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:
THU—SAT 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
info@worldfoodbooks.com
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 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. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or 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.
1971, Japanese
Hardcover (w.dust jacket and slipcase), 24 x 23 cm
Ed. of 600,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Kyuryudo / Tokyo
$350.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Rare first photo book by Japanese photographer Inakoshi Koichi, published in Japan in 1971 in an edition of only 600 copies. Maybe, maybe is an incredible collection of moody monochrome images shot in Manhattan, New York, evoking an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. The pictures have been printed in a dark gravure, with some shots bordering on conceptual, while others capture the bleak reality of American pessimism, especially as it relates to the Vietnam War. Reminiscent of the vein of Japanese photography popularized by Shigeo Gocho and Kiyoshi Suzuki, but with the lens turned outside Japan. Includes essay by Key Hasegawa.
Japanese photographer Koichi Inakoshi began his career as a graphic artist. However in 1970, he began working as a freelance photographer. Known for his monochromatic images of daily life, his works also include landscapes, streets, and portraits. A very prolific artist, he published several books of his work before his death in 2009. Koichi Inakoshi's first book titled Maybe, Maybe was published in 1971. His works have been exhibited in Japan, the United States, and Europe. Throughout his career, Koichi Inakoshi worked with artists of different fields. Notably, in 1984 Inakoshi collaborated with famous Japanese writer Haruki Murakami on the book Pictures of Wave, Tales of Wave.
Very Good copy book in average—poor slipcase with small chips and spine-creased.
1978, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 25.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Queer Kids / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Super rare glam rock issue of the super rare PANSY fanzine, published by Queer Kids in Tokyo in the 1970s. Never seen another issue ever before (apparently 12 were produced), PANSY applies the queer gaze to the world of glam rock, post punk, new romantic... T-Rex/Marc Bolan, New York Dolls, David Bowie, Japan, Slade, Roxy Music, Raped, Brats ... photographing, interviewing, and profiling the princes of the new androgynous wave with school diary visual sensibility and DIY hand-collage aesthetic throughout. Includes a New York Dolls family tree, loads of magazine clipped pictures, and hand-written Japanese texts. Very obscure, very charming, very Japanese.
Very Good copy with small previous sticker damage to top of spine (front/back), otherwise only light edge wear and age.
1972, Japanese
Softcover (w. french-fold dust jacket and printed cardboard slipcase w. original obistrip), 246 pages, 13 x 19.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kodansha Int / Tokyo
$160.00 - Out of stock
The very scarce and unique PUSH by Tadanori Yokoo, published in 1972 and featuring photography by Kishin Shinoyama and Daido Moriyama.
After a car accident in 1972 Tadanori Yokoo decided to take a two year hiatus from work at the height of his fame. PUSH is a visually inventive dairy of this period beautifully designed by Yokoo himself with colour nude girl photographs and b/w self-portraits of the artist by none other than Kishin Shinoyama, Daido Moriyama and Tadashi Krahashi. A gorgeous and curious production with humorous over-printing and incredible design, housed in original printed slipcase with the original publisher's obi-strip.
Tadanori Yokoo (b. 1936) is one of Japan's most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists, who began working with painting in 1966. In parallel, Yokoo’s early screenprints experimented with collage and illustration, combining found photographs with the influence of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e and pop art’s flat vibrant colours and overtly sexual and grotesque content, often reflecting on the rapid changes and Westernisation of Japan post-war society. His interests in mysticism and esotericism, deepened by travels to India, influenced his iconic posters with eclectic psychedelic imagery sharing the aesthetics of the underground counterculture he was associated with. In Tokyo, Yokoo worked as a stage designer for avant-garde theatre, collaborating extensively with Shūji Terayama and his experimental theater group Tenjō Sajiki. By the late 60s he had already achieved international recognition and in the early 1970s MoMA mounted a solo exhibition of his graphic work. His famous designs for The Beatles, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana and collaborations with friend and iconic Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake are renowned the world over. He also starred as a protagonist in Nagisa Oshima's film Diary of a Shinjuku Thief in 1968.
Very Good—Near Fine copy, with only light wear and age. Very well preserved and complete.
