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.
2009, English / French
Softcover (+ audio CD), 320 pages, 22.5 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$45.00 - In stock -
This publication is the first monograph on the artist, musician, performer, organiser, attempting to disclose the complex articulations between multiples activities and to introduce sound and contextual art problematic.
The texts present various approaches and activities of Paul Panhuysen, a general introduction, archives, music installations, paintings, in situ installations, games, Het Apolohuis activities and theoretical positions. The pictures illustrate different projects of Panhuysen's work (in situ installations, technical plan, exhibitions views), collected in different classifications: sound installation with long fine wire, installation with bird, game, painting... and the graphic design couch with different colour and form.
The audio CD Small Samples, Many Pieces is made up of small samples and a variety of sound art works. It presents sounds produced by musicians, animals and objects, composed music and improvisations, acoustical, amplified and electronic sounds. There are pieces based on calculus, but on intuition as well. In many works image and sound go together. This multitude and variety of impulses are typical for the artist Paul Panhuysen.
"A beautiful looking and sounding survey of a key European art and music figure."—Alan Licht, The Wire
Artist, musician, performer, organizer, Paul Panhuysen (1934, Borgharen—2015), after having studied painting and monumental design at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, and art sociology at the University of Utrecht, was, successively, the director of the Fine Arts Academy in Leeuwarden, and a curator and head of education and public relations for the Den Haag City Museum and for the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven. In addition, he continued to paint and make collages. In 1965 he founded the artist group “De Bende van de Blauwe Hand.” This group, which was closely related to Fluxus, presented exhibitions, environments and happenings in museums and galleries. Starting in 1965, he presented “situations” meant to involve the audience, and in 1968, he started the Maciunas Quartet, who are still making experimental music as the Maciunas Ensemble. In the early seventies, Panhuysen worked as an advisory artist with urban development teams (o.a. in Zoetermeer, Lunetten, Maaspoort) and developed systematic ordering systems and mathematical series that he has continued to use in his work as an artist. In addition, Panhuysen's work shows a predilection for found objects and the element of chance. To an increasing degree, Panhuysen has been concentrating on sound art, which has come to occupy an important place in his visual art work. He has presented his Long String Installations, which are played in concerts personally and in exhibitions as automats, worldwide in festivals since 1982 . These installations are set-up in indoor or outdoor spaces for anywhere from 1 to 40 days, using specific properties and architectural prospects of the location. Since 1989 Panhuysen developed artworks in which he confronts the audience with the creativity, intelligence and communicational skills of animals, especially of birds.
In 1980, Panhuysen founded Het Apollohuis, and since then till 1997, he has been the director of this internationally oriented podium where artists from divergent disciplines did present their work. In 1996 he received the Cultural Award of Noord-Brabant and in1998 he became Companion of the Order of the Dutch Lion. In 2004 Panhuysen received in the category Digital Musics from PrixArs Electronica an Honory Mention for the composition A Magic Square of 5 to Look at / A Magic Square of 5 to Listen to.
Edited by Yvan Etienne.
Texts by Paul Panhuysen, Jaap Bremer, Yvan Etienne, Michel Giroud, Rahma Khazam, Paul Kuypers, Helga de la Motte-Haber, Rene van Peer, Rolf Sachsse, Louis Ucciani.
2002, English / German
Softcover w. audio cd, 208 pages, 21.2 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Schirn Kunsthalle / Frankfurt
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$30.00 - Out of stock
The fast out-of-print hardcover catalogue with CD published to accompany the unique exhibition Frequenzen (Hz) / Frequencies (Hz): Audiovisuelle Raume / Audio-Visual Spaces, at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/Main February 8—March 28, 2002. Edited by Max Hollein and Jesper N. Jørgensen, with texts by Daniel Birnbaum, Nicolas Bourriaud, Will Bradley, Diedrich Diederichsen, Jesper N. Jørgensen, Blazenka Perica, and Martin Pesch.
