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.
2021, English
Hardcover, 148 pages, 16.5 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$180.00 - Out of stock
First, only edition of the immediately out-of-print monograph on American sculptor Michael E. Smith.
“Smith is the sound music makes as it collapses.”—Anthony Huberman
A fishing hat, caked with red, heat-resistant rubber, nailed crown-flush to a wall; a pair of gnarled black safety goggles, melted into unrecognizability; a thin, boomerang-shaped piece of translucent yellow plastic in which two animal snouts have been imbedded; the seat of a prisoner transport van; birdhouses; boilers; children’s clothes; diving accessories; old doors; animal scrotums; artificial hearts; grill covers; forklifts. Michael E. Smith’s (b. 1977, Detroit) works are not found or lost objects but sculptural collages originating from a strategy of emptying, “a reduction until arriving at a semantic point zero,” writes Martin Germann. Spare gestures in the exhibition spaces emerge out of the dimness thanks to the absence of artificial light. Accumulated traces of human experience conjure up a brink beyond which things and their attributes disintegrate and form a new constellation that seems to “betoken a funeral solemnity, as if [it] were the result of some kind of vigil or ritual,” as Chris Sharp states.
Initially conceived to document three solo shows at de Appel in Amsterdam (2015), Kunstverein Hannover (2015), and S.M.A.K. in Ghent (2017), this major publication also gathers new commissioned texts and a reprint that shed light on the artist’s decade-plus practice. Martin Germann’s text centers on the phenomenology of Smith’s installation process, revealing the role of context, craftsmanship, and improvisation for his creative act. Chris Sharp attends to the artist’s work from the early days, tackling core concepts of horror, postapocalyptic sublime, and non-signification, and how his installations are to be read as attempts to deepen loss and exhaustion by way of working through them, thereby “disarm[ing] the trauma.” Anthony Huberman captures the struggle of translating Smith’s work into language by reading it through the lens of music. As the artist himself states, his art may be “like listening to a cheap cassette player running low on batteries slugging along ‘T.B. Sheets’ by Van Morrison while working as a dishwasher.”
Highly recommended.
2018, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 255 x 192 mm
Published by
Surpllus / Melbourne
$40.00 - Out of stock
Comprehensive monograph on the work of Australian artist Damiano Bertoli.
"Melbourne artist Damiano Bertoli is best known for the ongoing series ‘Continuous moment’, a multidisciplinary practice that offers a paratactic investigation of artistic experiments, social projects and theoretical legacies that inform the history of modernism and contemporary art. At the centre of much of this thought and production is a delirious pragmatism that draws on material as diverse as Pablo Picasso’s 1941 surrealist play Le desire attrape par la queue (Desire caught by the tail), originally performed under the shadow of Nazi occupation, the aspirational practices of Superstudio (1966–78), which sought to live without architecture, and the occultism of the homicidal sect led by Charles ‘Willis’ Manson. What is decisive, in any case, is that for Bertoli the unity of this practice resides in a display methodology that echoes a number of avant-garde principles that question the backward looking gaze." - Nik Papas
Published by Surpllus. Designed by Ziga Testen, Edited by Brad Haylock.
Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white, with accompanying essays by Justin Clemens, Helen Hughes, Helen Johnson, Nik Papas, Chris Sharp, Liza Vasiliou.
2016, English / Spanish
Softcover, 144 pages, 23.5 x 17 cm
Published by
Lulu / Mexico City
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$48.00 - Out of stock
Published on the occasion of Manfred Pernice’s solo exhibition at Lulu, Mexico City, this monographic catalogue focuses on the artist's ongoing Kassetten (cassettes) series, initially begun in 2012. Spanning back to 1996, the book features abundant documentation of the various manifestations of the works, visual references, and other recent sculptures as well as texts by Lulu co-founder Chris Sharp.
2015, English / French
Softcover (w. dustjacket), 204 pages, 22 x 29 cm
$64.00 - Out of stock
Out of print.
