World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
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
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
$.00 - Out of stock
The eternal clean out! New items weekly.
https://worldfoodbooks.com/category/sale
Published by World Food Books / Melbourne
$20.00 - In stock -
A World Food Books gift voucher is redeemable in our Melbourne bookshop or via our webshop (here). An e-voucher (printable pdf) will be sent to your purchase email address (please notify us if you wish to have the voucher sent to an alternate address and wish us to fill in the receiver's details on the card).
Gift vouchers can be purchased in increments of $20 (Australian Dollars) and the total amount can simply be added to by increasing the quantity in your shopping cart. eg. A quantity of 5 gift vouchers will result in an item total of $100 - a $100 gift voucher. Simply click "ADD TO CART" 5 times, or update your quantity in the shopping cart.
If you wish to purchase multiple, separate gift vouchers in one go, please just email us and we can personally prepare and email you a payment request.
Please note: Please select Pick-Up on gift voucher purchse to avoid any postage charges. Accidental postage charges will be refunded right away!
Thank you.
For any questions, please don't hesitate to email: [email protected]
2015, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket/poster and obi), unpaginated, 31 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
GOT / Japan
$85.00 - In stock -
First instalment of GREASEBERRIES, the adult erotic art book series by Japanese cyber-punk manga master Masamune Shirow (b. 1961), acclaimed for his 1980s—1990s cult sci-fi manga Ghost in the Shell, Dominion, Appleseed, and Black Magic. Shirow is also known for creating erotic art. GREASEBERRIES, "A Collection of Masamune Shirow's Full Color Indecent Works" is one of his most popular graphic series, each over-sized, glossy, lavishly produced collection exploding with his iconic Galgrease hentai action. Mature audiences only!
Masanori Ota (b. 1961), better known by his pen name Masamune Shirow, is a master of the Japanese cyber-punk manga genre, internationally renowned for his 1980s—1990s cult manga Ghost in the Shell, Dominion, Appleseed, and Black Magic. Shirow is also known for creating erotic art. His unique artistic vision and complex techno-drama stories centred around key themes synonymous to Shirow — artificial-intelligence, highly lethal heroines, techno-philosophy, politics and mysticism, police-procedures, robotics/cyborgs, highly detailed mechanical designs and hard sci-fi rendering. During the 1990s Shirow shifted his focus from manga to art book or poster book formats, his Intron Depot art collections introducing many of his more graphic works edited from his earlier iconic mangas, alongside his personal works. Intron Depot and his Galgrease posterbooks segwayed perfectly into his more reclusive artistic life and 2000s works Pieces, W-Tails Cat, and Greaseberries, retaining all the innovative technical and detailed rendering, and applying them to graphic hentai fantasy manga, a genre he has mastered, much to the dismay of his more puritan (largely pathetic American) fans/critics.
Very Good—NF copy with original obi in dust jacket that doubles as a poster.
2015, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), unpaginated, 31 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
GOT / Japan
$85.00 - Out of stock
Third instalment of GREASEBERRIES, the adult erotic art book series by Japanese cyber-punk manga master Masamune Shirow (b. 1961), acclaimed for his 1980s—1990s cult sci-fi manga Ghost in the Shell, Dominion, Appleseed, and Black Magic. Shirow is also known for creating erotic art. GREASEBERRIES, "A Collection of Masamune Shirow's Full Color Indecent Works" is one of his most popular graphic series, each over-sized, glossy, lavishly produced collection exploding with his iconic Galgrease hentai action. Mature audiences only!