Frequencies [Hz] presents current positions of contemporary artists who work with sound within the context of visual art. The publication features works of sculptural and visual art alongside specific, often "minimalistic" installations and interventions in which employ sounds or electronic experiments with sound that impact upon the perception of architecture or otherwise influence the social components of individual experience. Beyond the scope of the defining non-material characteristics of sound, sound becomes a formal material, a kind of audible sculpture accompanied by discourse on its constructive, societal, philosophical, and emotional aspects. The use of sound in visual art is closely linked with the development of strategies involved in sculpture, installations, and interdisciplinary art forms. It profits from the technology of the new media. Thus the participating artists reflect not only upon the influence of new technological media on visual art and culture but upon the institutional context and the situation that evolves between the work of art and the viewer.
The artists: Knut Åsdam, Mark Bain, Angela Bulloch, Farmersmanual, Tommi Grönlund, Petteri Nisunen, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Ryoji Ikeda, Ann Lislegaard, Carsten Nicolai, Daniel Pflumm, Franz Pomassl, Ultra-red, Mika Vainio.
Texts in English and German.
1985, Japanese
Softcover, 64 pages, 25 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Okanoyama Museum of Art / Nishiwaki
$140.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce publication produced to accompany the exhibition "ISSEY MIYAKE BY TADANORI YOKOO" at Okanoyama Museum of Art in 1985. First and only 1985 edition, this excellent catalogue details the history of iconic collaborations between Japanese graphic artist Tadanori Yokoo and Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, spanning the 1970s and 1980s. It's all here, all of the incredible textile designs, posters, invitations, greeting cards, advertisements, garments, along with drawings and photographs, biographies, portrait, a full catalogue of the works... An invaluable resource for fans of either artist, boldly detailed and designed by Tadanori Yokoo Studio!
Very Good copy.
2014, English
Softcover, 122 pages, 14.2 x 21.3 cm
Published by
Tender Buttons Press / US
$38.00 - In stock -
Poetry. Edited by Lee Ann Brown. SONNETS, first published in 1989 as Tender Buttons Number 1 is widely considered to be one of the most generative and innovative works of contemporary American poetry, radically rethinking the traditional sonnet form. This expanded 25th Anniversary edition includes a new preface by Bernadette Mayer, an editor's note by Tender Buttons Press publisher Lee Ann Brown, and a selection of previously unpublished archival material including the Skinny Sonnets, described as Hypnogogic Word Playing in Reporters' Notebooks which further expand our map of Bernadette Mayer's ground- breaking works of writing consciousness.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 608 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Published by
Knopf / New York
$68.00 - Out of stock
A sensational new novel from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city.
Bret Easton Ellis's masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.
Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret's obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them--and Bret in particular--with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends--or his own mind--to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.
Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero L.A., The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at seventeen--sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting, and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.
2022, English
Hardcover, 352 pages, 22 x 28 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
Barbican Art Gallery / London
$80.00 - Out of stock
Traces the feminist icon Carolee Schneemann's prolific six-decade output, spanning her remarkably diverse, transgressive, and interdisciplinary expression.
Edited by Lotte Johnson and Chris Bayley.
Contributions by Jo Applin, Karen Di Franco, Jennifer Doyle, Elena Gorfinkel, Alison Green, Emily LaBarge, Thomas (T.) Jean Lax, Eileen Myles, Melissa Ragona, Amy Sillman and Kenneth White
Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) was one of the most experimental artists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book traces six decades of the feminist icon's diverse, transgressive and interdisciplinary expression through Schneemann's experimental early paintings, sculptural assemblages and kinetic works; rarely seen photographs of her radical performances; her pioneering films; and groundbreaking multi-media installations. Contributors shed new light on Schneemann's work, which addressed urgent topics from sexual expression and the objectification of women to human suffering and the violence of war. An artist who was concerned with the precarious lived experience of both humans and animals, this book positions Schneemann as one of the most relevant, provocative and inspiring artists in recent years.
Published by Yale in association with Barbican Art Gallery.
2022, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 96 pages, 20 x 25 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$58.00 - Out of stock
Carol Rama is one of the most exciting artistic rediscoveries of the 20th century. Her creative period spanned more than 70 years - tirelessly testing different materials, styles, and media. Among other things, the artist created a body of graphic works and unique watercolors that will be presented at Berlin's Gutshaus Steglitz. This overview publication on the work of the self-taught artist is being published at the same time. The Italian artist received attention for her unique oeuvre only at an advanced age and posthumously. In the 1940s, Rama caused a sensation with the permissive and, at the time, progressive portrayal of her protagonists. In her late work she returned to the depictions of her youth.
