World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1974, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Toho / Tokyo
$40.00 - In stock -
Wonderful, rare Japanese souvenir photo booklet for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, the critically-acclaimed 1974 American crime drama film directed by Joseph Sargent, produced by Gabriel Katzka and Edgar J. Scherick, and starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, and Héctor Elizondo. Heavily illustrated throughout with glossy colour and b/w stills from the film, alongside texts in Japanese about the film, cast, and production information.
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
2013, English
Hardcover, 176 pages, 17.4 x 19.6 cm
Published by
Atlas Press / London
$46.00 - In stock -
Mystery, the marvellous, the city of Paris transmuted by love, and Sanglot the Corsair’s pursuit of the siren Louise Lame: these are the essential ingredients of this masterpiece of early Surrealism. It was originally published in 1924 to immediate and lasting acclaim — except from the public authorities who immediately censored whole sections (here restored).
How describe a novel of such virtuosity and bravura, which never behaves as one would expect? Characters appear and vanish according to whim and desire, they walk underwater, nonchalantly accept astounding coincidences. It’s a hymn to the erotic, an adventure story illumined by the shades of Sade, Lautréamont and Jack the Ripper, a dream at once violent and tender, in fact the perfect embodiment of the Surrealist spirit: joyful, despairing, and effortlessly scandalous.
Desnos was one of the earliest members of the Paris Surrealist group. His remarkable talents first emerged during the “Period of Sleeping Fits”, when the group was investigating unconscious and trance states. Able to put himself in trance at will, he would pour out sonnets, prophecies, enigmatic drawings. “Desnos more than any of us got closest to the Surrealist truth,” wrote Breton in their first manifesto.
An active member of the Resistance, Desnos died of typhus two weeks after his liberation from the Nazi concentration camp at Terezin.
Translated and introduced by Terry Hale.
1980, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
? / Japan
$50.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, scarce Japanese souvenir photo booklet for John Cassavetes' 1980 film Gloria, one of the greatest crime thrillers of all-time, starring Gena Rowlands, Julie Carmen, Buck Henry, and John Adames. Heavily illustrated throughout with glossy colour and b/w stills from the film, mostly of the great Rowlands, the publication also features texts in Japanese about the film, cast, and production information. Possibly the only publication on this incredible film written and directed by John Cassavetes. An American thriller / pulp crime drama that follows a gangster's girlfriend (Gena Rowlands) who must slip the clutches of the mob with a young boy (John Adames) who is being hunted for information he may or may not have. One of the greatest gangster films ever made. Cited by Akira Kurosawa as one of his favourite films.
Fine copy.
1969 / 2006, English / French / German / Italian
Softcover binder (w. spring-loaded plate), 170 pages, 31.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
$290.00 - Out of stock
One of the great art documents of the 20th century, "Live in Your Head : When Attitudes Become Form", curated by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, March 22 - April 27, 1969. This is the impeccably re-produced facsimile edition of the exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with an exhibition honouring the legacy of Szeemann in 2006, published by the Kunsthalle Bern, the producers of the original. Strictly limited edition and immediately out-of-print, this most faithful reprint, with the unique die-cut alphabetically tabbed index bound with hardware-fittings, has become as collectible as the 1969 edition.
Sponsored by the Philip Morris tobacco company, this was an important, extensive and primary exhibition dedicated to the amalgam of Pop, Minimal and Conceptual Art in Europe and the United States. The catalogue itself is designed and produced by Szeemann, and printed in Switzerland by Stämpfli & Cie in Bern. Alongside those of Seth Siegelaub, Szeemann's now historical catalogues changed the way exhibition publishing performed. Presented as a indexical binder (spring-bound with a metal plate) forming an index of alphabetical artist pages and accompanying texts. Includes a biography, bibliography, illustrations and portrait for each artist.
Texts by Harald Szeemann, Scott Burton, Grégoire Müller and Tommaso Trini.
