World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2016, English
Softcover (w. embossed plastic sleeve), 240 pages, 31 x 24 cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
$90.00 - In stock -
At the intersection between art, design and social history, The Inventors of Tradition is a subjective study of the history of the Scottish textiles industry since the 1930s. It brings together samples of world-class design, the archive material of individuals and companies, and documentation in the form of film and interviews.
In response to this material the artist Lucy McKenzie and designer Beca Lipscombe, from Atelier, have produced a series of new works including clothing, furniture and accessories in collaborative partnership with Caerlee Mills, Begg Scotland, Hawick Cashmere, Laura Lees, Jannette Murray, Mackintosh, Muehlbauer and Steven Purvis.
With The Inventors of Tradition II, McKenzie and Lipscombe expand their exploration to encompass Scotland’s recent cultural past, making new connections that bring together art, architecture, design and sub-cultural identities.
Edited by Panel (Catriona Duffy and Lucy McEachan) – a collective of freelance curators that promotes design and craft through exhibitions and projects.
Atelier is a collaboration between artist Lucy McKenzie and designer Beca Lipscombe. Atelierʼs design work includes commissions for public and private spaces, temporary and permanent display and design objects.
As New copies with some light moisture rippling to back pages.
1996, Japanese / English
Softcover, 140 pages, 18.5 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Images of Erotic Art / Tokyo
$390.00 - Out of stock
The ridiculously scarce Japanese-only publication on the work of John Kacere.
Published by Images of Erotic Art in Tokyo in 1996, this fantastic monograph reproduces his famous photorealist paintings in full colour across roughly 140 landscape pages, broken into chapters "Lace", "See Through", "Delta", "Cotton", "Hip", and "Garter". Includes quotes from John Kacere in English, plus short texts and biography in Japanese, portrait of the artist in his studio, and more. Rarely seen and beautifully designed.
John C. Kacere (23 June 1920 – 5 August 1999) was an American artist. Originally an abstract expressionist, Kacere adopted a photorealist style in 1963. Nearly all of his iconic paintings depict the midsection of the female body. Although he rejected the term, Kacere is considered one of the original photorealists. Kacere's first painting in this style was in 1969, involving the midsection of a woman dressed in lingerie. It was over three times life size. Kacere continued this type of painting throughout the rest of his career, making it an icon of the photorealism movement. Though figurative paintings, Kacere's works have often been considered still lifes or even landscapes.
A fine copy of the first and only edition, protected under archival mylar.
1982, English
Offset-lithographic printed poster (80 x 60 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
O.K.Harris / New York
$190.00 - In stock -
Very rare early John Kacere exhibition poster, printed in Sweden on the occasion of a New York solo exhibition at O.K.Harris, 1982. Beautiful offset-lithographic printing on thick white stock featuring one of Kacere's iconic photorealist oil paintings. A real collector's item.
Dimensions : 80 x 60 cm
Fine copy. Crisp and unmarked, old "as new" preserved stock from the original Swedish print house. Online orders come carefully rolled in thick tubing.
John C. Kacere (23 June 1920 – 5 August 1999) was an American artist. Originally an abstract expressionist, Kacere adopted a photorealist style in 1963. Nearly all of his iconic paintings depict the midsection of the female body. Although he rejected the term, Kacere is considered one of the original photorealists. Kacere's first painting in this style was in 1969, involving the midsection of a woman dressed in lingerie. It was over three times life size. Kacere continued this type of painting throughout the rest of his career, making it an icon of the photorealism movement. Though figurative paintings, Kacere's works have often been considered still lifes or even landscapes.
1982, English
Offset-lithographic printed poster (80 x 60 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
O.K.Harris / New York
$190.00 - Out of stock
Very rare early John Kacere exhibition poster, printed in Sweden on the occasion of a New York solo exhibition at O.K.Harris, 1982. Beautiful offset-lithographic printing on thick white stock featuring one of Kacere's iconic photorealist oil paintings. A real collector's item.
Dimensions : 80 x 60 cm
Fine copy. Crisp and unmarked, old "as new" preserved stock from the original Swedish print house. Online orders come carefully rolled in thick tubing.