1982, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 172 pages, 29 x 21 cm
Signed.,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Soushisha / Tokyo
$500.00 - In stock - Add to cart
First 1982 edition of scarce cult photobook by Japanese photographer Joji 'George' Hashiguchi (b. born in Kagoshima in 1949). This copy boldly signed by Hashiguchi in silver marker on the front black endpaper. Hashiguchi's first, and arguably most powerful photobook, dedicated to rebellious or extremist 70s/80s youth tribes — punks, gangsters, skinheads, dealers/users, early b-boys, tearaways, bikers, berlin squatters, junkies, etc., in Liverpool, London, Nüremberg, East Berlin, New York City, Tokyo Shinjuku. At the age of nineteen Hashiguchi entered the Aoyama Photography School (Tokyo). For several years he wandered around the world and gradually became interested in recording the disaffected youth around the world. This, his first book, published after winning the Taiyo photography award, established him as a serious documentary photographer. A fascinating collection, both socially and ethnographically, capturing the spirit of late 70s counterculture and youthful unrest shot in raw photodocumentary style and finely printed in deep gravure. Texts in Japanese.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket that has general wear, tanning to spine/edges, wear to dj edges.
1981, English
Softcover, 102 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Society for Education in Film and Television Ltd. / London
$14.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Vol. 21 No. 4 of Screen, Independent Cinema, British TV - The Future, published by the Society for Education in Film and Television Ltd., London.
Contents : JOHN CAUGHIE: Because I am King and Independent Cinema; A discussion between Marc Karlin and Claire Johnston, Mark Nash and Paul Willemen: Problems of Independent Cinema; JOHN ELLIS: At the Fountainhead (of TV History); The Independent Film-makers' Association and the Fourth Channel; British TV Today; Channel Four and Innovation; PAUL KERR: Re-Inventing the Cinema; ALAN LOVELL: BFI Regional Conference; IAN CONNELL: Edinburgh TV Festival; MICHAEL O'PRAY: On Adrian Stokes and Film Aesthetics.
G—VG copy.
2015, English
Softcover (+ black staple-bound, silk-screened metallic-cover zine), 208 + 24 pages, 20 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$290.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition (Black cover) of the out-of-print first publication on the work of Experimental Jetset featuring almost two decades of graphic design praxis. Rather than a monolithic monograph, it is a very loose, personal archive, with essays by Linda van Deursen, Mark Owens, and Ian Svenonius, plus two photographic chapters with a selection of work by the studio, covering both printed matter and the documentation of site-specific pieces and installations. To conclude is a glossary-like anthology of texts (fragments of interviews, lectures, correspondence, etc.) previously written by Experimental Jetset, selected, edited, and structured by Jon Sueda. Combined with the zine 'Automatically Arranged Alphabets'. Stapled in a screenprinted silver cardboard cover, the zine contains a typographic experiment involving software-generated compositions (part of a series of sketches made between 2014-2015).
Both publications designed by Experimental Jetset.
As New copy of the first (black) print (book was re-printed multiple times in changing cover colours).
2015, English
Softcover (black staple-bound, silk-screened metallic stock), 24 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$18.00 - Out of stock
Stapled in a screenprinted silver cardboard cover, the zine (titled 'Automatically Arranged Alphabets') contains a typographic experiment involving software-generated compositions (part of a series of sketches made between 2014-2015).
Design: Experimental Jetset
1982, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 30 x 21.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tazawa Shobo / Tokyo
$180.00 - Out of stock
Very rare first (only) 1982 printing of this underground SM photo book by Japanese bondage master, Sun and Moon editor, writer, SM illustrator and painter, Yasushi Arakawa, more widely known by the name Keiichi Seta (b. 1933). Seta was an SM enthusiast who started his career contributing to what is probably Japan's most well-known SM magazine, Kitan Club, in the mid-1960s, under the name Sakae Nakamiya. He went on to found and publish such cult classic SM magazines as Sun and Moon and SM Mirage in the 1970s, where his work became widely known. Sun and Moon is considered to be Japan's first practical SM magazine.