Artists include Carl Andre, Giovanni Anselmo, Richard Artschwager, Thomas Bang, Jared Bark, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Marinus Boezem, Bill Bollinger, Michael Buthe, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Paul Cotton, Alighiero Boetti, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Ger Van Elk, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Paolo Icaro, Alain Jacquet, Neil Jenney, Jo Ann Kaplan, Eva Hesse, Edward Kienholz, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Gary B. Kuehn, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Roelof Louw, Bruce McLean, Walter De Maria, David Medalla, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Paul Pechter, Panamarenko, Michelangelo Pisteletto, Emilio Prini, Markus Raetz, Allen Ruppersberg, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Robert Ryman, Alan Saret, Sarkis, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle, Frank Viner, Erhard Walther, Lawrence Weiner, William Wegman, William Wiley and Gilberto Zorio.
Texts in English, French, German and Italian.
As New with only light creasing to the overhanging edges of the cover edges, otherwise a Fine copy.
2014, English/German
Softcover, 114 pages, 14.3 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$160.00 - Out of stock
First, very quickly out-of-print edition of "I'm Isa Genzken, the Only Female Fool", copublished by Kunsthalle Wien and Sternberg Press on the occasion of Isa Genzken’s exhibition of the same name, May 28–September 7, 2014, Kunsthalle Wien. Foreword by Nicolaus Schafhausen; texts by Joshua Decter and Tom McDonough. Heavily illustrated throughout with foiled covers.
“The Only Female Fool” is how Isa Genzken describes herself in the self-chosen title of her exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wien. This statement is typical of the fluid boundaries between deep seriousness and the exuberant, eccentric spirit that pervades her work. Genzken’s artistic practice is characterized by a wide spectrum of media and forms, although her roots in sculpture always remain visible. The exhibition and catalogue focus on specific aspects of her oeuvre, including the mirror motif, the examination of architecture, and space as a social sphere; where early works are juxtaposed with series from later creative periods. Genzken’s collaboration with other artists and her admiration for certain artistic positions is also brought into focus, and selected works by Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, Jasper Johns, Gerhard Richter, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Lawrence Weiner are presented in dialogue with Genzken’s multilayered work.
Design by Kummer & Herrman
Very Good copy, like new with only light cover dust wear.
2015, English
Softcover, 116 pages, 12 x 18 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$29.00 - Out of stock
In the last days of the Venetian Republic, the successive wives of Count Alvise Lanzi suffer mysterious, agonizing deaths. Murder Most Serene offers a cruel portrait of a beautiful, corrupt city-state and its equally extravagant, cruel, and corrupt inhabitants; redolent of darkness, death, corruption, poison, and transgression, it is also an over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek Venetian romp. Rich in historical detail and bursting with bejeweled putrescence, Gabrielle Wittkop’s chilling memento mori eschews the murder mystery in which it is garbed for a scintillating depiction of physical, moral, societal, and institutional corruption, in which the author plays the role of puppeteer—“present, masked as convention dictates, while in a Venice on the brink of downfall, women gorged with venom burst like wineskins.”
Self-styled heir to the Marquis de Sade, Gabrielle Wittkop (1920–2002) was a French author of a remarkable series of novels and travelogues, all laced with sardonic humor and dark sexuality, with recurrent themes of death, decay, disease, and decrepitude. After meeting Justus Wittkop, a German deserter, in Paris under the Occupation, she hid him from the Nazis and then married him after the war, in what she described as an “intellectual alliance.” He would commit suicide in 1986, with her approval, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Her first novel, The Necrophiliac, appeared in 1972, but a number of her books have only been made available since her own suicide in 2002, after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Translated, with an introduction, by Louise Rogers Lalaurie
“To all who suffer under political systems, Wittkop offers a prescription that’s difficult to swallow: the more violent your liberation, the more obscene and criminal you’ll have to become to feel free.” — Joshua Cohen, Harper’s Magazine
“This is dark, rich, deeply disturbing writing, conscious of its artifice and expertly manipulating that.” — M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review
“This isn’t simply a transcription of past events, but a kaleidoscopic vision of a society on the verge of moral, physical, and political collapse. The inevitable death of the Serene Republic rendered in a precocious admixture of apocalyptic foreboding and arch comedy.” — Karl Wolff, New York Journal of Books
“Wittkop frames her macabre voyeurism in the tradition of the ancient injunction inscribed on the Delphic temple: Know thyself.” — Matt Seidel, The Millions
“[Murder Most Serene] is a romp. Wittkop, too, is a superior writer, and I mean superior to nearly everyone I’ve ever read. These sentences are gorgeous; these sentences are so gorgeous they rekindled my belief in the efficacy of the beautiful. But when I recommend this book to friends, and they dutifully ask me why, I say this, first: Murder Most Serene will be the most fun you have reading this year. It was for me. — Ben Carter Olcott, Three Percent
“[B]y far the most radical of Wittkop’s works thus far available in English, a fascinating—if aesthetically dubious—exploration of Calvinistic world-weariness.” — Mark Molloy, Music & Literature
2011, English
Softcover, 92 pages, 12.7 x 17.8 cm
Published by
ECW Press / Canada
$32.00 - Out of stock
For more than three decades, Lucien—one of the most notorious characters in the history of the novel—has haunted the imaginations of readers around the world. Remarkably, the astounding protagonist of Gabrielle Wittkop's lyrical 1972 novella, The Necrophiliac, has never appeared in English until now.