John C. Kacere (23 June 1920 – 5 August 1999) was an American artist. Originally an abstract expressionist, Kacere adopted a photorealist style in 1963. Nearly all of his iconic paintings depict the midsection of the female body. Although he rejected the term, Kacere is considered one of the original photorealists. Kacere's first painting in this style was in 1969, involving the midsection of a woman dressed in lingerie. It was over three times life size. Kacere continued this type of painting throughout the rest of his career, making it an icon of the photorealism movement. Though figurative paintings, Kacere's works have often been considered still lifes or even landscapes.
1982, English
Offset-lithographic printed poster (80 x 60 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
O.K.Harris / New York
$190.00 - In stock -
Very rare early John Kacere exhibition poster, printed in Sweden on the occasion of a New York solo exhibition at O.K.Harris, 1982. Beautiful offset-lithographic printing on thick white stock featuring one of Kacere's iconic photorealist oil paintings. A real collector's item.
Dimensions : 80 x 60 cm
Fine copy. Crisp and unmarked, old "as new" preserved stock from the original Swedish print house. Online orders come carefully rolled in thick tubing.
John C. Kacere (23 June 1920 – 5 August 1999) was an American artist. Originally an abstract expressionist, Kacere adopted a photorealist style in 1963. Nearly all of his iconic paintings depict the midsection of the female body. Although he rejected the term, Kacere is considered one of the original photorealists. Kacere's first painting in this style was in 1969, involving the midsection of a woman dressed in lingerie. It was over three times life size. Kacere continued this type of painting throughout the rest of his career, making it an icon of the photorealism movement. Though figurative paintings, Kacere's works have often been considered still lifes or even landscapes.
2000, English / German
Softcover w. CD in printed bag, 104 pages, 23 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Raster-Noton / Chemnitz
$50.00 $25.00 - In stock -
Deluxe edition of raster-noton.oacis, the experimental audio-visual book and CD project published in 2000 by Raster-Noton, the legendary electronic music label founded in Germany in 1996, on the occasion of taktlos-bern event, 15-16 September 2000, Dampfzentrale, Bern. Edition of 3000 copies. Acoustics and optics, raster-noton.oacis goes beyond the momentary. The texts by top writers like Susanne Binas, Rob Young (The Wire), Pinky Rose, Peter Kraut (NZZ) and Martin Pesch (e.g. Frieze, Spex, Kunstforum) examine how raster-noton works on the cutting edge of electronic music, computer graphics and video animation, with which supreme ease the label moves between pop/club culture and the fine arts. Archives all discographies and performances throughout the 1990s, with graphics and photographic illustrations throughout in colour/bw. Softcover book housed in printed plastic bag — creative cover flap includes enhanced CD with audiotracks from the artists and multimedia data for Macintosh to adequately complete this state-of-the-art project. Includes tracks by Carsten Nicolai, Olaf Bender, and others via projects Noto, Impulse, Byetone, Komet, CoH, Alva Noto...
Award for "Best Books of Switzerland" 2000.
Very Good all round, some wear to bag, otherwise all perfectly preserved.
2023, English
Softcover, 234 pages, 17.78 x 12.7 cm
Published by
Spurl Editions / Sacramento
$44.00 - Out of stock
A horror story of one woman's awful reinvention, M. S. Coe's The Formation of Calcium is disturbingly funny and completely unexpected.
Middle-aged Mary Ellen Washie has finally freed herself of her stultified past life in western New York state and moved to Florida. With the husband she's grown to hate firmly in her rearview mirror, and all ties to her family cut off, she changes her name, bleaches her hair, and befriends Natalie, a seemingly kind, martini-loving woman whom she promptly begins to manipulate. As her machinations propel her beyond the brink of who she used to be, Mary Ellen seeks to unburden herself--but not one to sit down with pen and paper, she narrates the events of her new life into a cassette tape recorder, giving each tape an innocuous name to keep the curious away. A riveting account of one woman's awful reinvention, M. S. Coe's new novel is disturbingly funny and completely unexpected. With elements of pulp noir and confessional literature, The Formation of Calcium depicts the bland misery of modern American life as one woman seeks her own ill-fated transformation.