This very unique book is a photo collection dedicated to Arakawa's 22-year-old wife, Tomoko. Lavishly designed, it functions as a photo book more than it does an instructional book, with the first chapter made up of the SM rope play of Arakawa and the star of the book, Tomoko, and the second chapter titled "Swap Hunt" expanding into a lush collection documenting the pair and another couple, masked, with toys, candles, rope... Lastly there are some illustrated texts on rope craftsmanship by (probably) Arakawa and like-minded people.
Cover blurb : "Today ....... I can see the things I love shining brightly, I got the treasure of my life, struck by a strong emotion, your devoted love, forever I will never forget"
From the obi: "Photo book 'Tomoko' was edited based on the record that a beginner practitioner of SM love technique wanted to improve his bondage practical skill, and his beloved wife was provided as a material for learning it. It is, so to speak, the early "Aisiroku" of a married couple who live through a long life together. From the technique of love binding to the exchange of fellows of Yoetsu"
Good copy with some pinching to spine, light DJ wear, other VG.
2016, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$35.00 - Out of stock
Translated, with an introduction, by Erik Butler
First published in French in 1893, Sweating Blood describes the atrocities of war in thirty tales of horror and inhumanity from the pen of the “Pilgrim of the Absolute,” Léon Bloy. Writing with blood, sweat, tears, and moral outrage, Bloy drew from anecdotes, news reports, and his own experiences as a franc-tireur to compose a fragmented depiction of the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, told with equal measures of hatred and pathos, and alternating between cutting detail and muted anguish. From heaps of corpses, monstrous butchers, cowardly bourgeois, bloody massacres, seas of mud, drunken desperation, frightful disfigurement, grotesque hallucinations, and ghoulish means of personal revenge, a generalized portrait of suffering is revealed that ultimately requires a religious lens: for through Bloy’s maniacal nationalism and frenetic Catholicism, it is a hell that emerges here, a nineteenth-century apocalypse that tore a country apart and set the stage for a century of atrocities that were yet to come.
A close friend to Joris-Karl Huysmans, and later admired by the likes of Kafka and Borges, Léon Bloy (1846–1917) is among the best known but least translated of the French Decadent writers. Nourishing antireligious sentiments in his youth, his outlook changed radically when he moved to Paris and came under the influence of Barbey d’Aurevilly, the unconventionally religious novelist best known for Les Diaboliques. He earned his dual nickname of “The Pilgrim of the Absolute” through his unorthodox devotion to the Catholic Church and “The Ungrateful Beggar” through his endless reliance on the charity of friends to support him and his family.
“Monsieur Bloy is a prophet. He took care, in his writings, to certify himself as such for us: ‘I am a prophet.’ He was able to add: and a pamphleteer as well… The prophet makes hearts bleed; the pamphleteer flays skins; Bloy is a flayer of skins.”—Remy de Gourmont
“Bloy is a twin crystal of diamond and dung.”—Ernst Junger
1981, English
Softcover, 260 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Indiana University Press / Indiana
$30.00 - Out of stock
1981 first edition of Questions of Cinema by Stephen Heath, published by Indiana University Press. Stephen Heath's approach to the study of film, drawing on developments in psycho-analysis, semiotics and Marxism, is massively influential not only among cinema specialists, but also for students of art, literature and the sociology of culture. His own writings continue to be the most approachable in a notoriously difficult field.
For Questions of Cinema he has collected together a representative range of pieces, many of which are unpublished or not easily available to English readers, presenting film as a signifying practice and the cinema as a social institution of meanings. Topics treated include: the construction of space in film, narrative, the terms of the presence of people in film, relations of viewer to film, cinema and language, technology, political and avant-garde film practice ... Directors' work considered runs from Orson Welles through Hitchcock to Oshima and a number of British and American "independents."
Stephen Heath is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He is the author of The Nouveau Roman and Vertige du deplacement and has recently edited with Teresa de Lauretis The Cinematic Apparatus. He has taught and lectured on film in Europe and the United States.
Good copy general wear split to bottom spine cover edge. Erasable marginalia in pencil.