This new translation introduces readers to a masterpiece of French literature, striking not only for its astonishing subject matter but for the poetic beauty of the late author's subtle, intricate writing.
Like the best writings of Edgar Allan Poe or Baudelaire, Wittkop's prose goes far beyond mere gothic horror to explore the melancholy in the loneliest depths of the human condition, forcing readers to confront their own mortality with an unprecedented intimacy.
Born in 1920 in Nantes, Gabrielle Wittkop is the author of several novels, including La Mort de C., Sérénissime assassinat, and la Marchande d’enfants, as well as numerous poems and short stories. She died in 2002 in Frankfurt where she had lived for several decades.
Tranlator Don Bapst is an award-winning filmmaker and the author of three novels, including The Hanged Man.
2015, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 15 x 23 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$34.00 - In stock -
Translated, with an afterword, by Annette David
Exemplary Departures consists of five exquisitely wrought novellas depicting five “exemplary” deaths in various exotic locations around the globe: a gentleman spy disappears with his secrets into the Malaysian jungle; a young woman agonizes atop a ruined castle overlooking the Rhine; a writer succumbs to alcoholism in the streets of Baltimore; a salesman expires as a vagabond in the sewers of New York; and hermaphroditic twins are assassinated in a stagecoach. Drawing from the remnants of real-life anecdotes—from Edgar Allan Poe’s final days to the agonizing tale of Idilia Dubb—these stories are imagined descents into the death’s supreme indifference. A true modern inheritor of the legacy of the French Decadent writers, Wittkop spins these tales with her trademark macabre elegance and chilling humor, maneuvering in an uncertain space between dark Romanticism, Gothic Expressionism, and Sadistic cruelty. “Death is life’s most important moment” Wittkop had claimed; Exemplary Departures offers five particularly important moments for the English reader’s dubious delectation.
First published as a set of three novellas in 1995, this translation is of the 2012 edition of five novellas, which include the previously unpublished “Mr. T’s Last Secret” and “Claude and Hippolyte.”
Self-styled heir to the Marquis de Sade, Gabrielle Wittkop (1920–2002) was a French author of a remarkable series of novels and travelogues, all laced with sardonic humor and dark sexuality, with recurrent themes of death, decay, disease, and decrepitude. After meeting Justus Wittkop, a German deserter, in Paris under the Occupation, she hid him from the Nazis and then married him after the war, in what she described as an “intellectual alliance.” He would commit suicide in 1986, with her approval, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Her first novel, The Necrophiliac, appeared in 1972, but a number of her books have only been made available since her own suicide in 2002, after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
2018, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 14 x 21.8 cm
Published by
Seven Stories Press / New York
$34.00 - Out of stock
Introduction by Tobi Haslett
"This story, if it is one, deserves the closure of a suicide, perhaps even the magisterial finality of what is usually called a novel, but the remnants of that faraway time offer nothing more than a taste of damp ashes, a feeling of indeterminacy, and the obdurate inconclusiveness of passing time." So writes the unnamed narrator of Horse Crazy, looking back on a season of madness and desire. The first novel from the brilliant, protean Gary Indiana, Horse Crazy tells the story of a thirty-five-year-old writer for a New York arts and culture magazine whose life melts into a fever dream when he falls in love with the handsome, charming, possibly heroin-addicted, and almost certainly insane Gregory Burgess. In the derelict brownstones of the Lower East Side in the late eighties, among the coked out restauranteurs and art world impresarios of the supposed "downtown scene," the narrator wanders through the fog of passion. Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic is spreading through the city, and New York friendships sputter to an end. Here is a novel where the only moral is that thwarted passion is the truest passion, where love is a hallucination and the gravest illness is desire.