"The Formation of Calcium is a dark comedy, a horror story, and the sad tale of a marginalized woman."--Karen Mulvahill, Foreword Reviews
"The more Mary Ellen tries to reinvent herself, the more lies she tells and the more risks she's forced to take, and her recordings veer from understandable desperation to myopic self-assuredness, making for a vibrant character study ('It's like exhilaration and anticipation colliding down in your stomach, where everything real is felt, ' she says about her gambits). It's a wild, rewarding ride."--Publishers Weekly
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 416 pages, 22.86 x 15.24 cm
Published by
Simon and Schuster / New York
$49.00 - Out of stock
“It’s shocking to learn that this is McBride’s first book...Eat Your Mind does everything a good biography should and more” —Los Angeles Times
The first full-scale authorized biography of the pioneering experimental novelist Kathy Acker, one of the most original and controversial figures in 20th-century American literature.
Kathy Acker (1947–1997) was a rare and almost inconceivable thing: a celebrity experimental writer. Twenty-five years after her death, she remains one of the most original, shocking, and controversial artists of her era. The author of visionary, transgressive novels like Blood and Guts in High School; Empire of the Senses; and Pussy, King of Pirates, Acker wrote obsessively about the treachery of love, the limitations of language, and the possibility of revolution.
She was notorious for her methods—collaging together texts stolen from other writers with her own diaries, sexual fantasies, and blunt political critique—as well as her appearance. With her punkish hairstyles, tattoos, and couture outfits, she looked like no other writer before or after. Her work was exceptionally prescient, taking up complicated conversations about gender, sex, capitalism, and colonialism that continue today.
Acker’s life was as unruly and radical as her writing. Raised in a privileged but oppressive Upper East Side Jewish family, she turned her back on that world as soon as she could, seeking a life of romantic and intellectual adventure that led her to, and through, many of the most thrilling avant-garde and countercultural moments in America: the births of conceptual art and experimental music; the poetry wars of the 60s and 70s; the mainstreaming of hardcore porn; No Wave cinema and New Narrative writing; Riot grrrls, biker chicks, cyberpunks. As this definitive, “sympathetic, studious” (Edmund White, winner of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters) biography shows, Acker was not just a singular writer, she was also a titanic cultural force who tied together disparate movements in literature, art, music, theatre, and film.
A feat of literary biography, Eat Your Mind draws on exclusive interviews with hundreds of Acker’s intimates as well as her private journals, correspondence, and early drafts of her work, acclaimed journalist and critic Jason McBride, offers a thrilling account and a long-overdue reassessment of a misunderstood genius and revolutionary artist.
"Kathy Acker was a brilliant bundle of fascinating contradictions, and one of the brightest stars in a period when New York was the world center of creativity. Jason McBride has written a sympathetic, studious biography. He deserves every award for the depth of his research and the verve of his writing."—Edmund White, winner of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
"At times hilarious, at other times a tear-jerker, Eat Your Mind elucidates Kathy Acker’s complex genius in all its outrageous, tender, brutal glory. Jason McBride has written a page-turner worthy of hyperbole. A tour de force!"—Dodie Bellamy, author of Bee Reaved
"A great and timely biography of Kathy Acker. Unafraid to celebrate the complex intellectual histories that form both outer skin and inner guts of Acker's work, her interweaving of ideology and aesthetics, her passionate conviction that the avant-garde was something to be lived as much as written, McBride has produced a study genuinely faithful to his brilliant, difficult subject."—Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder
"Writers' lives are seldom of much biographical interest, but Kathy Acker's had enough incident for a shelf of novels. She was as singular, passionate, and complex in her life as she was in her work, and Jason McBride accounts for it all with admirable thoroughness and equanimity, in lucid and dispassionate prose."—Lucy Sante, author of Low Life
"An elegant, engaging account of one of the twentieth century’s most important writer-bandits, which traces the twists and turns of her life with great empathy and sensitivity. Eat Your Mind is a feast, full of delicious anecdotes and tasty scraps of previously unpublished material, and a master class in writing the biography of a subject who is always trying to slip the net of narrative."—Lauren Elkin, author Flâneuse
2023, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 13.5 x 20 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$58.00 - In stock -
A collection of Dan Graham's interviews and conversations with a wide array of individuals from various backgrounds and disciplines.