2009, English
Hardcover, 550 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$420.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the scarce, highly sought after, and most comprehensive book ever published on American artist Paul Thek, published in 2009 by MIT Press. Edited by Harald Falckenberg and Peter Weibel, this enormous 550 page monograph contains more than 300 works by this groundbreaking artist, documenting his journey from legendary outsider to central figure in many contemporary art movements.
Paul Thek occupied a place between high art and low art, between the epic and the everyday. During his brief life (1933-1988), he went against the grain of art world trends, humanizing the institutional spaces of art with the force of his humor, spirituality, and character. Twenty years after Thek's death from AIDS, we can now recognize his influence on contemporary artists ranging from Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman to Matthew Barney, Mike Kelley, and Paul McCarthy, as well as Kai Althoff, Jonathan Meese, and Thomas Hirschhorn. This book brings together more than 300 of Thek's works—many of which are published here for the first time—to offer the most comprehensive display of his work yet seen. The book, which accompanies an exhibition at ZKM ? Museum of Contemporary Art presenting Thek's work in dialogue with contemporary art by young artists, includes painting, sculpture, drawing, and installation work, as well as photographs documenting the room-size environments into which Thek incorporated elements from art, literature, theater, and religion. These works chart Thek's journey from legendary outsider to foundational figure in contemporary art. In their antiheroic diversity, Thek's works embody the art revolution of the 1960s; indeed, Susan Sontag dedicated her classic Against Interpretation to him. Thek's treatment of the body in such works as “Technological Reliquaries,” with their castings and replicas of human body parts, tissue, and bones, both evoke the aura of Christian relics and anticipate the work of Damien Hirst. The book, with more than 500 images (300 in colour) and nineteen essays by art historians, curators, collectors, and artists, investigates Thek's work on its own terms, and as a starting point for understanding the work of the many younger artists Thek has influenced.
Essays by Jean-Christophe Ammann, Margrit Brehm, Bazon Brock, Suzanne Delehanty, Harald Falckenberg, Marietta Franke, Stefan Germer, Kim Gordon, Roland Groenenboom, Axel Heil, Gregor Jansen, Mike Kelley, John Miller, Susanne Neubauer, Kenny Schachter, Harald Szeemann, Annette Tietenberg, Peter Weibel, Ann Wilson.
Good copy with tanning to spine, some bumping and waving from storage. Clean throughout.
2013, Japanese
Softcover, 255 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Million Publishing / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
"Videoshop of Horrors, Violence and Disgusting!! Welcome To A World Without Value!"
An Introduction to Bad Taste Video Studies in the 80's! is a labor of VHS love committed to publication by editor Keiji Yamazaki and a group of movie fans/critics in 2013, in Japan only, of course. During the 1980's VHS explosion, when the movie rental business was booming, so too was a demand for what is considered "bad taste" video. Splatter! Thriller! Rape and Revenge! Gore! Budget Sci-Fi! Ero Guro! Mondo! Exploitation! This in-depth compendium collects a unique moment in movie culture, celebrating the true identity of the long-lost, straight-to-video independent genre movies of the 1980's, from misunderstood director masterpieces to neighbourhood camcorder legends. "Revive the trauma-class film that should have disappeared from the bottom of hell without being recommended by anyone." (rough translation)... Illustrated throughout with posters and video cover art, this book documents the rarely documented, presenting many criminally overlooked works given serious reflection across many genres from the vantage point of Japan's unparalleled licensing and distribution of all things esoteric, cult, even prohibited, from the wildest recesses of the VHS imagination.
A graveyard of over 90 VHS corpses, re-animating hard-to-find productions from all over the globe (Italy, Britain, China, Australia, US...), spanning early, lesser-known examples of the "so bad it's good" from the 1970s into the 80's V-Zone... Baby Blood (1990), The Milpitas Monster (1975), Slithis (1978), Evil Clutch (1980), Copkiller (1983), Bodymelt (1993), The Pit (1981), Nail-Gun Massacre (1985), Doctor Gore (1975), Fight for Your Life (1977), Neon Maniacs (1986), Scalps (1983), Without Warning (1979), The Prey (1977), Sleepaway Camp (1983), Edge of the Axe (1989), True Gore (1988), Being Different (1981), Britannia Hospital (1982), to name but a few. Thematic chapters are punctuated by small articles on British Video, Horror magazines of the period, a roundtable between directors discussing the "golden age", and much more.