Over the course of a year, The Registry of Promise consisted of four interrelated exhibitions, which are represented as chapters in this book. In these chapters, Chris Sharp reflects on our increasingly fraught relationship with what the future may or may not hold, and the work engages with and plays upon the various readings and mutability of promise, along with the inevitability of what may come, whether positive or negative. Such polyvalence is particularly topical, as we have shifted from the anthropocentric promise of modernity to a negative faith in the post-human. Richly illustrated with works and installation views, and an archive of previously published articles by Chris Sharp.
With: Becky Beasley, Patrick Bernatchez, Juliette Blightman, Peter Buggenhout, Nina Canell, Michael Dean, Alexander Gutke, Jochen Lempert, Jean-Luc Moulène, Marlie Mul, Matt Mullican, Rosalind Nashashibi, Antoine Nessi, Jean-Marie Perdrix, Reto Pulfer, Mandla Reuter, Hans Schabus, Lucy Skaer, Michael E. Smith, Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Francisco Tropa, Andy Warhol and Anicka Yi.
Texts in English and French.
Design: Roger Willems
2018, English / Polish
Softcover, 240 pages, 24.1 x 33 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$55.00 $25.00 - In stock -
Texts by Jakub Bąk, Martha Kirszenbaum, and Chris Sharp
“Piotr Łakomy’s works enable the viewer, first of all a body wandering within the exhibition space, to measure its own physicality to the artwork. The reflective fabric or aluminum sheets he uses provoke, in fact, a sudden intimacy that springs from our relationship to the installation and feels appeasing and threatening at the same time. We recognize ourselves in this format; it inevitably attracts us, yet it frightens us just like our own shadow caught in the night.”––Martha Kirszenbaum
1211210 is the first publication devoted entirely to Piotr Łakomy’s oeuvre. In collaboration with the graphic designer Krzysztof Pyda, the artist has created a kind of a self-portrait book, the central part of which is reproductions of his works from 2012–2017, arranged according to a rigid rule. The photographs are reproduced on two scales—general views on a scale of 1:10, and details of works at 1:1. By that means, the essential aspect of Łakomy’s sculptural work—the relation of body size to the size of the object—has found its equivalent in the form of this printed album. This publication is produced and co-published by Griffin Art Space, Warsaw.
2017, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 16 x 24 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$54.00 - Out of stock
Cash for Gold is the most comprehensive monograph on the work of Nina Beier, copublished with the Kunstverein in Hamburg, in conjunction with Kunsthaus Glarus. Nina Beier’s art presents a particular challenge to critics, Alexander Scrimgeour outlines in the introduction to this catalogue— indeed, an anthology of eight different essays: a textual bounty that proved necessary. The conventional functions of the art writer: interpretation, judgement, critique, contextualisation, etc., stand in an uneasy relationship, not to say opposition, to the explorations of openness, assignations of value, and unspoken cultural codes in her work. The development of this catalogue, and the fact that it does not coalesce into a single, authoritative voice, can perhaps best be seen as a reflection of the work itself, and what makes or lets it carry meaning for different people in different ways. For all the specificity of its materials and forms, it draws its energy from the emotional valence of culturally embedded desires, pressures, norms and glitches within what Rosalind Krauss called, after Fredric Jameson, “the total saturation of cultural space by the image.” The sprawl and partiality of this catalogue is itself a mirror of a crisis of representation that is itself the ground occupied by the images, confused objects, and art-historical references in Beier’s work to date.
Bettina Steinbrügge, Alexander Scrimgeour, eds.