Dan Graham- Some Rockin' is a compilation of fifteen interviews (two of them previously unpublished) between Dan Graham and artist friends, architects, musicians, art critics, and curators from various parts of our world. In these interviews Graham's intense interest in and observation of cultural phenomena such as rock music, urbanism, architecture, corporate culture, and art world politics and their historical development overlaps and interferes with the articulated interest of the interviewers in Graham's art, sense of humour, attitude, and point of view in regard of a huge variety of topics. Two essays, besides the "Introduction," are added to this compilation- the essay "The Museum in Evolution" by Dan Graham, and an essay by the editor, Gregor Stemmrich, on the development and far reaching implications of Graham's art.
2022, English
Softcover, 364 pages, 14.2 x 21.8 cm
Published by
Divided Publishing / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
Recorded and transcribed throughout the 1960s, Carla Lonzi’s Self-portrait ruptures the narration of post-war modern art in Italy and beyond. Artmaking struck Lonzi as an invitation to be together in a ‘humanly satisfying way’, and this experiment in art-historical writing is a testament to her belief. Lonzi abolishes the role of the critic, her own, seeking change over self-preservation by theorising against the act of theorising. With an innovative approach to form, splicing and reassembling several interviews and conversations with such major figures as Carlo Accardi, Getulio Alviani, Enrico Castellani, Pietro Consagna, Luciano Fabro, Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Nigro, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Mimmo Rotella, Salvatore Scarpitta, Giulio Turcato, and Cy Twombly, she abolishes the role of the critic, seeking change over self-preservation by theorizing against the act of theorizing.
Afterword by Claire Fontaine.
Translated by Allison Grimaldi Donahue.
"Before she spurred everyone to spit on Hegel, Carla Lonzi arranged her Self-portrait in the form of a dialogue recorded with friends – artists – with whom she had been in conversation for years. She wanted to feel less alienated, to figure out a way for art to be a part of living, not a stupid contrivance to be consumed. Soon after the book was published, in order to continue to ‘live life in a creative way, not in obedience with the models that society proposes over and over’, she abandoned art criticism, but not art – and never life." —Bruce Hainley
2022, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 21.6 x 13.9 cm
Published by
Divided Publishing / London
$32.00 - In stock -
In World of Interiors I use collage and appropriation to destabilise the first-person ‘I’. I also write directly about the inescapable condition of being perceived and positioned by other people. Our lives take place in time and space, meaning in history and geography, as well as in relation to one another – not just interpersonally, but intergenerationally, with all the baggage of race, class, gender and nation that this implies. I write about economic cycles of wealth and poverty at the levels of the individual, group and state. The book is about travel and immigration: migrants, tourists and refugees. It is about the work of survival and the cost of survival. It is also a hopeful book – about how strong and indomitable the will can be.
Aurelia Guo is a writer and researcher based in London. She is a lecturer in law at London South Bank University.
'Tracing the borders between essay and poem, quotation and the fragment, Aurelia Guo’s writing circles and contradicts narratives of power. Her close readings of contested histories, abject biographies and her own experiences of migration and displacement transfix and unsettle. This book is mesmerising.'—Natasha Soobramanien
'An uncategorisable writer … intimate, impersonal, visionary and pitiless.'—Sam Riviere
2012, English / German
Softcover, 96 pages, 26 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Distanz / Berlin
$70.00 - Out of stock
Quickly out-of-print 2012 survey catalogue on the work of German artist Rosemarie Trockel, published by Distanz. Rosemarie Trockel (b. Schwerte 1952; lives and works in Cologne) rose to international fame in the mid-1980s with her knitting pictures. A second group of works from the 1990s consists of numerous variations on wall works and sculptures into which the artist integrates conventional stovetops. These works gave rise to the entrenched notion that she is an artist who interrogates the images that define women’s social roles, dedicated to contributing to their deconstruction. Yet Rosemarie Trockel’s oeuvre extends far beyond this one aspect. In its diversity, it defies any attempt to characterize it according to conventional criteria. Rosemarie Trockel is a painter as well as a graphic artist, a sculptor as well as a conceptual artist. In 2011, she receives the Kaiserring of the City of Goslar, one of the world’s most renowned art awards.
Includes essays by Friedemann Malsch, director, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, and Wulf Herzogenrath, director, Kunsthalle Bremen.