1974 / 1983, English
Softcover, 360 pages, 21 x 13 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Oxford University Press / New York
$20.00 - Out of stock
Revised 1983 edition of the 1974 Oxford University publication Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction Film by Erik Barnouw, a classic work on documentary films and filmmaking that surveys the history of the genre from 1895 to the present day (1983). Filled with photographs, many of them rare, collected during the author's travels around the world, Barnouw considers the medium within international political and social climate, examining the impact of new technical breakthroughs such as the video cassettes and cable television, spanning an extensive chronology of documentary works from Louis Lumiere's first effort to David Attenborough's groundbreaking Life on Earth via Dziga Vertov, Frederick Wiseman, Jean Pianleve, Roman Lazarevich Karmen, Arne Sucksdorff, Leni Riefenstahl, Albert and David Maysles, and hundreds more. This book makes the growing importance of a unique blend of art and reality accessible and understandable to all film lovers.
Good copy with general wear.
2023, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 25.4 x 18 cm
Published by
Fulgur Press / UK
$84.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Essays on the art and writings of the long-neglected British occultist and Surrealist.
Straddling the worlds of Surrealism, occultism and modernist literature, Ithell Colquhoun (1906-88) was widely respected in her lifetime, but her transgressive, esoteric and poetic paintings and writings were long neglected until Richard Shillitoe's 2009 book Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature initiated her revaluation--followed by Fulgur's 2016 publication Decad of Intelligence, the Tate's 2019 acquisition of more than 5,000 Colquhoun works and Amy Hale's 2020 biography. Colquhoun occupies a unique place within the lineage of occult Surrealist painters such as Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, as her presence in the 2022 Venice Biennale exhibition Milk of Dreams demonstrated.
This volume is the first critical examination of her diverse legacy, compiling papers from a 2018 conference on Colquhoun and her contemporaries Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini and Stella Snead. Contributors explore themes of authorship and agency, Colquhoun's drawing practice, her Celtic motifs, British Surrealism and alchemy.
2023, English
Hardcover, 270 pages, 24.13 x 16.51 cm
Published by
Equinox / Sheffield
$74.00 - Out of stock
Ivor Cutler: A Life Outside the Sitting Room is the first biography of one of post-war Britain's most recognisable authors, poets and performers. Mr Cutler (as he preferred to be known) wrote and recorded some of the most unusual and memorable songs and poems in British popular culture, including the hilarious and unsettling 'Life in a Scotch Sitting Room' series. Described by fans and commentators as an outsider because of his eccentric behaviour on and off stage, in many ways he was an insider, working for thirty years as a primary school teacher, gathering a body of fans from the heart of the cultural and social establishment, and regularly appearing on mainstream media. He was one of the first performers - if not the first - to appear on BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4, and famously recorded more John Peel sessions than any other act except the Fall.
This book is based on evidence from official documents, print and broadcast media; archive interviews with Ivor Cutler, his close friends and family, fans and collaborators; and new interviews with fans, friends and fellow performers. Contributors include musical and acting collaborators who have never been interviewed about their experiences with Mr Cutler.
"This is a really comprehensive and conscientious look at the great man's life and work. Straight in, we learn something about the family roots of 'Mr Cutler,' something I was never able to quite work out: it is clear here that my assumption that he emerged from an egg, at the foot of a little known mountain in Y'Hup is highly inaccurate."—Robert Wyatt, musician and composer
1976, English / Italian
Hardcover, 230 pages, 31 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Idea Books Edizioni / Milano
Studio Vista / London
$300.00 - Out of stock
The like-no-other Decorattivo - a groundbreaking publishing project from Achizoom founders Andrea Branzi and Massimo Morozzi, along with Clino T. Castelli and Adela Coat Turin, who together formed Il Centro Design Montefibre, to research textiles, fibres and colours. The published outcome was Decorattivo - a hardcover publication dedicated to "monographic themes of international textile and environmental design. This work is the result of wide research conducted internationally in museums, private collections and foundations, and aiming to trace original textile samples relating to the handbook's different chosen themes."
Intended to be an annual publication, only two editions of Decorattivo were issued by Idea (Milan) and Studio Vista, becoming very collectable source-books for anyone interested in pattern design, textiles, fibre design, and decorative systems, not to mention the work of some of Italy's finest avant-garde designers.