Masanori Ota (b. 1961), better known by his pen name Masamune Shirow, is a master of the Japanese cyber-punk manga genre, internationally renowned for his 1980s—1990s cult manga Ghost in the Shell, Dominion, Appleseed, and Black Magic. Shirow is also known for creating erotic art. His unique artistic vision and complex techno-drama stories centred around key themes synonymous to Shirow — artificial-intelligence, highly lethal heroines, techno-philosophy, politics and mysticism, police-procedures, robotics/cyborgs, highly detailed mechanical designs and hard sci-fi rendering. During the 1990s Shirow shifted his focus from manga to art book or poster book formats, his Intron Depot art collections introducing many of his more graphic works edited from his earlier iconic mangas, alongside his personal works. Intron Depot and his Galgrease posterbooks segwayed perfectly into his more reclusive artistic life and 2000s works Pieces, W-Tails Cat, and Greaseberries, retaining all the innovative technical and detailed rendering, and applying them to graphic hentai fantasy manga, a genre he has mastered, much to the dismay of his more puritan (largely pathetic American) fans/critics.
Very Good—NF copy with original obi.
2025, English
Softcover, 16 silk-screened pages, 14 x 16 cm
Edition of 30,
Published by
Self-Published / Naarm
$70.00 - In stock -
"'Insect Smut' is a small edition graphic zine made up of 14 collages. These are made by abstracting references from my personal archive of smut, kink, and comics. It's a homage to the vibrant scene of French graphic zines in the 1980's to 90's. Printed and bound at Troppo Print Studio over a three week period."—Oriette Wood
Silkscreened edition of 30
1995, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 200 pages, 27 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
Scarce, first hardcover edition of this wonderful 1995 Araki photo album. From cover to cover this book is entirely comprised of Araki's date-stamped photographs taken in the year 1995, presented chronologically and in rich colour. Araki documents all his favourite subjects — women, nudes, flowers, still-lifes, Japanese city details and his beloved cat Chiro, all in amazing panoramic format. Robert Frank and Nan Goldin even make appearances. The landscape format of this hardcover book allows for the images to be grouped into selections of two per page (four per spread) or a glorious single shot spanning a spread, making a jam-packed collection of almost 400 photographs. One of his best collections.
Very Good copy with Good dust jacket and obi-strip.
1993, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 23 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$220.00 - In stock -
Never to be missed, the first 1993 over-sized hardcover edition of Araki's incredible Erotos photo book, our favourite of his books. In this provocative work, controversial and legendary Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki makes a radical departure from his usual portraits and cityscapes, zooming his lens in on his evocative subjects. An exquisitely printed collection of arrestingly primal close-ups of parts of the human body, as well as pipes, fruit, wet sidewalks, flowers, snails—Erotos delves deep into the erotic subconscious. Reproduced in gorgeous glossy duotone full-page bleed, bound in heavy gloss red, foiled hardcovers. A stunning book! Araki at his most surrealist. Highest recommendation.
Nobuyoshi Araki is a prolific Japanese photographer who has produced thousands of photographs over the course of his career. He became famous for “Un Voyage Sentimental” (1971), a series of photos depicting both banal and deeply intimate scenes of his wife and lifelong muse, essayist Aoki Yoko (whom the artist credits for making him a photographer), during their honeymoon. To date the 75 year old has produced 450 photo books and counting. With a repertoire that knows no boundaries, Araki's diaristic style of photography has captured the world around him (his cat Chiro, the people and landscapes of Japan and his travels, flowers, family), though it is Araki’s intensely sexual imagery that has elicited particular controversy and fascination throughout his career. Similarly to Helmut Newton, Araki has often addressed subversive themes — such as bondage in the Japanese style Kinbaku — in his provocative depictions of female nudes. He typically works in black-and-white photography, and his hallmark style is deliberately casual. “Rather than shooting something that looks like a professional photograph, I want my work to feel intimate, like someone in the subject’s inner circle shot them,” he says. Pushing against the world of commercialised photography, he is celebrated for his history of self-publishing and distributing his work, beginning with his Xerox Photo Albums of 1970. Amongst many others, Araki has collaborated with American photographer Nan Goldin and Icelandic musician Björk.
Very Good copy in Very Good dust jacket with small amount of wear and tear.