Warning — all texts in Japanese, so this comes with an extra layer of translation detective work. But, the most essential titles and dates are in English, making it a valuable guide whichever way you slice it.
Very Good, almost As New copy.
2022, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 160 pages, 21.5 x 15 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Tatsumi / Tokyo
$70.00 - Out of stock
An unprecedented book documenting the world of eccentric B-grade video works ("Tondemo VHS") that proliferated in the Japanese market at the height of the video boom during the Shōwa era!
Once upon a time there were video rental shops in every city, but amongst the famous Hollywood blockbusters and popular cinema, mysterious videos were lined up like mountains ready for the more adventurous viewer. These videos came to define an era. An era of crazed killers, cyborgs, mystics, ninjas, biker gangs, and demented libido. The V-Zone! This book is devoted to this new wild unknown of the video era and a unique aspect of popular culture in Shōwa era Japan, the "Tondemu VHS". "Tondemu" is a Japanese expression derived from the term "dangerous," referring to things that deviate from reality and common sense. This encyclopaedic study celebrates these VHS deviations — the B-grade, the shocking, the trashy, the cheap, the vulgar, the unexplainable, the sleazy, the unintelligible, the incomprehensible, and the laughable — horror, sci-fi, action, exploitation, comedy, erotic, Japanese V cinema...
Profusely illustrated with hundreds of video cover artworks from the Japanese editions of films such as Microwave Massacre (1979), Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985), Driller Killer (1979), Guzoo: The Thing Forsaken by God - Part I (1986), Body Melt (1993), Prey (1977), Vampire's Kiss (1988), Monster Dog (1984), The Nail Gun Massacre (1985), The Park Is Mine (1986), Alapaap (1984), Body Count (1986), The New York Ripper (1982), Trancers (1984), Parasite (1981), The Keep (1983), Edge of The Axe (1987), 2019: After the Fall of New York (1983), Futurekill (1984), Coolie Killer (1982), The Missionary (1982), Polyester (1981), "Hungry Ghosts" (1985), Robowar (1988), TC 2000 (1993), Bad Taste (1987), Igor and the Lunatics (1985), Endgame (1983), Mutanthunt (1987), The Glove (1979), Picasso Trigger (1988), Project Shadowchaser (1992), Run and Kill (1993), Don't Go In The Woods... Alone (1981), Evil Heart (1985)... accompanied by commentary, plus chapters of features on everything from Hong Kong Noir, crazy pink movies, Troma films, the Emmanuelle film franchise, animal attack movies, director Toru Muranishi, Kazuo Umezu, cyber videos, video collections, Japanese video stores and mags, profiles, interviews, and much more. An must for any die-hard VHS head.
As New.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 86 pages, 30 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
First Japanese edition of the official companion book to the 1995 American sci-fi horror film Species (directed by Roger Donaldson and written by Dennis Feldman) and the film's artistic designer H.R. Giger, famous for his creations for the Alien film. This profusely illustrated "Making of" book is packed with reproductions of Giger's incredible conceptual drawings and models as well as photographs of special effects processes, Giger's set-design, animatronics, and creature fabrication, detailing all the work involved in bringing the science fiction creature Sil to the screen. Includes fold-out illustration of the famous "Ghost Train" and much more.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1998, English
Softcover, 385 pages, 15.24 x 22.86 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$35.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the definitive published account of Black Metal, published by Feral House in 1998. The Bloody Rise of the Black Metal Mafia Murder, suicide, occult sacrifices, church-burnings and fascism terrorism preoccupy the musicians and followers of Black Metal: a dark and psychotic version of heavy metal music. This extraordinary book penetrates the inner circle of the Black Metal leaders, reveals the truth behind the stories, and includes an interview with Varg Vikerness of the group Burzum, currently imprisoned for the murder of another Black Metal musician.