Texts by Karen Archey, Laura McLean-Ferris, John Miller, Post Brothers, Dieter Roelstraete, Chris Sharp, Bettina Steinbrügge, Alexander Scrimgeour, Ana Texeira Pinto
2017, English / German
Hardcover, 256 pages, 20.8 x 27.5 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$110.00 - Out of stock
Liz Magor (*1948) is one of the most important Canadian artists of her generation, and certainly its most influential sculptor of the past 30 years. This publication delivers an in-depth exploration of Liz Magor's sculpture and installations produced over the course of 40 years. It emphasizes the thematic and emotional range of Magor's practice. From the mental and physical contexts of retail consumerism to the spaces of the museum to the private, interior worlds of addiction and desire, Magor’s oeuvre has consistently combined a high level of conceptual and procedural rigor with the intense investigation of materials, ranging from twigs and textiles to rubber and polymerized gypsum. The book focuses on the richly layered nature of Magor’s practice—extraordinary in its tendency to meld multiple references to cultures of display, compulsion, and consumption, making the case that this visual and emotional richness is one of the reasons why Magor is one of the most intriguing conceptual artists of her generation.
This monographic publication includes an interview with Liz Magor and contributions by Dan Adler, Heike Munder, and Bettina Steinbrügge, as well as with Ian Carr-Harris, Géraldine Gourbe, Lesley Johnstone, Trevor Mahovsky, Isabelle Pauwels, Chris Sharp, and Corin Sworn. It accompanies the retrospective exhibition "Liz Magor" organized by the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, and Kunstverein in Hamburg in 2017.
Published with the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal; the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; and the Kunstverein Hamburg.
2013, English / German
Hardcover, 192 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
Ludwig Forum / Aachen
Walther König / Köln
$100.00 - Out of stock
The first major monographic catalogue surveying the art of Michael E. Smith (born Detroit 1977), published on occasion of the artist's solo exhibition at Ludwig Forum Aachen (April 21 - June 23 2013) and now out of print.
Besides essays by Brigitte Franzen, Alexander Koch, Simone Menegoi, Anna Sophia Schultz, and Chris Sharp, and an in-depth photographic survey of this major museum exhibition of Smith, the book also features a catalogue raisonné documenting Smith's work from 2007-2013.
Edited by Brigitte Franzen and Anna Sophia Schultz.
Softcover, 230 pages, 20.5 x 27 cm
Published by
Cura Books / Rome
$20.00 - Out of stock
cura. is a quarterly magazine, a publishing house, an exhibition space and a platform for editorial and curatorial activities, based in Rome, Italy.
CURA. NO.22
COVER BY SOL CALERO
INSIDE THE COVER
Sol Calero
text by Adam Carr
PORTRAITS IN THE EXHIBITION SPACE
Johannes Cladders’ anti-museum
by Lorenzo Benedetti
EXHIBITION LITERATURE
Expanded Literature.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
by Jean-Max Colard
SPOTLIGHT
James Bridle.
Seeing Like a Network
in conversation with Ben Vickers
Self-Portrait as a City.
Alex Israel in conversation
with Gigiotto Del Vecchio
ABOUT
Anicka Yi’s Allegorical Bouquets
by Chris Sharp
ABOUT
Kevin Beasley.
Energy Accumulates
by Rose Bouthillier
ARTIST’S PROJECT
by Amy Yao
SPOTLIGHT
Philipp Timischl
in conversation with
Pierre-Alexandre Mateos
and Charles Teyssou
A VISIT TO
Rodrigo Hernández
in conversation with
Joao Mourao & Luis Silva
SPOTLIGHT
ÅYR
in conversation with Philipp Ekardt
SPOTLIGHT
Caroline Mesquita
in conversation with
Martha Kirszenbaum
HOT!
Debora Delmar Corp.
by Judith Vrancken
Juliana Huxtable
by Whitney Mallett
Sophie Jung
by Frances Loeffler
Nancy Lupo
by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
2015, English
Softcover, 230 pages, 20.5 x 27 cm
Published by
Cura. / Rome
$20.00 - Out of stock
cura. is a quarterly magazine, a publishing house, an exhibition space and a platform for editorial and curatorial activities, based in Rome, Italy.