"The monographic theme of Decorattivo 1 is concerned with two contrasting decorative trends: on one side the amorphous or informal design directly connected to creative and spontaneous processes, on the other, the 'UFO', a decorative system created out of objects in space."
A one-of-kind design resource, profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white, including fold-out spreads. All texts in English and Italian.
Good copy, with light cover/spine wear and bumping to hard covers. Minor ex-libris card and markings. Light warp, but bright, crisp pages and good binding throughout.
1977, English / Italian
Hardcover, 230 pages, 31 x 22 cm
Private edition,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Centro Design Montefibre / Milan
$350.00 - Out of stock
The like-no-other Decorattivo - a groundbreaking publishing project from Achizoom founders Andrea Branzi and Massimo Morozzi, along with Clino T. Castelli and Adela Coat Turin, who together formed Il Centro Design Montefibre, to research textiles, fibres and colours. The published outcome was Decorattivo - a hardcover publication dedicated to "monographic themes of international textile and environmental design. This work is the result of wide research conducted internationally in museums, private collections and foundations, and aiming to trace original textile samples relating to the handbook's different chosen themes."
Intended to be an annual publication, only two editions of Decorattivo were issued, in both commercially distributed editions by Idea Books Milan, and the exceptionally rare privately distributed not-for-sale editions issued by Centro Design Montefibre itself. All versions very rare, but the not-for-sale editions with debossed covers barely exist. Very collectable source-books for anyone interested in pattern design, textiles, fibre design, and decorative systems, not to mention the work of some of Italy's finest avant-garde designers.
The monographic them of Decorattivo 2 is Righe e Quadri (Lines and Squares).
A one-of-kind design resource, profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white. All texts in English and Italian.
VG copy, with light cover/spine wear and bumping to one hard cover corner not affecting the pages within. Clean and bright throughout, tightly bound.
1974, Italian
Softcover, 198 pages, 27.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Casabella / Milan
$450.00 - Out of stock
The extremely collectable book of the movement, Architettura "Radicale" was published by Casabella Milan in 1974 and collects Navone's thesis with Orlandoni, forming an unsurpassed critical essay on the new avant-garde architecture and radical design of Italy (and further afield) that rose out of the 1960s. With an introduction by the great designer and editor Andrea Branzi, this volume contains over 150 black and white illustrations of projects and works by Archizoom, Superstudio, Alessandro Mendini, Gianni Pettena, UFO Group, Raimund Abraham, Lapo Binazzi, Andrea Branzi, James Gowan, Rem Koolhaas, Ugo La Pietra, Eduardo Paolozzi, Gaetano Pesce, Walter Pichler, Ettore Sottsass and many others. Includes a very important bibliography and profiles on the designers. A stunning piece of printed design history, now very rarely seen.
Good-Very Good copy with light general cover and corner wear, tanning to edges.
1987, Japanese
Softcover, 168 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Issue No.30 of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, founded in 1984 by Makoto Orui, who later became art director for Purple magazine in France and Rockin’on magazine in Japan. SALE2 was active for about 14 years during the 1980s—1990s, published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. With Orui's distinct design SALE2 developed an exclusive curated editorial set on ‘erotisism and its spiritual philosophy’, with each issue exploring different themes and features, heavy on fetishism and erotic art.
Issue No.30, the "Special Issue" features Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Richard Cerf, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Paul Wunderlich, Robert Maplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Man Ray, Lewis Carroll, John Willie, Bernard Montorgueil, Guido Crepax, Van Rod, Carlo, Betty Page, Tealdo, clippings from periodicals such as Amateur Bondage, Bondage Life, Bondage Fantasies, Bizarre Comix, Bizarre Classix, Bizarre Fotos, and much more...
Very heavily illustrated throughout with erotic photography and artwork, all texts in Japanese.
Very Good copy with tanning to pages.
2023, English
Softcover, 368 pages, 17.7 x 11.3 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$36.00 - Out of stock
What if capitalism and its social machine were the outcome of a conspiratorial strategy?