"With Lords of Chaos Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind paint a portrait of a fantastic realm where Satanism, neo-paganism and National Socialism energized a musical scene in which fantasy was actualized in the burning of medieval churches in Norway ...a uniquely valuable history of Black Metal music in general and of the Norwegian scene in particular as it is viewed by the participants themselves. Lords of Chaos is a compelling work deserving of a wide readership on both sides of the Atlantic." -- Dr. Jeffrey Kaplan, author of Radical Religion in America.
Average—Good copy with considerable wear, creasing.
2004, English
Softcover, 285 pages, 15.24 x 22.86 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$35.00 - In stock -
First 2004 edition. In 1986, the idea that death metal and grindcore would ever impact popular culture was unimaginable. Initially circulated through a scattered tape-trading network of underground thrill-seekers, bands rose from every corner of the globe and death metal and grindcore spread faster than a pandemic plague of undead flesh-eaters. By 1994, the genre's most prominent labels had sold millions of albums. This exciting history, featuring an introduction by famed DJ John Peel, tells the two-decade-long history of grindcore and death metal through the eyes and ringing ears of the artists, producers, and label owners who propelled them. Includes essential discography and "Life After Death" biography updates on the lives of those featured. Autopsy, Napalm Death, Carcass, Fear of God, S.O.B., Morbid Angel, Obituary, Terrorizer, Doom, Extreme Noise Terror, Decide, Entombed, Grave, Bolt Thrower, Brutal Truth, Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Siege, Cannibal Corpse, Discordance Axis, Decapitated, Exhumed, Vader, and so many more...
Average—Good copy with considerable wear, creasing.
1999, English
Softcover, 248 pages, 21 x 27 cm
Published by
Charta / Milan
$50.00 - In stock -
First edition of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's "Monument to a Lost Civilization" / "Monumento alla Civilità Perduta", the gorgeous, comprehensive catalogue/artist's book published the occasion of major art installation at the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa in Palermo, curated by Chiara Bertola and Paolo Falcone, 16 April—27 June 1999. "The presence of the Kabakovs in Palermo is something more than a passage. Their creative universe, which the installation at the Cantieri represents in a unique composition, is an extraordinary opportunity of reflection: the relationship with memory; the traces of daily life, of biographies, of environments: the memory of the dissolution of a society that was all the more surprising the more unshakeable and immutable it appeared." Profusely illustrated with drawings, paintings, photographs, alongside texts by the artists, biography, bibliography. Bi-lingual English / Italian facing text.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are amongst the most celebrated artists of their generation, widely known as pioneers of installation art. Ilya Kabakov was born in 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnipro) in Ukraine, formerly part of the Soviet Union. When he was eight, he moved to Moscow with his mother. He studied at the Art School of Moscow, and at the V.I. Surikov Art Institute. Artists in the Soviet Union were obliged to follow the officially approved style, Socialist Realism. Wanting to retain his independence, Ilya supported himself as a children’s book illustrator from 1955 to 1987, while continuing to make his own paintings and drawings. As an ‘unofficial artist’, he worked in the privacy of his Moscow attic studio, showing his art only to a close circle of artists and intellectuals. Ilya was not permitted to travel outside the Soviet Union until 1987, when he was offered a fellowship at the Graz Kunstverein, Austria. The following year he visited New York, and resumed contact with Emilia Lekach. Born in 1945, Emilia trained as a classical pianist at Music College in Irkutsk, and studied Spanish Language and Literature at Moscow University before emigrating to the United States in 1973. Ilya and Emilia began their artistic partnership in the late 1980s, and were married in 1992. Together, they have produced a prolific output of immersive installations and other conceptual works addressing ideas of utopia, dreams and fear, to reflect on the universal human condition.
Very Good copy.
2000, English
Hardcover, 120 pages, 22.3 x 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
The Drawing Center / New York
Merrell Publishers / London
$140.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful hardcover volume exploring every aspect of the art of the celebrated Belgian/French writer and artist Henri Michaux, published to accompany the major exhibition Untitled Passages, curated by Catherine de Zegher and Florian Rodari for The Drawing Centre, New York. Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux investigates Michaux’s graphic works in tandem with his poetic practice, addressing the artist-poet’s research into the passages between “writing” and “drawing”, taking its title from Michaux’s extensive body of untitled drawings and from Passages, his book of poetic writings. Profusely illustrated with an interview with Michaux by John Ashbery. Edited with texts by Catherine de Zegher, also Raymond Bellour, Henri Michaux, Laurent Jenny, Florian Rodari, Richard Sirburth.