1976, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 25.5 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Qantas / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
Published by Qantas Airlines, Tokyo, in 1976 and originally not for commercial sale, this wonderful photo book by the legendary Kishin Shinoyama was produced to promote Australia as a travel destination to a Japanese audience. Bound in landscape format with over 200 full-bleed black and white photographs, the entire book documents mid-1970s Australia through the lens of one of Japan's leading photographers. One of Shinoyama's best and least known books, with his stunning candid snaps — gorgeous sharp contrast and heavy grain imagery of Australian beach-life, the urban streets, pubs, markets, rural towns, and breathtaking outback landscapes. Kishin covered a lot of ground, shooting the people and places of Whale Beach, Sydney — Mermaid Beach, Gold Coast — Coolangatta, Queensland — Emu Bottom, Melbourne — York, West Australia — Ayers Rock, Alice Springs — Adelaide Airport — Alice Springs — Sandown Race-course, Melbourne — Paris Market, Sydney — Paddington, Sydney — Ingleside Ranch, Sydney — Old Sydney Town — Melbourne city — Sydney city — Healesville, Melbourne. All photos, only 3 pages of Japanese text.
This copy with the original Qantas promotional materials still bound-in. A treasure of an Australian souvenir photo book. Would love to see the out-takes!
Very Good copy with some wear to covers.
1990, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 352 pages, 29.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Loompanics Unltd / Port Townsend
$200.00 - In stock -
"Society's had their chance. I'm going hunting. Hunting humans."—James Oliver Huberty, 1984
Rare first 1990 blood-red clothbound hardcover edition of 'Hunting Humans: An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers' comprehensively researched and compiled by Michael Newton and published by himself and the legendary Loompanics Unlimited, Washington, purveyors of the controversial. More than 500 detailed case histories of serial killers from the 20th Century. This disturbing book describes their lives & their exploits without any varnish or puffery — the chilling details speak for themselves. More than 60% of the killers described here have never been mentioned in a published book before. This huge book is an unforgettable chronicle of the world's most deranged homicidal maniacs. One of the most complete books on serial killers there is.
Very Good copy with some foxing to block edges and prelims. Light wear to boards.
1984, French
Softcover, 36 pages (6 colour & 8 b/w ill.), 21 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Le Consortium / Dijon
$150.00 - In stock -
Rare 1984 catalogue/artist book published to accompany the exhibition Six Works at Le Consortium, Dijon, 25 June–28 July, 1984. Installation and individual works documented, with laid-in artist-designed wine label. Accompanying texts by Hubert Besacier, Haendel Teicher.
Born in Paris in the aftermath of World War II of a Polish father and a French mother, Marc Camille Chaimowicz (1947-2024) moved as a child to the United Kingdom. He studied at Ealing, Camberwell, and the Slate School of Art in London. In new artistic times, careful to bring art and life closer, often using performance, the life of Marc Camille Chaimowicz has become a great workshop. Living in the exhibition spaces, he sets up hotels entrances, decorates them with his own artefacts, and serves there some tea to visitors with musical background. When it became an official art practice which was no longer subversive, Chaimowicz abandoned performance art. From 1975 to 1979, he designed the interior of his Approach Road flat. Wallpapers, curtains, videos he made while performing in his own decor: everything had been tailored-imagined, drawn, and conceived to turn his interior into a room conducive to reverie. From the 1980s onwards, decors and furniture set like in a theatre scenography took their place in museums. Since then, hundreds of exhibitions have featured the interiors series of this international artist.
Fine—As New copy.
1981, English
Fold-out booklet, 20.4 x 22.6 cm (folded), 72 x 22.6 cm (unfolded)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
The Tate Gallery / London
$50.00 - In stock -
Rare 1981 fold-out booklet published to accompany Marc Camille Chaimowicz's performance of Partial Eclipse… at the Tate Gallery, London in September, 1981.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Fine copy.
2010, English / German / French
Folio of five looseleaf pattern sheets, a letter in facsimile, and catalogue, colour offset printed, 21.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Secession / Vienna
Walther König / Köln
$180.00 - In stock -
Out-of-print and collectible artist’s portfolio by Marc Camille Chaimowicz with five pattern sheets, a letter from Chaimowicz in facsimile, and an illustrated catalogue with essay by Silvia Eiblmayr (German/English and French/English). Produced by the Secession in a limited edition and published in cooperation with Musée La Piscine, Roubaix.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Like New copy.