CURA. No.20
FALL 2015
Cover by Allison Katz
INSIDE THE COVER
Allison Katz. Pungent Painting
text by Ruba Katrib
PORTRAITS IN THE EXHIBITION SPACE
Wim Beeren and Tomorrow’s Museum
by Lorenzo Benedetti
TALKING ABOUT
Why Poetry?
by Jean-Max Colard
POP-UP SECTION: DISPLAY
ISSUE 01
You Display, I Display, We Display
by Céline Condorelli and Gavin Wade
ABOUT
Josh Kline
by Ciara Moloney
PROJECT
A Wonderful World Under Construction
by GCC
SPOTLIGHT
Ryan Gander
in conversation with Adam Carr
ABOUT
Michael E. Smith
by Jenny Jaskey
A VISIT TO
Pedro Barateiro: The Current Situation /
Palmeiras Bravas, Museu Colecão Berardo, Lisbon
with João Mourão & Luís Silva
ABOUT
Marguerite Humeau
by Hans Ulrich Obrist
HOT!
Olga Balema
by Chris Sharp
Darja Bajagić
by Franklin Melendez
Sascha Braunig
by Rose Bouthillier
Rachel Rose
by Frances Loeffler
PROJECT
Villa Design Group
and Nicoletta Lambertucci
PROJECT
Lena Henke and Anna Gritz
2015, English / Spanish
Softcover w. dustjacket, 144 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 16 x 23 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$23.00 - Out of stock
Fabiola Iza, Chris Sharp, eds.
Economy, “in the sense of doing a lot with a little or sometimes nothing at all,” is one of the founding principles of the Lulennial, a biennial organized by Fabiola Iza and Chris Sharp at Lulu, a 9-square meter independent space in Mexico City. The diminutive space is not necessarily a constraint if the works exhibited (and featured in this accompanying publication) are the startling outcome of slight gestures, like those created by Jirí Kovanda, Roman Ondák, Kirsten Pieroth, Wilfredo Prieto, and Martín Soto Climent, just to name some of the more than 25 participants in the exhibition. Other instigators of this peculiar attitude, the purpose of which is to achieve the maximum effect through the smallest of means, range from Billy Apple to Graciela Carnevale to Mierle Laderman Ukeles and La Monte Young, among others.
2014, English
Softcover, 256 pages (colour ill.), 23 x 30 cm
Published by
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$22.00 - Out of stock
Kaleidoscope’s newest release, Issue 22 (Fall 2014), introduces a completely redesigned and revamped version of the magazine, under the visionary art direction of Munich-based Bureau Mirko Borsche. The magazine’s new direction combines its defining curatorial and interdisciplinary approach with an emphasis on the power of images and a keen attention to the update, and is best epitomized by the new cover tagline: VISUAL CULTURE NOW.
In the renovated opening section of HIGHLIGHTS, twelve profiles account for the best of the season: Boychild (by Francesca Gavin), Ed Fornieles (by George Vasey), Adriano Costa (by Laura McLean-Ferris), Liu Chuang (by Venus Lau), Carol Rama (by Jesi Khadivi), Tabor Robak (by Alex Gartenfeld), Jana Euler (by Martha Kirszenbaum), Guan Xiao (by Pablo Larios), Alex Da Corte (by Piper Marshall), David Ostrowski (by Peter J. Amdam), Aphex Twin (by Francesco Tenaglia), and Torey Thornton (by Ross Simonini).
To follow, our signature MAIN THEME section, titled SO NY, is dedicated to practices informed and inspired by the city of New York. From the gritty urban feeling to the great sense of community — living and working in NYC provides endless inspiration and fuel for artists and creators. We have selected four pairs, from different generations and circles, to share memories and discuss perspectives: Jeffrey Deitch and Fab 5 Freddy, Chris Martin and Joyce Pensato, Brendan Dugan and Ari Marcopoulos, and Cecilia Alemani and Marianne Vitale. The result is a choral tale of convergences, strategies, connections, and old and new magics. Enriched with a collectable poster by Ari Marcopoulos!