Fine copy, almost As New. Out-of-print.
2001, English
Softcover, 83 pages, 22 x 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Skira / Milan
The Drawing Center / New York
$400.00 - In stock -
Rare, first-ever English translation of this Michaux classic, very quickly out-of-print and sought after.
One of the key works of the poet and artist Henri Michaux (1899-1984) whose original approach intertwines the written word with his visionary paintings and drawings.
First published in 1972, this English language translation of Henri Michaux’s celebrated book Émergences- Résurgences has been published on the occasion of the exhibition Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux organized by The Drawing Center in New York.
Part essay, part poem—by turns lyric, ekphrastic, didactic, gnomic, and comic—it is also one of Michaux’s most sustained self-portraits.
Very Good copy. Tanned.
1966, English
Hardcover (Burlap covered boards), 342 pages, 32 x 31cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Harry N. Abrams / New York
$400.00 - Out of stock
Rare first 1966 burlap-bound edition of this seminal work by Allan Kaprow documenting the milieu of performance art and happenings in the early-mid 1960s. Published by H. N. Abrams, Assemblage, Environments & Happenings is a legendary photo-artist-book by “one of the grand antiheroes of contemporary art”, produced in way we would never see today. Wrapped in a heavy, debossed and screen-printed raw burlap hardcover, this massive and visually stunning volume features incredible typography, commentary and lay-out by Kaprow himself, accompanying countless photogravures (photos taken by Oldenburg, Robert McElroy, Peter Moore and others) featuring the work of artists (and non-artists) such as Claes Oldenburg, Tetsumi Kudo, Jean Tinguely, Clarence Schmidt, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Wolf Vostell, George Brecht, Kenneth Dewey, Milan Knizak, Jackson Pollock, Robert Whitman, Red Grooms, George Segal, Yayoi Kusama, Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg, Allan Kaprow, together with images of works by the Japanese Gutai Group (Murakami Saburo, Shozo Shimamoto, Kazuo Shiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, et al) and many more.
Allan Kaprow, “an artist who coined the term ‘happenings’ in the late 1950s and whose anti-art works contributed to radical changes in the course of late 20th-century art,” was a leading member-with artists George Segal, Jim Dine and Claes Oldenberg-of a group whose performance works were signally influenced by John Cage’s “reliance on chance as an organizing, or disorganizing element in art. Like Cage, Kaprow used a combination of choice and accident as a way of creating nonverbal, quasi-theatrical situations in which performers functioned as kinetic objects, the role of the single artist-genius was de-emphasized, audience members became creative participants and no-clear distinction was made between everyday actions and ritual…” (New York Times).
"Step Right In"
Very Good copy, spotless with tight-As New binding, perfectly preserved.
1999, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 21 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Charta / Milan
$45.00 - Out of stock
This exhibition catalogue presents over 50 works of art that are representative of Wolf Vostell's artistic commitment in the social and political sphere. This wonderful selection of works by Vostell, a central member of the Fluxus movement, is taken from the late 1950s to the mid-1990s, the entire period of his artistic production. Disasters of Peace, which refers to Goya's "The Disasters of War", a benchmark for any artist who wishes to confront history and whose lover Vostell was, focuses on contemporary tragedies such as the Holocaust, the Wall of Berlin, Vietnam, the Gulf War or Sarajevo. Of particular significance is a work entitled "6 TV - de-coll/age" (1963); it was the first video installation shown in the US in which Vostell predicted the negative effects of television. An interview between the artist and his wife complements this catalogue. Includes an illustrated chronology of his artistic activities.
Very Good copy with light wear/age, bump to lower spine corner.
2015, English
Hardcover, 192 pages, 22.86 x 3.18 x 31.12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
National Portrait Gallery / London
$150.00 - Out of stock
First edition hardcover catalogue — an acclaimed book published to accompany an acclaimed exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2015.
Since his death at the age of sixty-four in 1966, Alberto Giacometti has become recognised internationally as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century and sales of his sculptures now achieve record-breaking prices. Belonging to no particular artistic movement, he developed through cubist and surrealist phases and later attained a mature, individual idiom whose preoccupation with the depiction of a human presence in an enveloping space may be seen in relation to contemporary existentialist concerns with defining the place and purpose of man in a godless universe.