1981, English
Die cut folded exhibition card, 18 x 14.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Nigel Greenwood Inc. / London
$90.00 - In stock -
Rare die-cut folded exhibition card produced by Marc Camille Chaimowicz on the occasion of the exhibition Macquettes… at Nigel Greenwood Inc, London, 10 December, 1981—30 January, 1982.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Fine copy.
1960, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 18 x 11.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Berkley Medallion Books / Berkley
$14.00 - In stock -
First Berkeley Medallion Books paperback edition from 1960 of this short science fiction story collection by prolific genre author Murray Leinster, pseudonym of William Fitzgerald Jenkins. Stories include "The Aliens", "Fugitive from Space"; "Anthropological Note", "Skit-Tree Planet", and "Thing from the Sky". Illustrated by Richard Powers.
"WHEN MANKIND MEETS THE ALIENS
Who are the mysterious "aliens"? Some day, in the near or the far-distant future, mankind will meet them. What will happen then?
In this fascinating collection of stories, these questions are asked-and stimulating answers are given-by Murray Leinster, one of today's most prolific and most popular science-fiction writers.
Most scientists agree that many of the millions of planets in our galaxy are hosts to forms of life that are unknown to us-alien forms. They believe so because life will arise wherever the proper conditions exist— and in our teeming galaxy these conditions must exist on tens of thousands of planets.
Some of this strange alien life must be intelligent life. And some day man will encounter it.
What will happen then is thrillingly told in this unusual book by a master of science fiction."—book blurb
Average-Good copy with general wear, toning, foxing.
1971, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 18.5 x 12.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
E P Dutton / New York
$20.00 - Out of stock
Lovely first print 1971 copy of the Studio Vista/Dutton Pictureback book on Symbolists and Decadents by John Milner. A profusely illustrated study, almost a concise accompaniment to Philippe Jullian's study the same year.
"Thinkers, writers and artists in late-nineteenth-century Europe were impelled by their distrust of the growing materialism of their age towards a search for truths that were of personal and universal significance. The artist embarked on an interior journey and endeavoured to represent his experience of it in an art that would give body and form to emotions and dreams.
Originally a literary movement, Symbolism was born out of this inward search as writers and artists portrayed the longings and nightmares which epitomized the preoccupations of the fin de siècle death and frustration, union and conflict of the sexes, cruel or superfluous beauty, the fatal woman, the siren and the sphinx.
In this new introduction to these fascinating and highly individual artists John Milner traces the Symbolist and Decadent movements from the forerunners in the Pre-Raphaelite movement through the Synthetists (Gauguin and the Pont-Aven group), the Rose +Croix, the German and Austrian Secessions, the personal and fantastic vision of artists such as Odilon Redon and Arnold Böcklin.
Both Symbolist and Decadent painters were concerned with the expression of ideas, mood and emotions. The Decadents, however, in their reaction to a pragmatist and materialist age, withdrew into an exclusive dandyism, and embraced the twin rituals of Catholicism and diabolism; while the search for significance in the forms of Symbolist art was the shadow of a seeking for meaning and spiritual experience in a time of good sense and clear-cut ideas.
Artists of France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland and Britain are represented here with 115 compelling illustrations."
John Milner is a Lecturer in Art History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Very Good copy.
2000, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 224 pages, 20 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Twisted Spoon Press / Prague
$65.00 - In stock -
First hardcover English edition of The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch by Ladislav Klíma, published by Twisted Spoon in Prague, 2000. Long out-of-print. Translated from the Czech by Carleton Bulkin. Illustrated by Michal Vavrečka. Afterword by Josef Zumr.