On the other hand, the MONO section and cover story are dedicated to Norwegian, Los Angeles-based photographer Torbjørn Rødland. Seemingly speaking the fetishistic idiom of advertisement, marketing and food photography, Rødland’s images are in fact pervaded by the most compelling kind of perversity and haunted by boredom, spiritual longing, and a sense of aftermath. This monographic survey comprises an essay by Chris Sharp, an interview by Hanne Mugaas, and original portraits by Trine Hisdal.
Later on, a brand new section invites the eye to an enthralling journey across over 80 pages of visual contributions by artists, curators and image-makers, affirming the magazine’s centrality as a tool to show and experience art. This issue’s VISIONS include “Chopped & Screwed: Austin Lee and David Benjamin Sherry,” curated by Alessio Ascari; H.R. Giger’s “Biomechanoid”; Dorothea Tanning’s “Paintings”; Alexandra Bachzetsis’s “From A to B via C”; “Rondes Bosses,” curated by Nicolas Trembley; Chris Wiley’s “Technical Compositions”; and David Rappeneau’s “$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.”
Lastly, the closing section of REGULARS features our insightful columns on the past, present and future of art and culture: in the first installment of Futura 89+ Hans Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets interview American poet Andrew Durbin; Producers features Carson Chan’s conversation with Artsy’s founder Carter Cleveland; Christopher Schreck explores Francesco Clemente’s India as part of the Panorama series; and in Pioneers Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen talk to legendary artist Ashley Bickerton.
2013, English
Softcover, 148 pages + booklet, 17 x 24.5 cm
Published by
Fillip / Vancouver
$20.00 $5.00 - In stock -
Fillip 18, Spring 2013
features: Martha Langford, Sven Lütticken, Hassan Khan, Chris Sharp, Bassam El Baroni, Matthew Buckingham, David Harvey, and Petra Stavast.
Also includes a booklet of images from Charlotte Cheetham's Slide Shows: A Landscape of Contemporary Independent & Art Publishing.
2012, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 220 x 293 mm
Published by
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
"PAINTING FOREVER"
HIGHLIGHTS
Oscar Murillo by Isobel Harbison; Ryan Sullivan by Klaus Kertess; Allison Katz by Chris Sharp; Jonathan Binet by Michele D’Aurizio; Tala Madani by Chris Wiley.
MAIN THEME – Four Painters, Four Perspectives
Heimo Zobernig by Beatrix Ruf; John Currin by Catherine Wood; Amy Sillman by Joanna Fiduccia; Michael Krebber by Isabelle Graw.
MONO – Dianna Molzan
Essay by Jonathan Griffin; Interview by Bruce Hainley.
REGULARS
Futura: Nikolas Gambaroff by Hans Ulrich Obrist; Souvenir D’Italie: Giorgio Griffa by Luca Cerizza; Producers: Almine Rech by Carson Chan; On Exhibitions: “Painter Painter” by Cristina Travaglini.
2011, English
Softcover, 220 x 293 mm
Published by
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
Kaleidoscope #12 – Fall 2011
Kaleidoscope is an international quarterly of contemporary art and culture. Distributed worldwide on a seasonal basis, it offers a timely guide to the present (but also to the past and possible futures) with an interdisciplinary and unconventional approach.
HIGHLIGHTS: Public Movement interview by Alhena Katsof; RON NAGLE INTERVIEW BY STERLING RUBY; Lucie Stahl by Joanna Fiduccia; The Suburbs by Michele D’Aurizio; Uri Aran by Bartholomew Ryan.
MAIN THEME: STATE OF THE ART BOOK: EXPERIMENTAL COLLECTIBLE LIONEL BOVIER AND AA BRONSON IN CONVERSATION; Why the Book? by Chris Sharp; Special Project by Nina Beier; Secondary into Primary
‘c5bäke and Gavin Wade in conversation; Archive Fever Chris Decon interviewed by Florencia Serrot.
MONO: BERNADETTE CORPORATION: I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On words by Chris Wiley; Matter Expands Away by Vincenzo Latronico; IF EVERYTHING WORKS INTERVIEW BY ANNIE OCHMANEK; Special Project by Bernadette Corporation.