Average copy due to library contact protective covering over cover. Otherwise minimal library markings and Very Good pages throughout.
2003, English
Softcover, 258 pages, 20.3 x 22.5 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$65.00 - Out of stock
Critical writings and commentary by the Los Angeles based artist Mike Kelley.
The work of artist Mike Kelley (b. 1954) embraces performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, and sculpture. Drawing distinctively on high art and vernacular traditions, including historical research, popular culture, and psychology, Kelley came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of sculptures composed of craft materials. His recent work offers dialogues with architecture and with repressed memory syndrome, and a sustained inquiry into his own aesthetic and social history. The subjects on which Kelley has written are as varied as his artistic media. They include the work of fellow artists, sound, caricature, the uncanny, UFOlogy, and gender-bending.
This book offers a diverse collection of Kelley's writings from the last twenty-five years. It contains major critical texts on art, film, and the wider culture, including his piece on the aesthetic he calls "urban Gothic." It also contains essays, mostly commissioned for exhibition catalogs and journals, on the artists and groups David Askevold, OEyvind Fahlstroem, Douglas Huebler, John Miller, Survival Research Laboratories, and Paul Thek, among others. Kelley's voices are passionate, analytic, and ironic, and his critical intelligence is leavened with touches of whimsy.
“This collection proves that [Kelley] has not only helped write history but has had an effect on it.” — Diedrich Diederichsen, Artforum
2021, English
Softcover, 244 pages, 13 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$90.00 - Out of stock
Now out-of-print, Mike Kelley — Materialist Aesthetics and Memory Illusions is a critical appraisal of Mike Kelley’s politics of culture as expressed in his visual art and writings. An essay by Laura López Paniagua, with an introduction by John Miller.
American artist Mike Kelley (1954–2012) was the mastermind behind some of the most bizarre and instantly recognizable artistic projects of the 1990s. Dedicated as he was to visual art, Kelley was also an insightful theorist who wrote prolifically about his own creations as well as the historical context in which he worked. His writing reveals a matrix of deeply felt theories regarding the aesthetics of the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s, and his concern with victim culture and repressed memory syndrome.
This book presents a new perspective on the life and work of the artist, assessing his personal philosophy via art as well as writing. Art historian Laura López Paniagua places Kelley’s work in conversation with the theories of thinkers such as Georges Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Through Paniagua’s transdisciplinary approach, Kelley’s oeuvre emerges as a stance based in materialist aesthetics.
As New.
2008, English
Softcover (staple-bound w. CD), 66 pages, 25 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Journal / New York
$85.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of Mark Borthwick's artist book "No Mark - Will Shine," issued in 2008 by The Journal in New York. Entirely comprised of Borthwick's personal photographs and collages of image and text. Comes with original inserted CD, "Sur end a" by Will Shine (aka Mark Borthwick). Mark Borthwick is a British photographer, film-maker and musician now living in Brooklyn, New York. He is among the generation of photographers who in the ’90s broke through the conventions of fashion photography, his distinct style being very light, intuitive and personal. He worked regularly shooting for Purple magazine, Vogue, and collaborated closely with Maison Martin Margiela in the 1990's.
As New condition. Now very collectable.
2002, English / Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 22 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$65.00 - In stock -
2002 issue of the iconic STREET magazine from Japan. No. 129 "Style from LONDON" issue.
Every issue of the no longer in print, collectible STREET magazine is made up entirely full-bleed pages of photographs by legendary Japanese street style photographer and publisher Shoichi Aoki. Most issues cut back and forth between the fashion capitals (London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) candidly documenting the fashions in the streets, sometimes behind the scenes of fashion week, in street markets, around festivals, clubs, etc. Established in 1985 by Shoichi Aoki and Noriko Kojima, STREET (and later also Aoki's FRUITS) have become essential style goldmines, creating valuable photographic documents of the times like no other magazine.
Fine copy.
2003, English / Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 22 x 29 cm
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
2003 issue of the iconic STREET magazine from Japan. No. 143 "Style from LONDON, NEW YORK, Cash Point / LONDON".