Ladislav Klíma is considered to be one of the most important Czech philosophers of the 20th century, and arguably the greatest of the prewar era. His work has influenced artists of all stripes, most notably Bohumil Hrabal and the Plastic People of the Universe. His approach toward philosophy was similar to that of the sages of ancient India: i.e., one should not limit philosophy to speaking or writing about it, one should live it. In this way Klíma embarked on a lifelong pursuit of becoming “God,” which he equated with Absolute Will. Drawing his greatest inspiration from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, he developed his conception of will and radical subjectivism in numerous essays, aphorisms, tracts, prose works, and plays. Though he wrote many novels and stories, The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch is the only full-length work of fiction Klima prepared for publication during his lifetime. In a series of journal entries, the book chronicles the descent into madness of Prince Sternenhoch, the German Empire's foremost aristocrat and favorite to the Kaiser. Having become the “lowliest worm” at the hands of his deceased wife Helga, the Queen of Hells, he eventually attains an ultimate state of bliss and salvation. Klíma explores here the paradoxical nature of pure spirituality with dark absurdist humor and comically grostesque, often obscene, scenes. This volume also includes Klima's notorious essay “My Autobiography.” Though Klíma's work has been translated into many languages, this is the first book of his to appear in English.
Carleton Bulkin, from the San Francisco area, received an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Indiana University. His translations include Hidden History by Otokar Brezina (Twisted Spoon Press, 1998) and A False Dawn by Ilona Lacková (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2000).
Josef Zumr, a member of the Philosophy Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, teaches philosophy at Palacky University in Olomouc. He has devoted much of his professional life to Klíma's work.
Michal Vavrečka was born in 1975 in Olomouc. He is a graduate of the School of Fine Arts in Prague and now teaches painting at the State Arts School in Český Krumlov.
"The non-conformist work of Ladislav Klíma has almost always shocked, has often incited scandal, but has hardly ever left us indifferent. It is not necessary to accept his view of the world, but it is possible to live through it and enjoy it in all of its ambiguity, just as one does in the theater."—Václav Havel
"Klíma's tale reads like a book that Edgar Allan Poe might have written if he'd read Nietzsche, but there are also moments of reverie that are pure Czech . . . Klíma's rambunctious mix of high and low style and holy and profane content has been stamped indelibly on the Czech literary tradition."—Washington City Paper
"A dark, diverting entertainment, certainly out of the ordinary ... [Klíma] was a decidedly odd bloke, a real character. But he was not a stupid man, and he could write. This volume is apparently the first book of Klíma's to appear in English. Certainly he is an author deserving wider recognition in the English-speaking world."—The Complete Review
"Given the power of Carleton Bulkin's excellent translation, I can only hope that Twisted Spoon or some other publisher sees fit to soon translate more of Klíma's works—fiction or philosophy . . . The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch runs with gale-force intensity and speed."—Tom Bowden, The Education Digest
ISBN 8086264106
224 pp.
14 x 20cm
hardcover
6 full-color illustrations
fiction • novel
cover by Pavel Růt
1993, English
Softcover, 1238 pages, 17.5 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Twisted Spoon Press / Prague
$55.00 - In stock -
Rare first edition of Paul Leppin's most acclaimed book, Severin's Journey into The Dark: A Prague Ghost Story, published in English here for the first time by Twisted Spoon in Prague. Translated from the German by Kevin Blahut
Leppin once wrote: “Prague remains my deepest experience. Its conflicts, its mystery, its ratcatcher’s beauty have ever provided my poetic efforts with new inspiration and meaning.” It is this city of darkened walls and strange decay that forms the backdrop of Severin’s erotic adventures and fateful encounters as he enters a world of femmes fatales, Russian anarchists, dabblers in in the occult, and denizens of decadent salons. First published in 1914, Leppin seeks to unlock the mysterious erotic nature of his native city buried deep in the subconscious of its inhabitants. His depiction of this world, in a Prague straddling the border between the ancient and the modern, has brought Severin’s Journey into the Dark deserved international acclaim. As Max Brod so aptly remarked: "Leppin was the truly chosen bard of the painfully disappearing old Prague..."