“Horse Crazy is a sad, insane journey of infatuation and love. Frustrating to the bitter end—where all that is left is truth.” – Tracey Emin
“An archetypical story, expertly told. Fascinating to every man, no matter what his sexual tastes—like the characters in Genet.” – William S. Burroughs
“Sex, hypocrisy, solitude, loss, the punitive affinities that swallow the self—these are Gary Indiana’s themes, jingling through his books like money in Balzac. But rumbling beneath the malice is a melancholy yearning, a mind groping vulnerably for a human link.” – Tobi Haslett, from the introduction
2018, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by
Seven Stories Press / New York
$35.00 - In stock -
“A novel too weird and perverted and frankly minacious to stay in print, too unforgettable not to be reissued.”—Sarah Nicole Prickett, from the introduction
The narrator of Gone Tomorrow is an actor who has been cast in an unlikely art film set in Colombia. But from the moment he arrives at the airport in Bogota, only to witness a policeman beat a beggar half to death for no apparent reason, it becomes clear that this will not be the story of gritty bohemians triumphing against the odds. The director, Paul Grasvenor, seems more interested in manipulating his cast than shooting film. The cult star, Irma Irma, is a vamp too bored and boring to draw blood. And the incomparably beautiful Michael Simard doesn't seem to be putting out. Meanwhile, the film's shady financier appears to be sleeping with his mother, and a serial killer is skulking around the area killing tourists. Everything comes to a head when the carnaval celebration comes to nearby Cali. But once the fiesta comes to an end, all that's left is the memory and the narrator's insistence on telling the tale. "Unlike the majority of pointedly AIDS-era novels," writes Dennis Cooper, "Gone Tomorrow is neither an amoral nostalgia fest nor a thinly veiled wake-up call hyping the religion of sobriety. It's a philosophical work devised by a writer who's both too intelligent to buy into the notion that a successful future requires the compromise of collective decision and too moral to accept bitterness as the consequence of an adventurous life."
“Horribly refreshing, like an ice-cold glass of acid on a sweltering summer day . . . Indiana writes with an art critic’s eye for detail and a poet’s ear for language.” –Philadelphia Inquirer
“A disturbing, vivid, and brutal novel that succeeds in its dizzy mix of genres and influences. Not for the prudish, though.” –Kirkus Reviews
“Amazingly perverse, savagely amusing, unflinchingly serious. It may be in fact be the first really serious work of the imagination to come out of the AIDS catastrophe.” –Michael Herr, author of Dispatches
2022, English
Softcover, 228 pages, 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Seven Stories Press / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
"One of the most important chroniclers of the modern psyche." —The Guardian
The novelist, cultural critic, and indie icon serves up sometimes bitchy, always generous, erudite, and joyful assessments from the last thirty-five years of cutting edge film, art, and literature.
Whether he's describing Tracy Emin or Warhol, the films of Barbet Schroeder ("Schroeder is well aware that life is not a narrative; that we impose form on the movements of chance, contingency, and impulse....") or the installations of Barbara Kruger ("Kruger compresses the telling exchanges of lived experience that betray how skewed our lives are..."), Indiana is never just describing. His writing is refreshing, erudite, joyful.
Indiana champions shining examples of literary and artistic merit regardless of whether the individual artist or writer is famous; asserts a standard of care and tradition that has nothing to do with the ivory tower establishment; is unafraid to deliver the coup de grâce when someone needs to say the emperor has no clothes; speaks in the same breath--in the same discerning, insolent, eloquent way--about high art and pop culture. Few writers could get away with saying the things Gary Indiana does. And when the writing is this good, it's also political, plus it's a riot of fun on the page.
Here is Gary Indiana on Euro Disney resort park in Marne-la-Valée outside of Paris:
John Berger compares the art of Disney to that of Francis Bacon. He says that the same essential horror lurks in both, and that it springs from the viewer's imagining: There is nothing else. Even as a child, I understood how unbearable it would be to be trapped inside a cartoon frame.