Taking its title from Jean-Paul Sartre, who described Giacometti's endeavor to give "sensible expression" to "pure presence," this book explores the artist's work in relation to existentialist ideas. Spanning painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking, Giacometti's oeuvre ranges from surrealist objects to images of the human figure, with portraits of particular individuals at the center.
This book looks at the various phases of the artist's career and explores in detail his depiction of his main sitters, including his mother; Diego his brother; his wife Annette; Jean Genet the playwright; Caroline, a prostitute; and his friends Yanaihara and Lotar. Early drawings, paintings and sculptures of family members and his own image demonstrate Giacometti's awareness of Post-Impressionist and Divisionist styles.
From 1946 Giacometti resumed painting and depicting individuals became central to his work. After 1954, when he began making sculpture from life, his portraits expressed a dialogue between painting and sculpture.
As New copy, first edition, out-of-print.
2017, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 22 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Tate Gallery / London
$80.00 - In stock -
Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) is one of the few artists of the last century whose work is almost more recognizable than his name. His distinctive elongated figures are well known, and appear in major museum collections worldwide. However, the story of Giacometti’s evolution, from his first professional works of art through his surrealist compositions to the emergence of his mature style, has rarely been explored fully and in depth. This comprehensive overview of his career focuses on the art, the people, and the events that influenced him, and on the original and experimental way in which he approached and developed his work. An illustrated glossary of texts on his life and art is accompanied by a plate section of strikingly beautiful illustrations of his sculptures, paintings, and drawings as well as sketchbooks, decorative works, photographs, and studio ephemera, much of which have never been published before. This accessible survey is the definitive resource for fans of the artist.
Out-of-print, first edition, Very Good copy with light cover wear.
2015, English
Hardcover (cloth-bound), 248 pages, 18 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$400.00 - Out of stock
The great hardcover monographic book on the work of Giorgio Griffa, edited by Andrea Bellini, that very quickly disappeared from print and became understandibly collectible. This most comprehensive English-language book on the artist, published on the occasion of the cycle of exhibitions dedicated to the work of Giorgio Griffa (Turin, 1936) (Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serralves, Porto; Bergen Kunsthall; and Fondazione Giuliani, Rome) aims—through a series of essays by Andrea Bellini, Luca Cerizza, Laura Cherubini, Martin Clark, Suzanne Cotter, and Chris Dercon, a conversation between Griffa and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and a selection of artist’s writings and a chronology compiled by Marianna Vecellio—to highlight the very diverse features and extraordinary richness of Griffa’s paintings. Profusely illustrated throughout.
“Giorgio Griffa is one of the least-known Turin-born artists of the Arte Povera generation. Another precious ‘secret’ that the city of Turin, discreet and haughty as ever, has managed to keep under wraps—in this case for almost half a century. From the immediate post-war period, a singular group of young artists in the city helped write the history of European art in the second half of the twentieth-century. Together with now universally acclaimed figures, such as Alighiero Boetti, Giuseppe Penone, Giulio Paolini, Giovanni Anselmo, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gilberto Zorio, and Mario and Marisa Merz, there were also other leading artists in Turin, who have only recently begun to receive the international attention they deserve. Here I am thinking of the likes of Piero Gilardi, Gianni Piacentino, Carol Rama, Salvo, and Aldo Mondino, but also of the eccentric and eclectic Carlo Mollino. Griffa was one of the most discreet and isolated in this group of young people who revolved around Sperone’s gallery. He immediately showed an exclusive interest in painting, while his companions mainly moved out towards sculpture and installation from the mid-sixties.”—Andrea Bellini
Fine copy, almost As New.
2016, English / French
Softcover, 72 pages, 25 x 31 cm
Published by
Analogues / Arles
$65.00 - Out of stock
New monograph, with thirty emblematic paintings, a text by the artist, and an essay by Francesco Manacorda.
The art of the italian artist Giorgio Griffa developed quietly and with impressive coherence outside the latest movements broadly outlined on the contemporary scene. At the beginning of his career Griffa nonetheless associated himself with the representatives of Arte Povera, with whom he exhibited on numerous occasions in the 1960s and 1970s. His simultaneously “minimalist” painting also displayed an affinity in particular with the group Supports/Surfaces in France.