Average—Good copy. Internally VG with cover rubbing, darkening and some old sticker damage to back cover. Dedication to inside front cover.
1976, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Corgi / London
$30.00 - Out of stock
Scarce Corgi UK 1976 paperback edition of The Skull of The Marquis de Sade, a collection of short stories by author Robert Bloch, master of the monstrous. This story collection contains: The Skull of the Marquis de Sade; A Quiet Funeral; The Weird Tailor; The Man Who Knew Women; Lizzie Borden Took an Axe.; The Devil's Ticket; and The Bogey Man Will Get You.
Robert Albert Bloch (1917-1994) was an American fiction writer, primarily of crime, psychological horror and fantasy, much of which has been dramatized for radio, cinema and television. He also wrote a relatively small amount of science fiction. He is best known for his best-selling book, Psycho, upon which Alfred Hitchcock based his classic film.
Very Good copy, light edge wear and cover wear/toning.
1989, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 20.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Creation Books / London
$90.00 - Out of stock
As New copy of this very rare collection of poetry by the master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated throughout with many lithographs by French Symbolist Odilon Redon. A beautiful edition from the beginning of the Creation Books catalogue.
"Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone." (1847)
"Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) considered himself foremost a poet. Even his best-remembered tales read as prose-poems; obsessive tracts on dream and trance, catalepsy, premature burial, fetishism, necrophilia: a canon of ossified manias whose morbidness is reflected in the substance of his verse compositions. These, epistles of a poisoned romance between body and soul, charting febrile dreamscapes, seem to reflect the writer's life of sexual torment through a drink and opium mirror; a symphony of dead brides and delirium.
It was this doomed spiral that Baudelaire later recognized in announcing his own credo of perpetual intoxication; his "Fleurs du Mal" were inspired directly by Poe, sickly blooms that in turn coil through the feverclaws of Rimbaud, or the foetid distortions of Lautreamont. Right through to the claustrophobic cosmogenies of H.P. Lovecraft and perhaps beyond, the spirit of Poe resonates throughout the history of insane literature.
The poems selected for this present volume chart Poe's idealistic disintegration; from youthful Byronic romanticism, as in the long, convoluted and naive narrative "Al Aaraaf" (1829) into his more familiar, hallucinant cartography of the necropolis - most starkly expressed in the spiritual nadir of "The Conqueror Worm" (1842). In "Ulalume", for example, the writer is compelled to
revisit the swamplands where he has entombed the corpse of his butchered bride on a previous Hallowe'en; in "The Raven" , he is haunted by that dread harbinger of menstruation with promises of a spectral visitation from a mistress beyond the grave. The much-anthologized "Annabel Lee" - included here, as are several poems, in a lesser-known early version - is an unveiled paean to necrophilia.
The above-mentioned pieces are just some of many oneiric shards from that lost and fragmented mosaic, the glittering yet entombed genius of the artist - dreamland glimpsed through the sarcophagus lid of the heavens."
"Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was compelled to reproduce the most insane images from his unconscious, inspired by such "dangerous" writers of his time as Poe, Baudelaire, and Flaubert. Acclaimed by the Symbolists, clearly anticipating Surrealism, his bizarre and macabre works were immortalized by description in Joris-Karl Huysmans' profane bible "A Rebours" ("Against Nature") of 1884 -itself one of the strangest books ever committed to print.
The lithographs reproduced herein are from Redon's series "A Edgar Poe" of 1882."
—James Havoc (introduction)
Fine—As New copy.
1999, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 13.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Creation Books / London
$45.00 - In stock -
Dead Brides contains the vampire cycle of live stories, written between 1835 and 1842, which in many ways forms the nucleaus of Poe's prose work: Berenic, Montella, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Oval Portrait. In these classic tales, Poe investigates the vampiric nature of human relationships, including love and lust both normal and incestuous, and develops his theme to observe the vampiric qualities inherent in the creative or artistic process.