Since 1987, Indiana has published novels, nonfiction, plays, short stories -- all with an unmistakable, sardonic voice embedded in the text ..." —Los Angeles Times
1987, German
Softcover, 94 pages, 30 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart / Stuttgart
$20.00 - In stock -
Catalogue of German impressionist painter Christian Landenberger, "Paintings, Drawings and Etchings", held at the Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart in 1987. Heavily illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, accompanied by German texts.
Christian Adam Landenberger (1862—1927 in Stuttgart) was an impressionist painter and professor at the Stuttgart Art Academy. Christian Landenberger was primarily known for his impressionistic portraits, landscapes and scenes. As one of the forefathers of German plein air painting, he became an important figure in the evolution of German art. He preferred to paint open-air subjects, but still lifes, interiors, allegorical and religious depictions are also among Landenberger's works. From 1893 to 1915 he worked on the motif of "bathing boys".
Good copy with cover edge wear.
1983, English
Softcover, 26 pages, 31 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Stephen Mazoh Gallery / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
Over-sized catalogue published on the occasion of a solo exhibition by American painter Cy Twombly (1928—2011) at Stephen Mazoh Gallery, New York, in 1983. Illustrated in colour throughout with Twombly's exhibited works, accompanied by an essay by Marjorie Welish, biography and catalogue list.
Cy Twombly (1928—2011) was an American painter, draftsman, and sculptor whose work reflects a lifelong consideration of the expressive possibilities of mark making.
Good copy with cover wear/age.
1990, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 128 pages, 31 x 22 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Westermann / Braunschweig
$60.00 - Out of stock
1990 German edition of this 1986 monograph on Antoni Tàpies by Victoria Combalia Dexeus, originally published by Ediciones Poligrafa S. A., Barcelona, this edition by Westermann, Braunschweig.
"This book by Victoria Combalia Dexeus strengthens our intrinsically artistic knowledge of the painter with a text supported by a lucid, well-documented cultural consciousness. The author analyses a good number of specific paintings, the reciprocal relationships and connections of which with other cultural facts or events are established with very sound arguments. Her intelligent exposition is of great assistance to us in our attempts to further our acquaintance with the work of this great Catalan artist - an 'oeuvre' capable of successive interpretations which gradually reveal to us, as in this case, its 'greatness and its profundity." The chapters are: abstract art; childhood, adolescence & the Surrealist period; the international context; a many-faceted realism; imitation through textures; transpoition of textures; objects; ambiguous perspectives, poetic geometriess, empty spaces; bodies; elusive presences; signs. Heavy illustrated throughout.
Antoni Tàpies (1923 – 2012) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist. At 17, Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis and spent two years as a convalescent in the mountains, reading widely and pursuing an interest in art. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting. At this time he also became increasingly interested in philosophy, especially that of Sartre as well as Eastern thought. In 1948, Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War Movement in Spain known as Dau al Set, alongside poet Joan Brossa, which was connected to the Surrealist and Dadaist Movements. In 1953 he began working in mixed media as a member of the Art Informal school; this is considered his most original contribution to art. Working in a style known as pintura matèrica, in which non artistic materials are incorporated into paintings (clay, marble dust, waste paper, string, and rags), he became known as one of Spain's most renowned artists in the second half of the 20th century. Social themes run throughout his highly textured and tactile paintings, which were influenced by his experience of the politics and environment of the wartime and the postwar state of the Spanish government. His abstract and avant-garde works were displayed in many major museums all over the world. “If one draws things in a manner which provides only the barest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps by using his own imagination,” he reflected.
1986, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 128 pages, 31 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ediciones Poligrafa S. A. / Barcelona
$65.00 - Out of stock
First English edition of this great monograph on Antoni Tàpies by Victoria Combalia Dexeus and published by Ediciones Poligrafa S. A., Barcelona, in 1986.
"This book by Victoria Combalia Dexeus strengthens our intrinsically artistic knowledge of the painter with a text supported by a lucid, well-documented cultural consciousness. The author analyses a good number of specific paintings, the reciprocal relationships and connections of which with other cultural facts or events are established with very sound arguments. Her intelligent exposition is of great assistance to us in our attempts to further our acquaintance with the work of this great Catalan artist - an 'oeuvre' capable of successive interpretations which gradually reveal to us, as in this case, its 'greatness and its profundity." The chapters are: abstract art; childhood, adolescence & the Surrealist period; the international context; a many-faceted realism; imitation through textures; transpoition of textures; objects; ambiguous perspectives, poetic geometriess, empty spaces; bodies; elusive presences; signs. Heavy illustrated throughout.