Every issue of the no longer in print, collectible STREET magazine is made up entirely full-bleed pages of photographs by legendary Japanese street style photographer and publisher Shoichi Aoki. Most issues cut back and forth between the fashion capitals (London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) candidly documenting the fashions in the streets, sometimes behind the scenes of fashion week, in street markets, around festivals, clubs, etc. Established in 1985 by Shoichi Aoki and Noriko Kojima, STREET (and later also Aoki's FRUITS) have become essential style goldmines, creating valuable photographic documents of the times like no other magazine.
Fine copy.
2003, English / Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 22 x 29 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
2003 issue of the iconic STREET magazine from Japan. No. 145 "Style from NEW YORK, Hyères fashion festival 2003 France".
Every issue of the no longer in print, collectible STREET magazine is made up entirely full-bleed pages of photographs by legendary Japanese street style photographer and publisher Shoichi Aoki. Most issues cut back and forth between the fashion capitals (London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) candidly documenting the fashions in the streets, sometimes behind the scenes of fashion week, in street markets, around festivals, clubs, etc. Established in 1985 by Shoichi Aoki and Noriko Kojima, STREET (and later also Aoki's FRUITS) have become essential style goldmines, creating valuable photographic documents of the times like no other magazine.
Fine copy.
2003, English / Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 22 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
2003 issue of the iconic STREET magazine from Japan. No. 148 "Style from LONDON, NEW YORK, Nag Nag Nag LONDON".
Every issue of the no longer in print, collectible STREET magazine is made up entirely full-bleed pages of photographs by legendary Japanese street style photographer and publisher Shoichi Aoki. Most issues cut back and forth between the fashion capitals (London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) candidly documenting the fashions in the streets, sometimes behind the scenes of fashion week, in street markets, around festivals, clubs, etc. Established in 1985 by Shoichi Aoki and Noriko Kojima, STREET (and later also Aoki's FRUITS) have become essential style goldmines, creating valuable photographic documents of the times like no other magazine.
Fine copy.
2004, English / Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 22 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
2004 issue of the iconic STREET magazine from Japan. No. 150 "Style from Cash Point LONDON, LONDON".
Every issue of the no longer in print, collectible STREET magazine is made up entirely full-bleed pages of photographs by legendary Japanese street style photographer and publisher Shoichi Aoki. Most issues cut back and forth between the fashion capitals (London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) candidly documenting the fashions in the streets, sometimes behind the scenes of fashion week, in street markets, around festivals, clubs, etc. Established in 1985 by Shoichi Aoki and Noriko Kojima, STREET (and later also Aoki's FRUITS) have become essential style goldmines, creating valuable photographic documents of the times like no other magazine.
Fine copy.
2004, English / Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 22 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
2004 issue of the iconic STREET magazine from Japan. No. 151 "Style from LONDON, NEW YORK, TOKYO".
Every issue of the no longer in print, collectible STREET magazine is made up entirely full-bleed pages of photographs by legendary Japanese street style photographer and publisher Shoichi Aoki. Most issues cut back and forth between the fashion capitals (London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) candidly documenting the fashions in the streets, sometimes behind the scenes of fashion week, in street markets, around festivals, clubs, etc. Established in 1985 by Shoichi Aoki and Noriko Kojima, STREET (and later also Aoki's FRUITS) have become essential style goldmines, creating valuable photographic documents of the times like no other magazine.
Very Good copy with corner crease to cover.
2023, English
Softcover, 416 pages
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$84.00 - Out of stock
Published by Steve Lawrence and edited with Peter Hujar and Andrew Ullrick, Newspaper was published in New York City between 1968 and 1971.
Newspaper was a wordless, picture-only periodical that ran for fourteen issues and featured the disparate practices of over forty artists. With an editorial focus on placing appropriated material alongside new works, the periodical sought to codify a visual language of high and low culture that represented contemporary society in the late 1960s. While largely overlooked in art-historical discourse, Newspaper showcased many of the most revered artists working in the United States at the time, as well as an emerging coterie of queer artists.
The mid to late sixties was a flourishing period for artists experimenting with new media formats such as books, records, and magazines to create or distribute their work. Newspaper was one of the first artist-published tabloids of its era, preceding Andy Warhol’s Interview and Les Levine’s Culture Hero, both of which debuted in 1969. However, in contrast to other tabloids, Newspaper focused strictly on images.