What if capitalism and its social machine were the outcome of a conspiratorial strategy? This anonymous book considers evidence that they must be that. Further, it argues in favor of passionate counter-conspiracies as the logical form of revolt in our time, when our very souls are said to be at stake.
Translated by Robert Hurley
Robert Hurley is a translator whose credits include translating the work of French philosophers Michael Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Clastres, and Georges Bataille.
"The Conspiracist Manifesto should prompt a reconsideration of the question raised previously by both Jameson and Latour: Can the reflexive skepticism of “critical theory” be distinguished from that of “conspiracy theory”? What is—and what should be—the proper relation between these two bodies of “theory,” both ostensibly defined by radical suspicion?"—Geoff Shullenberger, The Chronicle of Higher Education
2023, English
Softcover, 432 pages, 17.6 x 11.5 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$35.00 - Out of stock
An acute reappraisal for our time of the very concept of revolution.
In order to be effective, union struggles, struggles for national liberation, worker mutualism, or struggles for emancipation were strategies that were necessarily connected to revolution. Starting from the historic defeat of the global Revolution in the mid-1970s, this book draws a portrait-whose elaboration is still lacking-of the concept of revolution. What conditions could lead us to speak of revolution once again?
In The Intolerable Present, the Urgency of Revolution, Maurizio Lazzarato ponders the fundamental importance of the passage from the historical class struggle (the conflict between capital and labour) to the more recent class struggles that open onto plural trajectories- social, sexual, gender, and race struggles. Expanding the notion of class as a rejoinder to the normative appropriation of minority politics, the revolution is returned as the horizon where subjection can be resorbed.
In this sense, Marxist, feminist, anticolonial, and postcolonial theories provide the necessary critical tools to understand the relations between classes and minorities, between the global North and the global South, and between the time of revolutions and the eruption of new subjectivities.
Maurizio Lazzarato is an independent philosopher who lives and works in Paris. He is the author of Wars and Capital with Eric Alliez (Semiotext(e), 2018), and Capital Hates Everyone: Fascism or Revolution (Semiotext(e), 2021).
2011, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 192 pages, 18 x 11.4 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kodansha Int / Tokyo
$300.00 - Out of stock
Daido Moriyama's legendary photo book, A Hunter. Rare, limited Kodansha reissue of the original first published in 1972, in new format akin to Araki's original classic Tokyo Lucky Hole (1990), now also out-of-print and collectible.
A seminal piece and an important addition to any serious photobook collector. “A Hunter”, one of Moriyama's first books, was originally published in 1972, as the tenth part of Japan's most lauded photobook series called “Gendai no Me,” and includes many of Daido Moriyama’s most infamous and respected photographs. For the series, Moriyama—inspired by Kerouac’s “On The Road”—drove through Japan by car, took photos wherever his wheels took him, and substantiated his status as one of Japan’s greatest photographers. "When I shoot something on a road ... I mutate to a hungry hunter. Routes and roads are the hunting field for as a photographer where I hunt images." A masterpiece!
Introduction and colophon in Japanese and English.
Daidō Moriyama is a Japanese photographer, born in 1938 in Osaka. Firstly, he studied photography before moving to Tokyo in 1961. To begin with, he worked as an assistant to Japanese photographer and filmmaker Eikoh Hosoe. As a result, he began to produce his own collection of photographs. Afterwards, he ended up depicting the forgotten areas and darker side of cities. Shortly after, Japan Photo-critics awarded him the New Artist Award. Hence, Moriyama’s images are now known for capturing the breakdown of Japanese tradition. His work captures life during and following the American occupation of Japan after World War II. In particular the effects of industrialisation and the consequential shift in urban life. His images focus on the areas left behind in a rapidly changing city. He received the Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement from the International Center of Photography in New York in 2004 as well as the Hasselblad Award in 2019.
Very Good copy.