Antoni Tàpies (1923 – 2012) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist. At 17, Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis and spent two years as a convalescent in the mountains, reading widely and pursuing an interest in art. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting. At this time he also became increasingly interested in philosophy, especially that of Sartre as well as Eastern thought. In 1948, Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War Movement in Spain known as Dau al Set, alongside poet Joan Brossa, which was connected to the Surrealist and Dadaist Movements. In 1953 he began working in mixed media as a member of the Art Informal school; this is considered his most original contribution to art. Working in a style known as pintura matèrica, in which non artistic materials are incorporated into paintings (clay, marble dust, waste paper, string, and rags), he became known as one of Spain's most renowned artists in the second half of the 20th century. Social themes run throughout his highly textured and tactile paintings, which were influenced by his experience of the politics and environment of the wartime and the postwar state of the Spanish government. His abstract and avant-garde works were displayed in many major museums all over the world. “If one draws things in a manner which provides only the barest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps by using his own imagination,” he reflected.
1979, English
Softcover, 278 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rizzoli / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
First edition, first softcover printing of this 1978 English-language major monograph on Antoni Tàpies, authored by English artist, historian and poet, Roland Penrose (1900—1984) and published by Rizzoli. Profusely illustrated with 217 images, including 73 in colour, accompanied by Penrose's text, a chronology, checklist, bibliography, list of previous exhibitions, and list of museums and institutions with works by Tàpies.
Antoni Tàpies (1923 – 2012) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist. At 17, Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis and spent two years as a convalescent in the mountains, reading widely and pursuing an interest in art. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting. At this time he also became increasingly interested in philosophy, especially that of Sartre as well as Eastern thought. In 1948, Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War Movement in Spain known as Dau al Set, alongside poet Joan Brossa, which was connected to the Surrealist and Dadaist Movements. In 1953 he began working in mixed media as a member of the Art Informal school; this is considered his most original contribution to art. Working in a style known as pintura matèrica, in which non artistic materials are incorporated into paintings (clay, marble dust, waste paper, string, and rags), he became known as one of Spain's most renowned artists in the second half of the 20th century. Social themes run throughout his highly textured and tactile paintings, which were influenced by his experience of the politics and environment of the wartime and the postwar state of the Spanish government. His abstract and avant-garde works were displayed in many major museums all over the world. “If one draws things in a manner which provides only the barest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps by using his own imagination,” he reflected.
Very Good copy, light wear to edges, small marker price cross-out to back cover.
1985, French
Softcover, 32 pages, 32 x 24 cm
Published by
Galerie Maeght / Paris
$35.00 - In stock -
First edition of Antoni Tàpies — Paintings 1965-1980, published on the occasion of the exhibition in 1985 at Gallerie Adrien Maeght, Paris. Illustrated throughout with large colour and b/w reproductions on Tàpies works, accompanied by foreword by Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, biography and list of works.
Antoni Tàpies (1923 – 2012) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist. At 17, Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis and spent two years as a convalescent in the mountains, reading widely and pursuing an interest in art. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting. At this time he also became increasingly interested in philosophy, especially that of Sartre as well as Eastern thought. In 1948, Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War Movement in Spain known as Dau al Set, alongside poet Joan Brossa, which was connected to the Surrealist and Dadaist Movements. In 1953 he began working in mixed media as a member of the Art Informal school; this is considered his most original contribution to art. Working in a style known as pintura matèrica, in which non artistic materials are incorporated into paintings (clay, marble dust, waste paper, string, and rags), he became known as one of Spain's most renowned artists in the second half of the 20th century. Social themes run throughout his highly textured and tactile paintings, which were influenced by his experience of the politics and environment of the wartime and the postwar state of the Spanish government. His abstract and avant-garde works were displayed in many major museums all over the world. “If one draws things in a manner which provides only the barest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps by using his own imagination,” he reflected.
Good copy with rubbing wear to cover print and some pinching to spine, internally well preserved.