COLUMNS: PIONEERS: Hannah Wilke by Simone Menegoi; FUTURA: David Hominal interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist; MAPPING THE STUDIO: Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet by Luca Cerizza; ON EXHIBITION: “Carlo Mollino. Maniera Moderna” by Paola Nicolin; LAST QUESTION: What Is Going on out in the Street? answer by Ari Marcopoulos.
2011, English
Softcover, 220 x 293 mm
Published by
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
Kaleidoscope Issue #11 – Summer 2011
Kaleidoscope is an international quarterly of contemporary art and culture. Distributed worldwide on a seasonal basis, it offers a timely guide to the present (but also to the past and possible futures) with an interdisciplinary and unconventional approach.
HIGHLIGHTS: Steven Shearer by Dieter Roelstraete; Slavs & Tatars by Carson Chan; Kaari Upson by Quinn Latimer; Alina Szapocznikow by Chris Sharp; Greg Parma-Smith interview by Nicolas Guagnini.
MAIN THEME: POP RIGHT NOW: Roundtable with Bettina Funcke, Massimiliano Gioni, John Miller, moderated by Joanna Fiduccia, with a postscript by Boris Groys, and artworks by Darren Bader; Justin Bieber by Francesco Spampinato; Rashid Johnson interview by Alessio Ascari; The Dark Side of Hipness Mark Greif and Richard Lloyd in conversation.
MONO: MARK LECKEY: Lost in the Supermarket by Barbara Casavecchia; The Browser Is a Portal by Isobel Harbison; Special Project by Mark Leckey; Art Stigmergy interview by Mark Fisher.
COLUMNS: PIONEERS: Morgan Fisher by Simone Menegoi; FUTURA: Helen Marten interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist; MAPPING THE STUDIO: Simon Denny by Luca Cerizza; CRITICAL SPACE: Douglas Coupland interview by Markus Miessen; ON EXHIBITION: Jeff Koons’ “The New” by Paola Nicolin; LAST QUESTION: And What About Pop Music? answer by Scott King.
2011, English
Softcover, 220 x 293 mm
Published by
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
Kaleidoscope 10 – Spring 2011
Kaleidoscope is an international quarterly of contemporary art and culture. Distributed worldwide on a seasonal basis, it offers a timely guide to the present (but also to the past and possible futures) with an interdisciplinary and unconventional approach.
HIGHLIGHTS
Michael E. Smith by Chris Sharp; Jean-Léon Gérome by Marie de Brugerolle; Kathryn Andrews by Michael Ned Holte; Criticism as Fiction? by Vincenzo Latronico; John Divola by Chris Wiley.
MAIN THEME – Art Faces the Economy
Superflex by Marina Vishmidt; Charles Esche and Maria Lind in conversation; Current Account by Nav Haq; Zachary Formwalt by Binna Choi
MONO – Haegue Yang
Essay by Bart van der Heide; Focus by Joanna Fiduccia; Special project by Haegue Yang; Interview by Yasmil Raymond.
REGULARS
Pionners: Absalon by Simone Menegoi; Futura: Raumlabor by Hans Ulrich Obrist; Mapping the Studio: Heimo Zobernig by Luca Cerizza; Vis à vis: Leigh Ledare and Hilary Lloyd by Elena Filipovic; Critical Space: Chantal Mouffe by Markus Miessen; Last Question by Alessandro Pessoli.
2010, English/German
Hardcover, 160 pages, 15 x 23 cm
Published by
Neuer Aachener Kunstverein / Aachen
$44.00 - Out of stock
Sculptures that radiate ephemeral powers and fragile vitality.
The fragile installations of Nina Canell (born 1979 in Sweden, lives and works in Berlin) are essays on changeability. Electrical equipment and neon tubes establish sculptural, temporary, almost performative connections to water, wood, and stones in which the individual materials influence one another and are constantly in motion. Based on her work with scientific and pseudo-scientific experiments and with natural phenomenon, the fragile vitality of Canell s sculptures sometimes calls our perception of reality into question. She is interested in the unnoticed and unfathomable qualities that so often seem to be lost in everyday life.
