ault's formative years, but with a reach that has long since transcended regional classifications.
Volume 2 follows a more reflective and distanced mode than its predecessor, including installation images of the exhibitions, and a series of essays from scholars and curators that respond to the overall character and process of Tell It To My Heart. The publication also includes a comprehensive checklist of artworks exhibited across the three venues, as well as those works included in the film programs accompanying each exhibition.
Tell It To My Heart – Collected by Julie Ault, Volume 2 is edited by Richard Birkett, Martin Beck and Julie Ault, and includes texts by curator Richard Birkett; art historian Patricia Falguières; writer Sarah Schulman; and archivist Marvin J. Taylor, with graphic design by Project Projects, New York.
2013, English
Softcover, 208 pages (colour and b/w ill. throughout), 22.8 cm x 17.8 cm
Ed. of 1000,
Published by
Daniel Buchholz Galerie / Köln
Walther König / Köln
$60.00 - Out of stock
This book documents the collection of the artist Martin Wong (1946–1999).
In numerous colour illustrations, photographs that Heinz Peter Knes took together with Danh Vo, the book depicts the interiors of the Wong Fie family residency in San Francisco filled with paintings, sculptures, and mulitfaceted objects from very specific and diverse fields of interest such as asian antiques and americana that Martin Wong followed and collected together with his parents throughout is life.
This books was produced on the occasion of the exhibiton:
Julie Ault/Heinz Peter Knes/Danh Vo/Martin Wong
“Neptune Society, San Francisco Columbarium, 4th Fl., Dome Room, South Wall, Tier 4, Niche 2” at Daniel Buchholz Galerie, Fasanenstraße 30, Berlin
Portion of exhibition text:
Under the title "Neptune Society, San Francisco Columbarium, 4th Fl., Dome Room, South Wall, Tier 4" we are presenting an installation with new works by Dahn Vo, a new text by Julie Ault and photographs by Heinz Peter Knes, as well selected works and ephemera from the estate and collection of Martin Wong. The exhibition was organised by Dahn Vo. Together with Julie Ault and Heinz Peter Knes, Dahn Vo enters into a dialogue with the work of Martin Wong whose estate and collection iscurrently stored and administered by Martin Wong’s mother Florence Wong Fie in the Wong family house in San Francisco. Martin Wong (1946-1999) was born in Portland Oregon as the only son of Chinese immigrants Benjamin Fie and Florence Wong Fie.
Martin Wong grew up in San Francisco where he was active in the late 60s and early 70s in the art scene in San Francisco, first as a ceramic artist, then as a draughtsman and painter. In San Francisco he also became a member of the performance groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light. In 1978 Martin Wong moves to New York’s Lower East Side. Since the beginning of the 80s Martin Wong has been showing his work in the context of exhibition spaces and galleries like the Semaphore Gallery, Exit Art and PPOW which were all just being set up at that time.
From his early years Martin Wong has cultivated a distinct passion for collecting in the most diverse areas. Together with his mother, he begins haunting antique shops and flea markets in search of curiosities from American Folk Art and antiques, above all Asiatic antiques, acquiring extensive knowledge and expertise in these fields. Later, alongside his work as a painter he will make a living as a dealer in Asian antiques. After moving to New York Martin Wong takes an increasing interest in the art market and begins to acquire works which interest him and which he can afford to buy. One of the first artworks which he acquired after moving to New York was a “Campbell’s Tomato Juice” box by Andy Warhol. Warhol is in many ways a model for Martin Wong and the areas of interest of both artists are astoundingly similar (at this time Andy Warhol’s private collection had not been published, which makes the parallels between Warhol’s and Wong’s collections the more astonishing).
Martin Wong also acquires a drawing by Piet Mondrian which he then sells at the end of the 80s in order to use the money as the initial capital for a Museum of Graffiti Art. By this time Martin Wong had assembled a large collection from the New York graffiti scene. The Street Art and Poetry scene in New York in the late 70s and early 80s were important points of reference for Martin Wong and substantially shaped the work he produced after the move from San Francisco. Martin Wong developed his known “Sign Language” paintings, that depict sentences in the finger alphabet of gesture language, as his answer to the ‘tags’ of the New York graffiti artists.
During his years in New York Martin Wong also kept in close contact and conducted an extensive correspondence with his family in which he informs his parents about his experiences in New York and reports, in particular to his mother, about his latest purchases and sales.
In 1994 Martin Wong is diagnosed HIV positive. When the state of his health becomes worse Martin Wong decides to move back to his parents in San Francisco. The house he returns to has in the meantime changed into a hybrid between warehouse and shrine, full of the objects, antiques and works of art that Martin Wong had regularly sent back to his mother, as well as a large number of his own works that he dedicated to his parents. Until his death in 1999, with the exception of occasional trips to New York with his mother to see exhibitions and keep up his contacts with his New York circle, Martin Wong was now to live in the parental home where he continued to work, for example on the cactus paintings or a depiction of Patty Hearst in the painting “Did I ever have a Chance”, which is, according to reports, one of Martin Wong’s last paintings and is supposed to have been his proposal for an AIDS Memorial.
In the 90s when it becomes clear to Martin Wong that he will not outlive his parents, he begins to search for a suitable burial place for his family, since it is a Chinese tradition that the son takes care of the burial of his parents. He decides on a family plot in San Francisco Columbarium, an urn repository in a cemetery in the vicinity of the Wong Fie home. In the dome on the fourth floor in row four on the South Wall Martin Wong’s urn and that of his father are now to be found.
Florence Wong Fie who lives in the family house, manages her son’s artistic legacy, archives the collection, and is working to establish a Martin Wong Foundation for Artists. The urn repository site was designed by her as if it were an annex of her house, and it is richly decorated with a changing selection of objects and photographs.
The house in its current state is a unique document of the life’s work of Martin Wong, an important representative of the art scene in New York's lower East Side in the 80s. In a variety of ways the contents of the house on the one hand reflects the wealth of reference in Martin Wong’s works, and over and above that the unique relationship between Martin Wong and his parents with all the necessarily complicated projections and possible misunderstandings such relationships entail.
Danh Vo has been involved with Martin Wong’s work for a considerable time. In the course of many visits to Florence Wong Fie he has come to know the house and the collection. Florence Wong Fie has now announced that she will have to give up the house in the coming year and move into a retirement home. The question of the continuing existence of the collection has not at this time been clarified. Danh Vo has invited Heinz Peter Knes to make a photo-documentation of the house, and has commissioned Julie Ault to write a piece on the unique constellation of the collection. Julie Ault knew Martin Wong back in the 80s in New York and worked with him on several occasions, she also knows Florence Wong Fie.
In the course of the exhibition we will publish a book with Julie Ault’s text and Hans Peter Knes’s photographs.