At a time when photography was not being exhibited regularly in galleries, Newspaper provided an alternative exhibition space for the medium and some of the era’s greatest photographers. The publication’s large size and unbound format encouraged readers to take it apart and hang its pages, which was how Newspaper was installed at the Museum of Modern Art’s influential Information show in 1970.
This is not to say that Newspaper only existed within the narrow confines of the art world, far from it. It lived within (and shared contributors with) a robust network of underground and queer periodicals like The New York Review of Sex, Rags, and Gay Power, among others. Yet, unlike many of these tabloids, Newspaper has largely disappeared from the discourse around underground magazines, queer publishing, and artists’ periodicals.
All fourteen issues of Newspaper are compiled in this volume for the first time.
Featured artists include: Diane Arbus, Art Workers Coalition, Richard Avedon, Clyde Baines, Sheyla Baykal, Peter Beard, Brigid Berlin, Richard Bernstein, Ann Douglas, Paul Fisher, Maurice Hogenboom, Peter Hujar, Scott Hyde, Christo and Jeanne-Claude Javacheff, Ray Johnson, Edwin Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Gerald Laing, Dorothea Lange, Steve Lawrence, Jeff Lew, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Mercado, Duane Michals, Jack Mitchell, Forrest “Frosty” Myers, Billy Name, Stephen Paley, Warner Pearson, Jurgen Warner Piepke, Charles Pratt, Joseph Raffael, Mel Ramos, Lilo Raymond, Ruspoli-Rodriguez, Lucas Samaras, Alan Saret, Bill Schwedler, Leni Sinclair, Norman Snyder, Elizabeth Staal, Stanley Stellar, Terry Stevenson, Paul Thek, Andrew Ullrick, Andy Warhol, William T. Wiley, and May Wilson.
Editor: Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez
Managing Editor: James Hoff
Designer: Rick Myers
Copy editor: Allison Dubinsky
2023, English
Softcover, 686 pages, 21.6 x 17 cm
Published by
Spector Books / Leipzig
$82.00 - In stock -
Subversion does not belong to anyone. It can come from artists who outwit the state or from intelligence agencies who infiltrate the art scene on behalf of the state. But what happens when the two sides meet? After the old state security archives in many Eastern European countries were opened, it became possible for this interaction to be studied in detail. Drawing on scientific essays and artistic contributions, the book shows how the secret police monitored happenings, performance art, and action art and looks at the debates they had about the new art form; it also demonstrates not only how the police documented artistic actions in detail using forensic techniques but also how they manipulated them and sought to thwart them with counter-actions. In addition to this, the book also reveals how artists dealt with the possibility that they were being observed by the secret police and how they now work with the material stored in the archives maintained by the intelligence services.
2022, Englih
Softcover, 48 pages, 11 x 17 cm
Published by
Rab-Rab Press / Helsinki
$30.00 - In stock -
The first volume in bie bao series dedicated to militant investigations on Russian poet, designer, typographer, theoretician, and publisher Iliazd (Ilya Zdanevich), who developed a new philosophy and methodology from zaum (trans-sense) experiments.
This publication presents Zdanevich's talk Le degré 41 sinapisé on the "pearl disease" in language, reporting on the potential of zaum to destroy not only social and national barriers, but also the ones dividing humans and animals. This first English translation of the talk from 1922 is introduced together with a short note by Marzio Marzaduri, an Italian scholar who first published the sinapisé lecture from the manuscript in its original Russian. The volume also includes an experimental essay by Elvin Brandhi, a Welsh musician who sent her text from Istanbul, while on a long layover on the way to Beirut on February 22nd 2022, exactly one hundred years on from the date Zdanevich initially gave the lecture.
The bie bao series will include eight publications, covering many layers of Zdanevich's rich theoretical and artistic output. Each volume consists of a bio-bibliographical introduction, a commentary, a translation with annotations, and artistic intervention.
Iliazd (Ilya Zdanevich, 1894-1975) was a Russian poet, designer, typographer, theoretician, art critic, and publisher, close to the avant-garde circles and one of the promoters of Futurism in Russia, author of a poetic work, drama written in zaum abstract poetic trans-sense or "transrational" language, and novels.
Introduction by Marzio Marzaduri, essay by Elvin Brandhi.
Graphic design: Bardhi Haliti.