1994, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. obi strip), 382 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Fuga Shobo / Tokyo
$380.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Fine, signed copy of Nobuyoshi Araki's 1994 photo book, Arakitronics, the first work of Araki created on digital camera, yet quintessentially Araki. Shot in 1994 in a studio with a single female model, and briefly a stand-in "lover", and of course Araki in cameo. This heavy hardcover book is comprised cover-to-cover with full-bleed full-colour rich glossy fetish and bondage-themed nudes of his model performing. Shot in a digital stream, "Araki's attempt here is a challenge to the traditional way of photography that gives a privileged meaning to one cut and is to be governed by arbitrary aesthetics [...] the essential anarchism of the image is opposed to the principle that has continued to secretly control photography"—Koitaro Iizawa (photo critic, historian) in his Afterword. In print the photos can at times be rough and lacking in resolution, but they express "the direct power inherent to Eros".
This special copy signed by Araki on the one available blank page in his trademark "A" in large red marker!
Nobuyoshi Araki is a prolific Japanese photographer who has produced thousands of photographs over the course of his career. He became famous for “Un Voyage Sentimental” (1971), a series of photos depicting both banal and deeply intimate scenes of his wife and lifelong muse, essayist Aoki Yoko (whom the artist credits for making him a photographer), during their honeymoon. To date the 75 year old has produced 450 photo books and counting. With a repertoire that knows no boundaries, Araki's diaristic style of photography has captured the world around him (his cat Chiro, the people and landscapes of Japan and his travels, flowers, family), though it is Araki’s intensely sexual imagery that has elicited particular controversy and fascination throughout his career. Similarly to Helmut Newton, Araki has often addressed subversive themes — such as bondage in the Japanese style Kinbaku — in his provocative depictions of female nudes. He typically works in black-and-white photography, and his hallmark style is deliberately casual. “Rather than shooting something that looks like a professional photograph, I want my work to feel intimate, like someone in the subject’s inner circle shot them,” he says. Pushing against the world of commercialised photography, he is celebrated for his history of self-publishing and distributing his work, beginning with his Xerox Photo Albums of 1970. Amongst many others, Araki has collaborated with American photographer Nan Goldin and Icelandic musician Björk.
Near Fine copy with VG obi and clean interior.
2006, English
Hardcover, 288 pages, 21 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
The Drawing Center / New York
$150.00 - In stock - Add to cart
First hardcover edition of this out-of-print volume on Eva Hesse's drawing practice. Hesse (1936—1970) was a highly experimental artist who continually challenged the conventions of her time. For Hesse, drawing played a unique role, providing the nexus between her works in all media. Eva Hesse Drawing is the first book to explore her drawing process, following her work from drawing to painting and sculpture, and always back to drawing. The book features important, recently rediscovered “working drawings,” providing an intimate look at Hesse’s everyday practice and methodology.
An accomplished draftswoman, Hesse began to develop her wandering, tentative line while studying at Yale University in the late 1950s. Her early 1960s works on paper engaged with visual vocabularies from geometry to biomorphic abstraction. In 1965, Hesse combined her tactile sensibility for materials with her stringlike line to achieve a breakthrough: her astonishing reliefs, which began to bridge the space between two and three dimensions. Balancing the disembodiment of line with its intensified materialization, Hesse went on to develop one of the most innovative oeuvres of the twentieth century, anticipating the hybridization of media and crossing borderlines linking one impossible space to another.
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
1997, English / German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 296 pages, 22 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Generali Foundation / Vienna
$280.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Rare first hardcover edition of the catalogue raisonné of Gordon Matta-Clark's incredible drawings published in conjunction with exhibition held at Generali Foundation, Vienna, May 7—August 10, 1997. Heavily illustrated throughout (243 colour and 548 b/w illustrations) with essays by Sabine Breitwiesser, Peter Fend, and Pamela M. Lee. Includes a biography and bibliography. Text in English and German.
Gordon Matta-Clark (1943—1978) was an American artist best known for site-specific artworks he made in the 1970s. He was also a pioneer in the field of socially engaged food art.
Fine copy in Fine DJ.
1983, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 320 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Routledge / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
First 1984 hardcover English edition of this collection of essays documenting a dialogue between phenomenology and Marxism, with the contributors representing a cross-section from the two traditions. The theoretical and historical presuppositions of the phenomenology inaugurated by Husserl are very different from those of the much older Marxist tradition, yet, as these essays show, there are definite points of contact, communication and exchange between the two traditions.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket.