World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2023, English / Spanish
Softcover, 164 pages, 215 x 27.5 cm
Published by
Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite / Berlin
$59.00 - In stock -
An indepth survey to June Crespo's artistic practice.
Through an unconventional use of casting and molding techniques, June Crespo has developed a sculptural language that questions the attributes, narratives and genealogies associated to materials such as concrete, steel or bronze. In her recent works, the references to the human body and the presence of architectural and botanical motifs respond to a precise mandate: to put into question the distinction between the structural elements and the ornament.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Vieron su casa hacerse campo at the Museo CA2M – Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in 2023, this publication presents an indepth survey to June Crespo's artistic practice and unravels the particular spatial and material relationships that her work brings into play. In addition to graphic documentation of the exhibition, the publication includes documentation of other recent projects, graphic materials specifically produced for this book, and a series of essays written by Aimar Arriola, Sylvia Lavin, Julia Spínola and Marc Navarro, curator of the exhibition.
June Crespo (born 1982 in Pamplona, lives and works in Bilbao) understands sculpture as an exercise that enables her to bring together seemingly opposed qualities. Her works partake equally of the petrean and the perishable, the mechanised and the manual, the abject and the sensuous. The convergence between materials and motifs creates a vocabulary that seems interpretable as a contradiction. On the one hand, certain motifs are taken from industrially produced objects, bearing in mind aspects like ergonomics and formal organicity. On the other, plant and organic motifs appear as the result of highly technical systems of production and representation. Both respond to the exploration of a transitional body-object that, having been fragmented and recomposed, forsakes its original form and meanings. Thus, stalks, busts and conduits are abstracted into channels and carcases that trace a network of connections ranging from the tectonic to the physiological and associated with the domestic sphere and its design as an extension of the body. In this way, notions like human scale, void and gravity are used to establish analogies with the body and to influence the intrinsically spatial, that is, physical, nature of sculpture.
Edited by Marc Navarro.
Texts by Aimar Arriola, Sylvia Lavin, Marc Navarro, Julia Spínola.
Graphic design: Studio Manuel Raeder (Manuel Raeder and Louise Borinski).
2008, English / German
Hardcover, 176 pages, 21.5 x 30.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Schirn Kunsthalle / Frankfurt
$190.00 - Out of stock
Now out-of-print and collectible, this wonderful hardcover monograph is entirely dedicated to the exceptional, radical and nearly unknown period of paintings from famed Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte known as the Période Vache, from 1948.
René Magritte numbers not only among the most important, but also among the most popular twentieth-century artists. Often against the grain of the artistic tendencies of his time, the Belgian Surrealist painter developed a unique and unmistakable pictorial language. His work’s continuing crucial influence on later generations of artists and his impact on today’s visual culture are almost without par. Many of his enigmatic and equally hard-to-forget solutions have been reproduced in the millions and become famous icons far beyond the world of art.
However, a fascinating period of the artist’s landmark oeuvre has remained nearly unknown: his so-called Période vache. In 1948, Magritte made a group of paintings and gouaches distinctly different from the rest of his work for his first solo exhibition in Paris. Relying on a new, fast and aggressive style of painting – and particularly inspired by popular sources such as caricatures and comics, but also interspersing his works with stylistic quotations from artists like James Ensor or Henri Matisse – Magritte, within only a few weeks, produced about thirty entirely uncharacteristic works that caused an outrage in Paris. The artist deliberately conceived the exhibition as a provocation of and an assault on the Parisian public. Painting in an unexpectedly crude, playful, and intentionally “bad” manner, he reflected his own work and painting in general.
The fact that Magritte’s first solo presentation in Paris did not take place before 1948 is of crucial relevance for the genesis of his Période vache. Paris was not only the center of the art world, but also the capital of the Surrealist movement, and Magritte, as the central figure of Belgian Surrealism, had been in close contact with the circle around André Breton since the 1920s. Yet, it was not only his attempt to establish himself in the French metropolis that failed after only a three-year stay (1927–1930); even after his international recognition had grown in the 1930s, he was denied an adequate appreciation of his work in Paris. In addition, Magritte came into direct conflict with Paris after the war when his redefinition of Surrealism met with the disapproval of the Surrealist group’s protagonists returning home from exile.
This was the context in which Magritte regarded his invitation to Paris in 1948 less as an overdue chance of success in the French metropolis but rather as an opportunity for taking revenge – for the arrogance of the capital’s art scene and the ossified attitude of a Surrealism that had outlived itself and become far too socially acceptable – by pulling off a surprising coup.
The term “vache” used by Magritte for his new group of works is mostly understood as an ironical allusion to the historical movement of the Fauves, whose exaggerated coloring Magritte’s works parodied as much as their decoratively pleasing character. Yet in French, “vache” does not only mean “cow,” but also as much as “mean” or “nasty”; “vacherie” signifies a mean trick. Thus, the term hints at the aggressive and deliberately crude quality characteristic of the pictures.
The exhibition in Paris turned out the expected failure. Not one picture was sold. The press reacted frostily. The public was appalled. The Paris Surrealists kept their distance. Only one of the vache works was exhibited again during Magritte’s lifetime, i.e. until 1967. For exhibition makers as well as art dealers and art historians, this group of works constituted an alien element in an otherwise extraordinarily consistent oeuvre. In addition, it did not fit in with the image of an artist who had, above all, been presented as a pioneer of Pop art and Concept art since the 1960s. It was not before thirty years after their making that these hitherto forgotten works began to be gradually reevaluated and appreciated starting with the “Westkunst” exhibition in Cologne. In the context of the 1980s’ Post-Conceptual painting, the strategies Magritte had relied on for subverting the prevailing standards of painting in the medium itself appeared both exemplary and highly topical. Today, about forty years after Magritte’s death, contemporary artists such as John Currin or Sean Landers often come to understand his oeuvre by making themselves familiar with the works of his Période vache at first. The works’ humor, spontaneous style, and daring bad taste provide an example for a form of painting deriving its momentum from the apparent meaningless of its subjects in order to refute the clichés of today’s world of images. With his manifesto-like protest against all varieties of arrogance and reprimands in the arts, Magritte has become a model for the artist’s triumph over the workings of an art scene that seem to be more overpowering today than they ever were.
Edited by Esther Schlicht and Max Hollein. With a preface by Max Hollein and texts by Michel Draguet, Robert Fleck, Florence Hespel, and Esther Schlicht.
Very Good copy, with knock to top of back boards (not effecting contents)
1999, English / Japanese
Softcover, unpaginated, 11.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Little More / Tokyo
$150.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful pocket journal photo book published in 1999 by Tokyo's Little More books, documenting the 1998 and 1999 Paris fashion weeks through the travels and relationships of Nakako Hayashi, artist and editor of the great Here and There journal and fashion and art contributor to Purple, Hanatsubaki, Ryu-ko-tsu-shin, and more. Naturally, this publication has all the feeling of Here and There and early issues of Purple, and includes many of the key contributors to those magazines — all friends of Hayashi's, plus documentation of the long lost galleries and hot-spots of Paris, London, and Japan — Colette, Purple Institute, The Pineal Eye, The Deep Gallery, Purple Cafe... An excellent time-capsule of 1990's anti-fashion world at its peak. Includes a sticker sheet of Susan Cianciolo's Run7 collection!
Contributions and documentation of work by Susan Cianciolo, Mark Borthwick, BLESS, Elein Fleiss, Comme des Garçons, Maison Martin Margiela, A.F. Vandevorst, Veronique Branquinho, Jerome Dreyfuss, Gaspard Yurkievich, Junya Watanabe, Martine Sitbon, Colette, Purple, Takashi Homma, Mike Mills, Olivier Theyskens, Andre Walker, Jeremy Scott, Niels Klavers, Dick Page, and more.
Texts in English and Japanese.
Very Good copy.
2023, English
Softcover, 140 pages, 18 x 12.5 cm
Published by
Sublunary Editions / Seattle
$34.00 - Out of stock
"But I’m not the fig, I’m the wasp. I burrow into sweet, dark places of fecundity, into novels and paintings and poems and architectures, and I make them my own."
"We the Parasites is my new favorite book, a dazzlingly erudite disquisition on the erotics of criticism, riven with knockout sentences and a luxuriant sensibility. A. V. Marraccini stops you in your tracks, urges you to think with her a while about the delicious joy of art, how we grow huge and terrifying on it, and how this thievery, this parasitism is necessary both for its continuance and for our own."—Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse: Women Walk the City
"In 1964, Sontag wrote: 'In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.' Since then, many works of criticism have paid lip service to this desideratum, but few have managed to achieve it. […] In We the Parasites, encountering a work of art is not fixed as a safe looking at, but rather as an eating, a kissing, a being-seduced-by, a being-contaminated by, a being-infected-by that restores art and criticism to the dangerous adventure that it is."—Ryan Ruby
In her debut book, A. V. Marraccini explores how we inhabit works of art, and how our sense of longing informs and changes our relationship to them. Intertwining fig wasps, Updike, Genet, Twombly, Rilke, jewel heists, and a vividly rendered panoply of histories and myths from classical antiquity, We the Parasites both tells a strange love story and makes a slantwise argument about reading with the body, and what it ultimately means to know, and to want.
A.V. Marraccini is a critic, essayist, and historian of art. In addition to her scholarly work, she has written on both visual culture and literature for publications ranging from the TLS and the LARB to BOMB magazine and Hyperallergic.
2022, English
Softcover, 358 pages, 20.5 x 13 cm
Published by
11:11 Press / US
$48.00 - Out of stock
Children of the New Flesh is a wide-ranging compendium of reflections on the enduring impact of David Cronenberg, one of the most significant filmmakers of all time. Focusing on a series of short films that Cronenberg directed in the 1960s and 70s, many of which have rarely been seen, this book considers the legacy of these works in their own right, as well as their relationship to future masterpieces like Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and eXistenZ.
Much more than a work of tribute, Children of the New Flesh is a meditation on the nature of influence itself. It teases out the undercurrents in Cronenberg's films, obsessed as they are with secret signals, sinister experiments, and mental viruses, and shows how these ideas resonate in our own paranoid, sickened, hyper-networked times.
Featuring original fiction and essays from luminaries such as Brian Evenson, Blake Butler, Michael Cisco, Graham Rae, Joe Koch, Gary J. Shipley, Tobias Carroll, and Charlene Elsby, and interviews with figures such as Kathe Koja, Patrick McGrath, Tim Lucas, and Bruce Wagner—not to mention an exclusive interview with Cronenberg himself—this book is at once a study and a living example of the singular power of hybrid forms. It's an invitation to seek undead materials in the dark recesses of the past, and to use them as a means of tuning into the freakish wavelengths of the present.
"CHILDREN OF THE NEW FLESH IS A MUST-READ FOR FILM FANATICS AND FANS OF DAVID CRONENBERG. EDITED BY CHRIS KELSO AND DAVID LEO RICE, THIS COLLECTION EXPLORES THE DARK PERIPHERIES OF CRONENBERG'S INFLUENCE AND EARLY WORK, EXAMINING A WORLD OF STRANGENESS AND MYSTERY." - BRANDON HOBSON, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST AND AUTHOR OF THE REMOVED
"THE LIVING LEGEND OF ECCENTRIC CINEMA BEGETS WEIRD NEW PROGENY IN CHILDREN OF THE NEW FLESH" - RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE
"DO NOT OVEREMPHASIZE CRONENBERG'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE PHYSICAL BODY; THAT DOES A DISSERVICE TO HIS DEEP, ABIDING, PASSIONATE INTEREST IN THE ENERGY BODY, THE ETHEREAL BODY, THE BODY DOUBLE, THE COSMIC BODY. IN THE END, HE IS A CONSUMMATE PHILOSOPHER OF THE SPIRIT." - BRUCE WAGNER, AUTHOR OF DEAD STARS, MAPS TO THE STARS, AND THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
2023, English
Softcover, 158 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by
11:11 Press / US
$48.00 - In stock -
Somewhere between a journal and a report, a question and an answer, Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche takes up the “only serious problem in philosophy” and submits it to the only kind of scrutiny proper to it: the personal. In arriving at this “personal” account, however, Nao detours through decidedly un-private, public cultural touchpoints—the lives of celebrities, religion, television shows, sporting events—and in doing so lays bare how even this most subjective of phenomena grows out of an endless encounter with the world. Race has a part in this encounter. So does migration. As does money. Growing out of these entanglements, queer affinities bud and bloom in this text—which, made up of pen-and-ink drawings, photographs, and Nao’s playful spin on pilish, is simultaneously constrained and unconstrained—to become the bonds that can make one want to live on.
After losing my father to suicide I was given many very thoughtful books about why we sometimes kill ourselves; none of them, even in sum, carried the insight, vision, or credibility of Vi Khi Nao’s SUICIDE: THE AUTOIMMUNE DISORDER OF THE PSYCHE. Achingly un-sentimental, extensively researched, exquisitely illustrated, and overflowing with personal wisdom (and, most importantly, warmth), SUICIDE inhabits a truly novel numbering system to chart a kind of star map to the present condition, a guide to failure, an ode to other people; a way, if we stick together, to survive. — Daniel Uncapher
SUICIDE would be an encyclopedic novel if encyclopedic novels were not boring and if instead of trying to capture the full range of the world’s knowledge—like Dante, Joyce, or Pynchon—they attempted to capture instead what knowledge feels like on the brink of death and the cosmic and pragmatic love it takes to keep each other living. Vi Khi Nao knows, too, how short life is and kept it under 153 pages. — CLOSE WALL
Vi Khi Nao’s SUICIDE: THE AUTOIMMUNE DISORDER OF THE PSYCHE confronts the universal question of suicide with a scientific curiosity, mathematical precision, and visionary vulnerability that is uniquely their own, and will leave a lasting impression on any reader—especially those who know all-too well the weight of the titular subject in their lives. — Randall Scott
Vi Khi Nao traces all the ways suicide twisted around her family, her education, her art, and her heart condition in this brilliant memoir. It’s a revealing and honest account of her “suicidal scars of the soul” and the devastating effect that illness has on a life. — Anthony Luebbert
This manuscript. What is it? What is it? The laying out of a life along the razor’s edge of its own annihilation. An investigation of the conditions of its possibility. A reflection on famous suicides. Famous non-suicides. The illnesses within which health is inscribed. Memoir punctuated by image, number, text. Each word a brush stroke. Every metaphor a fatty lump. Constrained by the infinite sprawl of π, SUICIDE: THE AUTOIMMUNE DISORDER OF THE PSYCHE opens as a wound into a mind working through what it means to live by passing through the identical question of what it means to die. — FAR WALL
2023, English
Softcover, 248 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Rose Books / Arizona
$34.00 - Out of stock
Geoff Rickly’s debut novel Someone Who Isn’t Me is a feverish journey through the psyche of someone who no longer recognizes himself. When Geoff hears that a drug called ibogaine might be able to save him from his heroin addiction, he goes to a clinic in Mexico to confront the darkest and most destructive versions of himself. In this modern reimagining of the Divine Comedy, survival lurks in the darkest corners of Geoff’s brain, asking, will he make it? Can anyone?
2023, English
Softcover, 132 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Rose Books / Arizona
$36.00 - In stock -
A novel about a former teen detective going on vacation to die. Featuring original art by Robert Hickerson, Johnny Ryan, B. Thom Stevenson, Mike Diana, and Sammy Harkham.
“The Holy Day is a made-for-television noir pulled inside-out like a skinned rabbit, a musculature of absurdity clinging to a skeleton of secrets. This has more madness and mystery in a single paragraph than most books do in total.”—Daniel Kraus, New York Times best-selling author of The Living Dead, The Shape of Water, and Whalefall
“Reading The Holy Day feels like fighting to wake up from an acid trip within a nightmare. At once both brilliant and maddening. A linguistic perversion that taunts the rules and boundaries of literary form. I would say that this book should be taught in schools but kids are demented enough as it is.”—Dan Ozzi, author of Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore
“The return of the wizard of gore with an object to be looked upon (watched) as much as it is to be read. Total fucking soul sacrifice.”—John Trefry, author of Plats
"Like a Nouveau Roman novelization of 2001’s Stargate sequence feeding head-on into a meat processor, experiencing The Holy Day feels simultaneously transcendent and impossible, sacred and nuts. Or as our polyphonous, Argento-tinged ex-teen detective narrator describes it: ‘A well for water; a portal to an even cornier dimension; the headhole in an executioner’s hood; a haunted house squish trick.’ Whatever the hell it is, grindcore icon Christopher Norris’s latest insta-cult classic has once again reset the benchmark for high-concept psycho-horror, along with the reader’s limbic system, and the edges of the map of the dream of death."—Blake Butler, author of Molly and Alice Knott
“Christopher Norris’ The Holy Day is a fever dream from which you won’t want to wake up. Alternately frightening and reassuring, Harriet the Spy enters the House of Leaves in this absolutely singular literary experience. A marvel.”—Lexi Kent-Monning, author of The Burden of Joy
“With blood, guts and imagistic precision, Norris coaxes the unnameable into the light with immense technical skill. Not to be read as much as absorbed, The Holy Day rewires the ways a novel can behave. Expansive, explosive, extreme—this book is an immersive experience.”—Mila Jaroniec, author of Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover
“The Holy Day is a shapeshifting puzzle that always seems just out of reach. Just when you think you’ve got your head around it, it changes on you. As hilarious as it is disturbing, Christopher Norris continues to thrill me with his writing. Much like Hunchback '88, The Holy Day is a challenge to the reader, and if you accept it, you'll be rewarded greatly for your efforts.”—Jon Nix, director of Don't Fall in Love With Yourself and Beyond Barricades: The Story of Anti-Flag
“It seems a kind of trickery that a book this unrelatable and menacing should captivate its audience. I recommend you read it slowly and with the care one might reserve for sacred texts.”—Christopher Zeischegg, author of Body to Job and The Magician
“Despite anticipating it madly, Christopher Norris’s second novel sent me spinning in the most disorientating way possible, expectations of something cool and brilliant exceeded instantly. Within the first few pages, it was clear that I was reading something special. Crafted meticulously and buzzing with an energy that I can still feel racing round my brain, The Holy Day takes itself apart and starts rebuilding in front of your eyes. The reader is left questioning what they’re actually holding in their hands—the text is living, and you end up feeling that anyone who doesn’t take these kinds of risks with language and form is a coward, but in reality, only someone with Norris’ skill could pull this off. Once again, Christopher Norris has created an absolute masterpiece, that in any right world, should be worshipped by lovers of leftfield and experimental writing for the foreseeable future and well beyond. Forget it—I’ll stop holding back: this thing should be talked about forever. Rarely does it feel like this – like a book might outrun a reader’s imagination. The Holy Day really is that wild and that fantastic.”—Thomas Moore, author of Your Dreams
“Once again, Christopher Norris shows us that he truly possesses no peers when it comes to his literary output. While The Holy Day does bring the reader into the familiar lair of chaotic prose Norris perfected with his debut, Hunchback ‘88, this work stands at ample distance from the presentations of modern authors whose names might be cast in similar circles. Simply for the sole notion that Norris crafts it with such sure voice, with each line of prose chained to the next in permanence, as if it had always existed. It could have never maintained any other form. Here, readers are willingly strapped to the text’s knotted topology in straps of white leather rather than primitive duct tape. Analogous to the Nouveau Roman, The Holy Day is poetic only as a means to attack its own form. Shifting between chainsaw and scalpel erasure editorial, Norris spawns a text that slithers through the vitreous realms evoked within the pages of Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie, Duras’ Moderato Cantabile, and Butor’s La Modification. Through its alchemy, The Holy Day bends time and space at its own discretion, dragging the reader across its looping feedback. A welcomed voyage between admiration and apprehension—though posers are gravely cautioned—‘Submission is a lesson learned.’”—William Watson, author of House of Delete
2021, English
Softcover, 432 pages, 17.5 x 10 cm
Published by
Inside The Castle / Kansas
$40.00 - Out of stock
“Horror” w/ special guests Bráulio Amado / badbadbadbad.com Chris Farren / chrisfarren.com Chris Zeishegg / chriszeischegg.com Dan Mumford / dan-mumford.com Elijah Funk / online-ceramics.com Glenn R. / awginc.org John Jr. / john-jr.com Johnny Ryan John Trefry / jhtrefry.org Maggie Siebert Maria Calandra / mariacalandra.com Mark McCoy / markmccoyart.com Perry Shall / perryshall.com Richard “French” Sayer / funeralfrench.com Roland Scagnetti Sammy Harkham Thomas Moore Tony Stella / tony-stella.com
"Hunchback ‘88 is the new-ish debut novel from Christopher Norris (formerly of Combatwoundedveteran). The novel is ostensibly a simple slasher story but it’s presentation is what makes it great. This novel is probably the most formally daring work I’ve read in years. Revolting and erotic in equal measures. Norris finds his own rhythms in obstructing the reader’s understanding of what exactly is going on page-to-page. Hunchback is thrilling to read in the same way that novels like A Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting were in High School."—The Chain World
2023, English / German
Softcover (staple-bound), 56 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Published by
Neue Galerie Gladbeck / Gladbeck
$35.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Michaela Eichwald — Free path to happiness, August 25, 2023 – October 29, 2023, Neue Galerie Gladbeck. Bilingual english and German, with a photo series and notes by the artist, illustrations of the works and installations, accompanied by a text by Luisa Schlotterbeck. This publication was created in collaboration with Michaela Eichwald, Luisa Schlotterbeck and Visible. In memory of Kathrin Roussel. Supported by Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York City, Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Dépendance, Brussels. With kind support from Sparkasse Gladbeck.
2023, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Uh Books / Amsterdam
$25.00 - In stock -
F.R.DAVID was concerned with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practice. Following and open call, this is - the very last issue - a collectively-compiled "Erratum", or addendum [if you will] to the twenty-three issues from 2007 until now.
Edited with Paul Abbott, After 8, Alma Sarif, Phil Baber, Daniel Blumberg, Thomas Boutoux, Kristien Van den Brande, Chloe Chignell, Martina Copley, Anthony Elms, Chris Evans, Carolina Festa, Kasper Feyrer, Richard Finlay Fletcher, Ben Green, Mariëtte Groot, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Léa Guillon, Sarah Handley, Gloria Hasnay, Loes Jacobs, Michel Khleifi, Willis Kingery, gerlach en koop, James Goggin, Keira Greene, Léa Guillon, Jacob Lindgren, Kobe Matthijs, Martino Morandi, Zen Nguyen, Alice Notley, Robert M. Ochshorn, Oscar the dog, Willem Oorebeek, David Reinfurt, Scott Rogers, Andrés de Santiago Areizaga, Rosa Sarholz, Clara Schulmann, Andrea di Serego Alighieri, Sabrina Tarasoff, Kristy Trinier, Seymour Wright and Unknown.
2021, Japanese / English
Hardcover (with obi), 368 pages, 20 x 30 cm
Published by
Toyota Municipal Museum of Art / Aichi
$130.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful hardcover catalogue published in Japan to the exhibition Beuys + Palermo touring three venues across Japan in 2021.
Joseph Beuys and Blinky Palermo were from different generations, but both experienced WWII and the postwar reconstruction, as teacher and pupil. One of the most important artists since World War II, Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) asserted that true capital lies in the creativity of human beings, and viewing the whole of society as sculpture, set out to change it. Beuys is also known for his role in nurturing numerous artists in his capacity as an educator. One such pupil was Blinky Palermo (1943–1977). The modest abstract works that form the legacy of this painter active for just a short few years from the mid-1960s up to his early demise, were an attempt to quietly overturn our perceptions, and social systems, via the visceral experience of color and form, all the while reconstructing the compositional elements of painting. The works of these two superficially contrasting German artists were alike in that both Beuys and Palermo endeavored to restore art to the status of a raw, live endeavor, Beuys indeed later acknowledging his former student to be the artist closest to himself. Composed primarily of works from the 1960s and ‘70s, documentation from the period and detailed texts, “Beuys + Palermo” explores the features of each of these two artists, while simultaneously searching for the latent power of their praxis in their involvement and overlap with each other.
1989, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and original plastic wrap), 80 pages, 22.8 x 16.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakutokan / Japan
$100.00 - In stock -
First edition of The World of Pierre Molinier, published in 1989 in Japan. An exquisite book of Molinier's fetishistic gender-bending paintings, photomontages, and drawings, fittingly wrapped in "stocking" dust jacket, with texts by André Breton, translated from French to Japanese by Kosaku Ikuta, imagery from "Molinier" (1966) film by Raymond Borde, beautifully designed and printed in Japan where Molinier's artworks had a particular resonance.
Pierre Molinier (1900—1976) was a French painter, photographer and a forerunner of gender performance art and Body Art (Art corporel). Molinier spent much of his artistic life working in isolation in Bordeaux, exiled from local and national art scenes. Born in Agen, nothing had predestined Molinier to a life as an artist. Self-taught, from a working-class background, he followed in his father’s footsteps and started out as a house painter. He got married and had two children. Tired of his infidelities and provocative behaviour, his wife left their marital home an in 1950 and Molinier begun photographing himself seriously, staging his own death and erecting a fake gravestone proudly declaring himself ‘a man without morals’. He was thrown out of the Bordeaux Salon des Indépendants as early as 1951 amidst controversy over his orgiastic painting of the same year, Le Grand Combat. Stirring up an obsessive correspondence with the anarchic poet-founder of Surrealism, André Breton, Molinier was soon integrated into the Surrealist group with a solo exhibition at Breton’s Paris gallery in 1956. Molinier’s anti-moral project appealed to the group’s interest in repressed desires, fetishism, and the transgression of bourgeois morals. In 1959, he exhibited at the Exposition International du Surrealism in Paris. From the mid-1960s Molinier chronicled the exploration of his subconscious transsexual desires in "Cent Photographies Erotiques": graphically detailed images of pain and pleasure. Cut-up, reassembled, and manipulated, Molinier painstakingly created elaborate and sensual photomontages in which he assumed the roles of dominatrix and succuba previously taken by the women of his paintings. Either alone with doll-like mannequins or with female models such as German sadomasochist Hanel Koeck, Molinier, who considered himself fundamentally androgynous, appears as a transvestite, employing his body and that of his acquaintances to create visions of hybrid identity, where stockinged multi-limbed, multi-sexed beings imitate pagan figures, Hindu gods, and Masonic symbols, in a rejection of a Christian tradition which he argued, had repressed androgyny. Designed to shock, Molinier’s artwork represented a very intimate disclosure about his own sexual ambiguity, inviting the viewer to bring to the images his or her own response of excitement or disgust. The degree of his artistic perversity and blasphemous tendencies was deemed too much for the French cultural elite, and the man Breton dubbed the “magician of erotic art” was shunned from the art world. Molinier did not participate in the 1965 International Surrealist Exhibition. For the last 11 years of his life Molinier played out his own most profound moments in the 'theatre' of his Bordeaux 'boudoir – atelier'. He committed suicide in 1976, shooting himself with a pistol, something he had foreshadowed in his artwork, time and again. Essentially a leg fetishist, but also considering himself as a shaman, facetious and provocative, anti-bourgeois and anti-religious, Molinier enjoyed transgressing gender identification : his outstanding photographs greatly influenced the European and North American Body Art in the 1970s and continue to fascinate artists today.
Very Good copy in original plastic jacket.
2023, English / French
Vinyl LP
400 copies,
Published by
Slow Moves / Turin—Paris
$58.00 - In stock -
Originally released in a long sold-out edition of 50 cassette tapes, Love, Emily (Acte 3) was the third and final album of Michel Henritzi’s industrial label AKT Production. Recorded in a Paris studio in 1987, this 25-minute collage of spoken word and noise saturations intersects two radical voices from literature and experimental music of the time: American author Kathy Acker reading excerpts from her book My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Nox, mainstay of the French noise and industrial scene. Pulled from oblivion, restored and remastered for vinyl by Slow Moves, this archive gem crosses the clashing worlds of poetry and industrial music, melding Acker’s thought-provoking words to absolute and inflexible industrial sounds. A lot of it is noise, but a lot of it is also play; research for a new mystique, generating unusual forms and unknown languages.
Published in a limited edition of 400 copies, this vinyl also comes with a long printed panel of previously unpublished photographs and letters from Kathy Acker, tracing the background exchanges that led to the collaboration between the groundbreaking writer, Henritzi and Nox, a poster of Kathy Acker with french translations and a download code featuring both music and extra archival material (interview and articles).
Kathy Acker (1947-1997) was at the forefront of transgressive writing from the Seventies until her death. Her provocative intertextual narratives—halfway between autobiography and pornography—were developed in lectures, performances and films (Variety, Bette Gordon). Her published work includes Blood and Guts in High School (1984), Don Quixote (1986), and Empire of the Senseless (1988).
Nox was a French industrial band active from 1981 to 1992, founded by Arno (guitar, voice), Cécile Babiole (bass, voice, percussions), and Gerome Nox (guitar, voice), joined by Laurent Perrier (guitar, voice) then Laurent Pernice (percussions, voice). Their musical influences go from German Krautrock (Neu, Can...) to industrial music (Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle...) through repetitive music. The collective is at the origin of the AKT label with Michel Henritzi.
2023, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 10.5 x 8 cm
Published by
Hanuman Editions / US
$25.00 - Out of stock
Bread and Water
Eileen Myles
First published by Hanuman Books in 1986, Bread and Water is the debut short story collection by the renowned poet Eileen Myles, assembling six stories with an autobiographical flavor, of being a queer, working-class poet with a penchant for mischief. Stories include: "Light Warrior", "21, 22, 23…, "Merry Christmas Mr. Title", "Bath, Maine", "Bread and Water", and "Everybody Would Go Play Cards at Eddie and Nonie's".
Eileen Myles (b. 1949) is an American writer, poet, artist, teacher, and playwright. They are the author of more than twenty books, including Sappho's Boat, Chelsea Girls, Afterglow, and For Now.
From the first series redux of Hanuman Books, the legendary and cult series of chapbooks that were printed in southern India and published out of the storied Chelsea Hotel in New York City between 1986 and 1993. Founded by American curator Raymond Foye and artist Francesco Celemente, Hanuman Books was dedicated mainly to the extreme deconstructive edge of the countercultural poetic, musical, and artistic currents of the 1960s and 1970s, spanning the era of the Cold War, the AIDS crisis, the Harlem Ballroom scene, the Beats, Warhol's Factory etc. Hanuman Books sought to marry the folk-minimal-artisanal with the cutting edge, playfully marketing their books as ‘secret’ documents of an avant-garde subculture, meant to be passed on covertly at street corners just as millenarian chapbooks of medieval times were supposed to have been. Printed in India, the small format is meant to mimic the chapbook form of the Hanuman Chalisa (a folk compendium of chants to the Hindu god Hanuman, sold very cheaply in the bazaars of India) that made them perfect for slipping illicitly into any pocket. Redux editions edited by Shruti Belliappa and Joshua Rothes.
2023, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 10.5 x 8 cm
Published by
Hanuman Editions / US
$25.00 - In stock -
In this brief, dense essay, Daumal bids us to resist the very notion of the truth, and to recognize it as an artistic and metaphysical dead-end.
René Daumal (1908-1944) was a French poet and writer often associated with surrealism (though he fought against the label), spiritualism, and 'pataphysics. He is perhaps best remembered for the posthumously published novel, Mount Analogue (1952).
From the first series redux of Hanuman Books, the legendary and cult series of chapbooks that were printed in southern India and published out of the storied Chelsea Hotel in New York City between 1986 and 1993. Founded by American curator Raymond Foye and artist Francesco Celemente, Hanuman Books was dedicated mainly to the extreme deconstructive edge of the countercultural poetic, musical, and artistic currents of the 1960s and 1970s, spanning the era of the Cold War, the AIDS crisis, the Harlem Ballroom scene, the Beats, Warhol's Factory etc. Hanuman Books sought to marry the folk-minimal-artisanal with the cutting edge, playfully marketing their books as ‘secret’ documents of an avant-garde subculture, meant to be passed on covertly at street corners just as millenarian chapbooks of medieval times were supposed to have been. Printed in India, the small format is meant to mimic the chapbook form of the Hanuman Chalisa (a folk compendium of chants to the Hindu god Hanuman, sold very cheaply in the bazaars of India) that made them perfect for slipping illicitly into any pocket. Redux editions edited by Shruti Belliappa and Joshua Rothes.
2023, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 10.5 x 8 cm
Published by
Hanuman Editions / US
$25.00 - In stock -
Already a member of The Feminist Writers’ Guild and one of the principle founders/proponents of the New Narrative movement, Dodie Bellamy published her first book with Hanuman Books in 1991. Feminine Hijinks brings together two long pieces, "Complicity" and "The Debbies I Have Known", along with a new introduction by the author, written for this reissue.
Dodie Bellamy (b. 1951) is an American writer, journalist, and educator, most often associated with the New Narrative movement. She is the author of The Letters of Mina Harker, Cunt-ups, Pink Steam, The TV Sutras, and co-edited Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing 1977–1997 with Kevin Killian.
From the first series redux of Hanuman Books, the legendary and cult series of chapbooks that were printed in southern India and published out of the storied Chelsea Hotel in New York City between 1986 and 1993. Founded by American curator Raymond Foye and artist Francesco Celemente, Hanuman Books was dedicated mainly to the extreme deconstructive edge of the countercultural poetic, musical, and artistic currents of the 1960s and 1970s, spanning the era of the Cold War, the AIDS crisis, the Harlem Ballroom scene, the Beats, Warhol's Factory etc. Hanuman Books sought to marry the folk-minimal-artisanal with the cutting edge, playfully marketing their books as ‘secret’ documents of an avant-garde subculture, meant to be passed on covertly at street corners just as millenarian chapbooks of medieval times were supposed to have been. Printed in India, the small format is meant to mimic the chapbook form of the Hanuman Chalisa (a folk compendium of chants to the Hindu god Hanuman, sold very cheaply in the bazaars of India) that made them perfect for slipping illicitly into any pocket. Redux editions edited by Shruti Belliappa and Joshua Rothes.
2023, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 10.5 x 8 cm
Published by
Hanuman Editions / US
$25.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1987 as a standalone volume by Hanuman Books, John Ashbery's "The Ice Storm" is an extended prose-poem by one of the most important and influential poets of our time.
John Ashbery (1927-2017) was an American poet and critic. Referred to often as an "avant-garde" poet, "experimentalist", or "surrealist", Ashbery's work resisted easy classification. He was awarded nearly every major prize for an American poet during his career, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.
From the first series redux of Hanuman Books, the legendary and cult series of chapbooks that were printed in southern India and published out of the storied Chelsea Hotel in New York City between 1986 and 1993. Founded by American curator Raymond Foye and artist Francesco Celemente, Hanuman Books was dedicated mainly to the extreme deconstructive edge of the countercultural poetic, musical, and artistic currents of the 1960s and 1970s, spanning the era of the Cold War, the AIDS crisis, the Harlem Ballroom scene, the Beats, Warhol's Factory etc. Hanuman Books sought to marry the folk-minimal-artisanal with the cutting edge, playfully marketing their books as ‘secret’ documents of an avant-garde subculture, meant to be passed on covertly at street corners just as millenarian chapbooks of medieval times were supposed to have been. Printed in India, the small format is meant to mimic the chapbook form of the Hanuman Chalisa (a folk compendium of chants to the Hindu god Hanuman, sold very cheaply in the bazaars of India) that made them perfect for slipping illicitly into any pocket. Redux editions edited by Shruti Belliappa and Joshua Rothes.
2023, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 10.5 x 8 cm
Published by
Hanuman Editions / US
$25.00 - Out of stock
Compiled and edited by George Scrivani for Hanuman Books in 1988, On My Painting collects six texts from the pioneering German artist Max Beckmann, who fled Nazi Germany after his paintings—increasingly moody and reflective of the existential terror of the time—were labeled "degenerate". In addition to the titular essay, this volume contains short pieces "Creative Credo" and "The New Program", extracts from his Diaries, three "Letters to a Woman Painter", and the text of a speech given to the philosophy faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, shortly before his death in 1950.
Max Beckmann (1884-1950) was a German artist whose body of work includes painting and sculpture. A rising star during the Weimar era, Beckmann left Germany following the ascent of Adolf Hitler, living in self-imposed exile in Amsterdam before finally being granted a teaching position in the United States in 1947. He died of a heart attack in 1950. Though he eschewed the label of "Expressionism", he is often associated with the movement, and was heavily influential on the American offshoots that followed.
From the first series redux of Hanuman Books, the legendary and cult series of chapbooks that were printed in southern India and published out of the storied Chelsea Hotel in New York City between 1986 and 1993. Founded by American curator Raymond Foye and artist Francesco Celemente, Hanuman Books was dedicated mainly to the extreme deconstructive edge of the countercultural poetic, musical, and artistic currents of the 1960s and 1970s, spanning the era of the Cold War, the AIDS crisis, the Harlem Ballroom scene, the Beats, Warhol's Factory etc. Hanuman Books sought to marry the folk-minimal-artisanal with the cutting edge, playfully marketing their books as ‘secret’ documents of an avant-garde subculture, meant to be passed on covertly at street corners just as millenarian chapbooks of medieval times were supposed to have been. Printed in India, the small format is meant to mimic the chapbook form of the Hanuman Chalisa (a folk compendium of chants to the Hindu god Hanuman, sold very cheaply in the bazaars of India) that made them perfect for slipping illicitly into any pocket. Redux editions edited by Shruti Belliappa and Joshua Rothes.
1996, English / German
Softcover, 288 pages, 27 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Oktagon Verlag / Stuttgart
$220.00 $100.00 - In stock -
First edition of one of the most sought after of Andre books, this large, heavily illustrated exhibition catalogue was published in conjunction with major exhibition conceived by Carl Andre with curator Eva Meyer-Hermann and held in Germany at Krefeld at Home, Wolfsburg at Large in 1996. The book forms an extensive exhibition chronology and detailed catalogue raisonné of works (including texts/notations and specs to accompany each work - illustrated in both colour and b/w throughout), alongside essays by Eva Meyer-Hermann and Paul Sutinen, as well as an interview with the artist conducted by Phyllis Tuchman, and a letter from Hollis Frampton to Enno Develing.
All texts in both German and English.
Carl Andre (b. 1935) is an American Minimal sculptor and poet associated with Minimalism. Andre is known for abstract work made of repetitive blocks, bricks, and metal plates arranged directly on the floor. Like other Minimalists of his generation, Andre constructed his works out of industrial materials that called attention to the inherent physical structure of the piece and to the architecture of the surrounding space. Eschewing metaphor and symbolism, Andre’s work operates as a set of purely physical and perceptual concerns. Moving to New York in 1957, he became associated with friend Frank Stella and worked in Stella’s studio while developing his own drawings and sculpture. Stella’s abstract paintings of that period were an important influence on Andre’s developing aesthetic, as was the work of modern sculptor Constantin Brâncuși. A number of experiences—including four years of work in railyards in the early 1960s and a trip to the prehistoric archaeological site of Stonehenge in England—solidified Andre’s determination to work with modular units, from wood to metals. Placing square metal tiles onto larger squares, upon which he invited viewers to walk, challenged the museum audience, who were more accustomed to keeping their distance from artworks and to observing sculptures on pedestals.
First edition, very scarce. Very Good copy, clean and tight throughout, only light corner bumping to bottom and tanning to spine, otherwise a crisp copy.
2023, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 268 page, 29.8 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Karma / New York
$125.00 - Out of stock
A window into the world of 1970s painting through the work of 30 women artists. Text by Hilton Als, Elizabeth Hess, Lucy R. Lippard, Ivy Shapiro. Conversation with Connie Choi, Cynthia Carlson, Cynthia Hawkins, Harriet Korman, Dindga McCannon.
Published to follow the landmark exhibition at Karma Gallery, New York, this catalog unites the works of 30 women painters who were active in New York City during the 1970s. The collection showcases the diverse practices and backgrounds of these artists, all of whom were deeply influenced by the transformative legacy of second-wave feminism. During this period, a new form of painting emerged, fusing elements of sculpture and textile into the medium while reevaluating its role through innovative art historical methodologies. Amid debates about the relevance of painting, women artists revitalized the practice, coinciding with a shifting political landscape characterized by the global revolt of women against their marginalized status.
Artists include: Emma Amos, Ida Applebroog, Jennifer Bartlett, Betty Blayton, Vivian Browne, Cynthia Carlson, Martha Diamond, Louise Fishman, Suzan Frecon, Nancy Graves, Cynthia Hawkins, Mary Heilmann, Virginia Jaramillo, Jane Kaplowitz, Harriet Korman, Lois Lane, Helen Marden, Dindga McCannon, Ree Morton, Elizabeth Murray, Ellen Phelan, Howardena Pindell, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Faith Ringgold, Dorothea Rockburne, Susan Rothenberg, Joan Semmel, Jenny Snider, Joan Snyder, Pat Steir.
2024, English
Softcover, 145 pages, 21 x 29.8 cm
Published by
Neon Parc / Melbourne
Discipline / Melbourne
$30.00 - Out of stock
This luminous volume on artist Elizabeth Newman includes two essays by Francis Plagne, each of which cover different, crucial time-periods of Newman’s practice. Highly illustrated, the beautiful works collected here range from the very recent, to those created in the last ten years or so. Melbourne-based Newman uses painting, printmaking, installation and found objects to explore, interrogate and apprehend questions that revolve around the philosophical and social conditions of art.
Co-published by Neon Parc and Discipline, Elizabeth Newman: Still makin’ history.... is the sister volume to Elizabeth Newman: Drawings.
2024, English
Softcover, 145 pages, 21 x 29.8 cm
Published by
Neon Parc / Melbourne
Discipline / Melbourne
$30.00 - Out of stock
This beautiful volume traces the links between Elizabeth Newman’s drawing practice and wider oeuvre. As Erik Jensen writes in his accompanying essay "her drawings are stubborn and deliberate and curious and patient" – they are acts of discovery that are, as Newman says, about "going to the nothing... to what is most me". Often radiant with colour, much of the work here is strikingly immediate, playful, visceral. Also includes an interview between Helen Hughes, Francis Plagne and Newman.
Co-published by Neon Parc and Discipline, Elizabeth Newman: Drawings is the sister volume to Elizabeth Newman: Still makin’ history....Melbourne-based artist Elizabeth Newman uses painting, printmaking, installation and found objects to explore, interrogate and apprehend questions that revolve around the philosophical and social conditions of art.
2021, English
Softcover (w. plastic dust jacket), 72 pages, 21 x 30 cm
Published by
Drill Hall Gallery / Canberra
$35.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Un-titled: Elizabeth Newman at Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 20 November, 2021—23 January, 2022. The exhibition surveyed Newman’s body of work, ranging from collage, installation, text-based, textile or found object, and all infused with painterly notions of re-presentation. Hovering around the edges of signification, embracing affect and the act of becoming, her work pivots around reversals of positive and negative, challenging the limitations of language while paradoxically affirming the plasticity of our systems of understanding. Profusely illustrated throughout with essays by Tony Oates and Frances Plagne. Designed by Small Tasks.