1983, French
Softcover, 32 pages, 31.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Galerie Maeght / Paris
$55.00 - In stock -
First edition of Tàpies — Repères: Cahiers d'art contemporain, no. 7 in a series of large-format illustrated catalogues by Galerie Maeght published in 1983. Originally included 2 original lithographs. The cover is stated as an original lithograph by Tàpies, which is present, but the other loosely inserted lithograph is not present. Includes colour and b/w reproductions of 32 of Tàpies works with details, accompanied by a text in French and catalogue of works.
Antoni Tàpies (1923 – 2012) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist. At 17, Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis and spent two years as a convalescent in the mountains, reading widely and pursuing an interest in art. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting. At this time he also became increasingly interested in philosophy, especially that of Sartre as well as Eastern thought. In 1948, Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War Movement in Spain known as Dau al Set, alongside poet Joan Brossa, which was connected to the Surrealist and Dadaist Movements. In 1953 he began working in mixed media as a member of the Art Informal school; this is considered his most original contribution to art. Working in a style known as pintura matèrica, in which non artistic materials are incorporated into paintings (clay, marble dust, waste paper, string, and rags), he became known as one of Spain's most renowned artists in the second half of the 20th century. Social themes run throughout his highly textured and tactile paintings, which were influenced by his experience of the politics and environment of the wartime and the postwar state of the Spanish government. His abstract and avant-garde works were displayed in many major museums all over the world. “If one draws things in a manner which provides only the barest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps by using his own imagination,” he reflected.
Good copy with some wear to cover edges.
1964, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 30 pages, 21 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$30.00 - Out of stock
Exhibition catalogue published by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, in 1964, where this exhibition of contemporary Australian Sculpture was assembled for travel to various Australian venues throughout 1964-65. With an opening text by director Gordon Thompson, this catalogue is illustrated throughout with the works of Anita Aarons, Ruth Adams, Ian Bow, George Baldessin, Owen Broughton, John Dowie, Herbert Flugelman, Hermann Hohaus, Vincas Jomantas, Julius Kane, Inge King, Robert Klippel, Clifford Last, George Luke, Max Lyle, Clement Meadmore, Lenton Parr, Bob Parr, Norma Redpath, Leonard Shillam, Stephen Walker, Lawrence Ware, Anthony Woodcock, Teisutis Zikaras.
Good copy with light curling and wear.
1964, English
Softcover (single bi-fold card), 25 x 15.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Argus Gallery / Melbourne
$140.00 - In stock -
Incredibly rare first catalogue of Italian-Australian artist George Baldessin, published on the occasion of his first solo exhibition held at Argus Gallery in 1964, on the fourth floor of the old Argus newspaper building in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. Bi-fold catalogue lists a brief biography with complete list of 39 exhibited works in sculpture, drawings, etchings/aquatints, and bronzes, featuring Baldessin print cover. The Argus Gallery exhibit "was the rite de passage which marked Baldessin's coming of age in Australian art"—Memory Jockisch Holloway, Baldessin having only just returned to Melbourne in 1963 from studying in Milan under sculptor Marino Marini. An important piece.
George Baldessin (1939–1978) was an Italian-Australian artist, printmaker and sculptor. He studied at RMIT from 1958 to 1961 and later at the Chelsea School of Art in London in 1962. He continued further study at the Brera Academy of Fine Art Milan from 1962 – 63. A charismatic figure in the history of Australian art, especially in Melbourne in the 1970s when Baldessin worked in a studio on Collins St with fellow artists Tate Adams, Les Kossatz, Andrew Sibley, Roger Kemp, Fred Williams and Jan Senbergs. Together with Imants Tillers, Baldessin represented Australia at the XIII São Paulo Art Biennial in 1975. Tillers and Baldessin became close friends between 1975 to 1977 when Baldessin lived in Paris, attending the Lacourière-Frélaut engraving workshop. Baldessin was known for his generosity and encouragement to others' creativity until his accidental death in 1978, at the age of 39. Baldessin's prints and Surrealist influenced distorted figurative sculptural work features in most major private and public collections in Australia, and many overseas. A major joint exhibition featuring Baldessin's works alongside Brett Whiteley's was featured at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2018.
Average—good copy. Foxing, general wear/age.