Evaporation Essays is the first extensive monograph on the artist and includes
sculptures from the past three years.
With texts by Lilian Haberer and Regina Barunke, Xander Karskens, Caomhín Mac Giolla Léith, Pádraic E. Moore, and Chris Sharp and a glossary by Melanie Bono and Annette Hans.
2011, English
Softcover, 32 pages, 16 x 26 cm
Published by
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$22.00 - Out of stock
“Just as Duchamp once asked himself if it was possible to make a work of art that was not a work of art, the Vienna-based Australian artist Andy Boot asks, all but rhetorically, not to mention paradoxically, if it is possible to make an image that is not an image. Indeed, what constitutes an image now that we live in the labyrinth of images? What is its current zero degree? And how is that determined? Or perhaps better yet, legislated?” – Chris Sharp
With texts by Michele D'Aurizio and Chris Sharp.
Softcover, 26 x 14 cm, 336 pages (colour ill. throughout)
Published by
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
Paraguay Press / Paris
$30.00 - Out of stock
American artist and filmmaker Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow), who was a former assistant to Gregory Markopoulos and mentored by Stan Brakhage, has gained a solid reputation among cinema enthusiasts for his films made during the 1960s and 1970s. His work was associated with the earliest examples of the so-called 'structural' film movement, when Land worked alongside filmmakers like Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton and Paul Sharits, though he distanced himself from this context very early on. Land himself stresses his education as a painter and his early efforts recalling Abstract Expressionist painting through exposing the physical properties of celluloid (Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc., 1965-1966). His visual genius was paired with sophisticated wordplay in his subsequent output. Inspired by educational film (Remedial Reading Comprehension, 1970), advertisement and television, Land parodies the experimental and structural film-movement itself, as is manifest in his 1975 Wide Angle Saxon. Virtuosity in the use of Duchampian double entendres, puns and wit, make these films hilarious at times, and gave Land a special status in the then burgeoning American avant-garde cinema. Thirty years after On the Marriage Broker Joke - his last completed film (with the exception of two rarely screened video-shot projects made in the mid-1980s, Noli Me Tangere and The Box Theory, and the unfinished Undesirables, 1999) - a new film, Dialogues (2007-2009), was shown at the Kunsthalle Bern. Dialogues is an episodic series of short films informed by the artist's study of folklore, myth, history and the theology of all major religions, including Gnosticism and cabala. With a healthy dose of irony and a proudly irreverent attitude toward all kind of orthodoxies Land readily applies the structure of the Platonic dialogue to explore themes of reincarnation, art criticism, and Tantra. In the filmmaker's own words Dialogues "concentrates on the events of Owen Land's life in 1985, when he returned to Los Angeles after spending a year in Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Okinawa, Japan. […] It was a time for much soul-searching about his relationships with women (and with strippers). There are flashbacks to that very formative period, the 1960s when 'we won the sexual revolution' as one character says. Some of the episodes contain events which are more speculative, or imaginative, than literally real." The film also includes musings about Land's artistic forebears and pastiches of other films, including The Graduate, Red Eye (called Craven Death Maven), most of Kenneth Anger's films, and complex allusions to the films of Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage. This book is constructed around Land's "Dialogues" and features the "Dialogues" script, interviews between Land and Julia Strebelow and Scott Foundas, and an essay by Chris Sharp. Edited by Philippe Pirotte and Julia Strebelow. Co-published by Paraguay Press and Kunsthalle Bern on the occasion of the exhibitions: Owen Land: “Dialogues” Kunsthalle Bern 4.4. – 17.5.2009 Owen Land: “How can you believe anything he says?” KW Berlin – Kunst-Werke Berlin e.V. – Institute for Contemporary Art 22.11.2009 – 24.1.2010