Elegant, unprimed and unstretched, the canvases by Italian artist Giorgio Griffa offer constellations of horizontal lines and the numerals of the golden mean in a graceful and warm minimalism. Like a melody, a rhythm or a line of poetry, these painted signs in half-tones convey a certain lyricism, one that is also found in the artist's poems.
Griffa's raw canvases are covered with marks in pastel shades of acrylic paint, which he says “are performed by the brush, by my hand, the paint, my concentration, etc.” They attest to his admiration for the artists of ancient times, and his “feeling for the centuries-old memory of painting”. His solo show at the Fondation presents earlier as well as very recent works, including Canone aureo 705 (VVG) (2015), a breath-taking homage to Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night of 1889.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Giorgio Griffa” at Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, from February 13 to April 24, 2016.
In 1968, Giorgio Griffa (born 1936 in Turin, where he lives and works) abandoned figurative painting in favor of a format of abstract painting that still characterizes his work to this day. Painting with acrylic on raw un-stretched canvas, burlap and linen, Griffa's works are nailed directly to the wall along their top edge. When not exhibited, the works are folded and stacked, resulting creases that create an underlying grid for his compositions. In keeping with his idea that painting is “constant and never finished”, many of his works display a deliberate end-point that has been described as “stopping a thought mid-sentence.” Despite early associations with movements such as Arte Povera and Minimalism, Giorgio Griffa's work was not exhibited in the United States for 40 years after his first solo exhibition in New York at Ileana Sonnabend's gallery. In 2012, Giorgio Griffa had a solo exhibition, Fragments 1968 - 2012 at Casey Kaplan in New York, leading him to be named one of the “10 thrilling rediscoveries from 2012.”
2023, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 23.5 x 22.2 cm
Published by
Strange Attractor / London
$79.00 - Out of stock
Stories of the secret underground Cold War-era Soviet music subculture that distributed forbidden music on used hospital x-rays.
During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were ruthlessly controlled by the state. But a secret underground subculture of music lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines and making their own records of forbidden jazz, rock 'n' roll, and Russian music, cut onto used hospital x-ray film. Bone Music is the follow up the acclaimed X-Ray Audio: The Strange History of Soviet Music on the Bone, delving deeper into a forgotten era when being a music fan could mean a lengthy prison sentence, or worse.
Who made these records? Why did they do it and how was it even possible? Foregrounding interviews and oral testimonies gathered over five years, Bone Music presents the stories of the original bone bootleggers, their customers, musicians, record collectors, and commentators, evoking a spirited resistance to a repressive culture of prohibition and punishment. It reveals that although Western jazz and rock'n'roll were important to the Stilyagi youth culture, the true rebel music was that of forbidden Russian emigres, gypsy romances, and criminal tunes: the soul songs of a society brutally cut off from its culture.
Richly illustrated with dozens of new images of Soviet x-ray discs and sound letters, Bone Music details how the bootleggers worked, outlining the technical precedents of their techniques, situating their discs in a revised history of recorded media, and bringing a wealth of compelling new detail.
2022, English
Softcover, 180 pages, 20.3 x 12.7 cm
Published by
Clash Books / US
$32.00 - Out of stock
Through diaristic ellipses, Nash crafts an origin story of obsessional masochism
Drawing on the nostalgia of a nascent digital age and grappling with an eating disorder, indie cult author Elle Nash paints a realistic and poignant portrait of a teenager's quest for self-identification on both sides of the computer screen. Using Livejournal entries, we meet our protagonist, in her messy transition into adulthood in the midst of grappling with calorie counts, boys, and being honest with who she is only online. Following up her cult fiction debut Animals Eat Each Other, Nash shows she belongs in the same camp along with exciting feminist literary disrupters the likes of Melissa Broder and Alissa Nutting.
It's 2005. Lucy shambles through the last weeks of her senior year of high school, jonesing for a thinner body, desperate to connect with another human. Who is reflected back at her when she is sleeping with someone, when she is puking into the toilet bowl? Who is reflected back when she's alone? Only the internet knows, where she muses on the concept of her "self" through her Livejournal, with a cadre of online friends who are definitely NOT pro-anorexic. Everyone's sick here, but at least they understand.