Vampirism, with its terrible energy exchanges and lesions, is ultimately Poe's analogy for a love that persists beyond the grave - an all-consuming passion that knows no peace until an undead reconciliation is effected.
With a preface by Jeremy Reed, Dead Brides is illustrated by the lithographs of the Symbolist Odilon Redon, who was compelled to reproduce the most insane images from his unconcious through the inspiration of Baudelaire, Huysmans, and other dangerous writers of his age.
Near Fine copy.
1961 / 1971, English
Softcover, 196 pages, 16 x 10.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Scholastic Book Services / USA
$15.00 - In stock -
1971 print of this popular 1961 pocket-book collection of eight classic stories by the master of horror, Edgar Allan Poe. Fantastic stories of the dreamlike; unreal, world of Edgar Allan Poe. " The Fall of the House of Usher", "Ligeia", "The Mask of the Red Death", plus five others that hover on the edges of madness, sounding the knell of doom.
Good—VG copy with general wear/age.
1978, English
Hardcover (w dust jacket), 160 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Dent / London
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1978 hardcover edition of this anthology of the "eerie, weird and wicked".
"The diversity of this collection, chosen by a mastermind of the macabre, is a guarantee of success. Some of the stories are chilling, some surprising and bewildering, some unexpectedly tragic—but all are memorable. There are many forms of horror— sometimes it comes disguised as a normal occurrence, or it appears in a lovely chateau on the Riviera—or on a slave ship, in a tale of revenge. Franz Kafka writes of a horrific experience in his memorable tale. Ray Bradbury shows us that even a love relationship is not always free from terror, and Evelyn Waugh's description of peaceful days in a tropical sun, reading Dickens, catches us completely unprepared for the devastating horror which erupts.
Features the short stories of Ray Bradbury, Evelyn Waugh, R. C. Cook, Algernon Blackwood, Miriam Allen deFord, Robert Graves, Fielden Hughes, E F Benson, Richard Middleton, Stanley Ellin, Franz Kafka, Christine Campbell Thomson & L P Hartley.
Jacket drawing by Alex Brychta.
NF/NF DJ.
1990, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 21.5 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Routledge / London
$35.00 - In stock -
First 1990 edition.
Why has the work of Jacques Lacan been so influential in feminist, psychoanalytic, and literary theory?
Why have his writings caused so much debate and controversy?
Feminists interested in questions of subjectivity, knowledge, and desire can afford to ignore Lacan's work at their peril. Yet his views can be accepted only at great cost, for his position is clearly antagonistic to, not agnostic about, any feminism committed to an equality of the two sexes.
Elizabeth Grosz has written a critical overview of Lacan's work from a feminist perspective, introducing and discussing his major texts and providing a much needed background to many of his arguments. She points to the difficulty of 'independent' evaluation of this complex body of work - it is hard not to read Lacan on his own terms; and she discusses the arguments with which feminist critics have supported and countered his ideas. She outlines the debate as to whether he has merely described patriarchal power rela-tions, or whether his work, lacking historical and cultural qualification, insidiously advocates them.
Elizabeth Grosz is Senior Lecturer in the Department of General Philosophy at the University of Sydney.
Good—VG copy light general wear.
1995, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Vintage / UK
$20.00 - In stock -
1995 Vintage UK paperback edition.
"The cult status of Crash has intensified since its original publication in 1973, making it a classic of underground literature. In this hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a 'TV scientist' turned 'nightmare angel of the highways', experiments with erotic atrocities among crash victims, each more sinister than the last: ultimately, he craves a union of blood, semen, and engine coolant in a head-on collision with Elizabeth Taylor."—book jacket
"A writer of enormous inventive powers, Ballard has, like Calvino, a remarkable gift for filling the empty, deprived spaces of modern life with invisible cities and the wonder worlds of the imagination"—Malcolm Bradbury, New York Times Book Review
"Ballard is amongst our finest writers of fiction"—Anthony Burgess
Good copy, bit "kinky" from storage, toned pages, cover wear.