1963, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 21 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Grayflower Publications for Gallery A / Melbourne
$140.00 - Out of stock
Incredibly rare first catalogue of the great Australian sculptor Norma Redpath. Published on the occasion of her first solo exhibition in 1963 at Gallery A in Melbourne. Opening with a text by Gordon Thompson and exhibition history, the catalogue reproduces Redpath's 12 bronzetti (small scale bronzes) which she had made during her time on a scholarship in Milan and presented in Melbourne for the first time. An important and seldom seen catalogue.
Norma Redpath (1928 – 2013) was a prominent Australian artist. Born in Melbourne, she became a member of the Victorian Sculptors' Society (VSS) whilst still a student at RMIT. In 1953 she, along with Inge King, Julius Kane and Clifford Last, founded the 'Group of Four' and in 1961 she joined the artists grouping 'Centre Five' (among others Inge King, Julius Kane, Clifford Last, Lenton Parr, Vincas Jomantas and Teisutis Zikaras), who broke with the VSS and organised private exhibitions. During the fifties, she traveled to Europe and studied in Italy from 1956 to 1958 at the Universita per Stranieri in Perugia and she lived in Rome. Her love for Italy and Italian art would not release her. In 1958 she returned to Australia, but in 1962 she won a scholarship from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where she would later settle. In 1963, Redpath was given her first solo exhibition in Australia at Max Hutchinson’s Gallery A in Melbourne. Known as the Little Bauhaus, the gallery, under the management of artist/designer Clement Meadmore, championed non-figurative art and industrial design. The show was composed of 12 bronzetti (small scale bronzes) which she had made during her time in Milan. After the critical and financial success of the Gallery A show she was awarded several major commissions in Australia during the 1960s and 1970s, including the Treasury Fountain in Canberra. In 1970 Norma Redpath was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to contemporary sculpture. Redpath shared her time between Melbourne and Italy, returning permanently to Melbourne in 1985.
Good copy with light wear/age, small amoutn of foxing, little creases.
1983, Japanese
Softcover, 208 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Takashi Miwa / Tokyo
$65.00 - Out of stock
Very rare copy of issue 5 of Japanese underground SM magazine, SM Mirage, a doujinshi-style (self-published) photo magazine launched in 1983 by Keiichi Seta, and published by Takashi Miwa in a series of only 8 volumes. All volumes feature cover artwork by Tsubaki Yamaguchi and are packed with colour and b/w photo features, illustrated technique articles, illustrated stories, bondage galleries, and more, heavy with hardcore kinbaku/sm/maniac photography. Contributors included Kaoru Roppongi, Kazuo Sakuma, Tsubaki Yamaguchi, Yoji Muku, Keiichi Seta, Hajime Ounai, Yasushi Arakawa, and others. Very seldom seen.
Not for the faint-hearted.
Good copy with general wear/age.
1983, Japanese
Softcover, 208 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Takashi Miwa / Tokyo
$65.00 - Out of stock
Very rare copy of issue 6 of Japanese underground SM magazine, SM Mirage, a doujinshi-style (self-published) photo magazine launched in 1983 by Keiichi Seta, and published by Takashi Miwa in a series of only 8 volumes. All volumes feature cover artwork by Tsubaki Yamaguchi and are packed with colour and b/w photo features, illustrated technique articles, illustrated stories, bondage galleries, and more, heavy with hardcore kinbaku/sm/maniac photography. Contributors included Kaoru Roppongi, Kazuo Sakuma, Tsubaki Yamaguchi, Yoji Muku, Keiichi Seta, Hajime Ounai, Yasushi Arakawa, and others. Very seldom seen.
Not for the faint-hearted.
Good copy with general wear/age, light rippling to bottom of a few pages.
1984, Japanese
Softcover, 208 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Takashi Miwa / Tokyo
$65.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of issue 7 of Japanese underground SM magazine, SM Mirage, a doujinshi-style (self-published) photo magazine launched in 1983 by Keiichi Seta, and published by Takashi Miwa in a series of only 8 volumes. All volumes feature cover artwork by Tsubaki Yamaguchi and are packed with colour and b/w photo features, illustrated technique articles, illustrated stories, bondage galleries, and more, heavy with hardcore kinbaku/sm/maniac photography. Contributors included Kaoru Roppongi, Kazuo Sakuma, Tsubaki Yamaguchi, Yoji Muku, Keiichi Seta, Hajime Ounai, Yasushi Arakawa, and others. Very seldom seen.
Not for the faint-hearted.
Good copy with general wear/age.