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.
1978, English
Softcover folder, fold-out loose leaf 1 x 1.5 metres + additional loose leaf piece, 22 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Outback Press / Fitzroy
$200.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of late Australian artist/compositional linguist/raconteur Chris Mann's epic first published work, Words and Classes — On Having Words, published by Melbourne's Outbackl Press in 1978 in this elaborate artist's book/binder housing an enormous fold-out (approx 1 x 1.5 M unfurled) thick newsprint sheet printed both sides with Mann's experimental texts — poetry, stream-of-consciousness prose, commentaries, dialogues, even a small play — one of the finest examples of Mann's complex and witty exploration of linguistic composition. Includes an additional text work printed and folded inside along with the main work, possibly not originally included.
Chris Mann (1949—2018) was an Australian-American composer, poet and performer specializing in the emerging field of compositional linguistics, coined by Kenneth Gaburo and described by Mann as "the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do". Mann was the son of German Jewish refugees, Ruth and Peter Mann, who settled in Melbourne and founded the Discurio music store Score record label in the 1960s, producing some of Australia's first recordings of Australian folk music as well as jazz, classical and Aboriginal music. Mann studied Chinese and linguistics at the University of Melbourne, and his interest in language, systems, and philosophy is evident in his work. Mann founded the New Music Centre in 1972 and taught at the State College of Victoria in the mid-1970s. He then left teaching to work on research projects involving cultural ideas of information theory and has been recognized by UNESCO for his work in that field. Mann moved to New York in the 1980s and was an associate of American composers John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo. He has performed text in collaboration with artists such as Thomas Buckner, David Dunn, Annea Lockwood, Larry Polansky, and Robert Rauschenberg. Mann has recorded with the ensemble Machine For Making Sense with Amanda Stewart and others, Chris Mann and the Impediments (with two backup singers and Mann reading a text simultaneously while only being able to hear one another), and Chris Mann and The Use. His piece The Plato Songs, a collaboration with Holland Hopson and R. Luke DuBois, features realtime spectral analysis and parsing of the voice into multiple channels based on phonemes. Mann has also participated in the 60x60 project. Mann taught in the Media Studies Graduate program at The New School. He died in September 2018, survived by his wife and two children.
Very Good copy with some rubbing to folder and tanning to all stocks. Fold-out work As New with age tanning, folded as issued. Edge wear and spine crease to folder.
1974, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 64 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Khasmik Enterprises / Annandale
$65.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of the first volume of Khasmik Quarterly, edited by Stefanie Bennett and Margaret McMann and published in 1974 by important small poetry imprint, Khasmik Enterprises, operating from Annandale, NSW. Contributors include: Kate Jennings, Philip Roberts, Ken Bolton, Gary Oliver, Gaby, Robert Adamson, Carol Novack, Rae Desmond Jones, Stefanie Bennett, π.ο., Colleen Burke, Graham Rowlands (reviews Vikki Viidikas' Condition Red), and Cheryl Adamson.
Good—VG copy with tanning, light general wear from age, ex-libris bookplate inserted from collection of Donald Fulton Hall.
1974, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 72 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Ear in a Wheatfield / North Fitzroy
$160.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of The Ear in a Wheatfield - Earth Ship, second series No. 5, February 1974, edited by English-Australian poet Kris Hemensley and hand-printed by Retta Hemensley on the Hemensley-Reneo in North Fitzroy, Victoria. An important Australian small-press literary journal published by Hemensley between 1973—1976, The Ear was a vital mouthpiece for experimental poetry, bringing together international contributors (featuring many UK friends associated with Ambit, Grosseteste Review, Bananas, Curtains, and the American L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, etc), with writers in Australia operating outside the mainstream. This issue is packed with contributions by Geoff Bowman, Abigail Mozley, Colin Symes, John Millett, Larry Eigner, Trevor Reeves, Michael Palmer, John Thorpe, Maria Gitin, John Riley, Bill Fell, Franco Beltrametti, Roger McDonald, Jennifer Maiden; correspondence: James Koller, Jas Duke, a report on "New Poetry in New Zealand" by Trevor Reeves, new book and magazine reviews (from Paul Buck's Curtains to Vicki Viidikas' Condition Red), plus special review section of Japanese poetry titles, and much more, all processed typescript by Hemensley and stapled.
Kris Hemensley (b. 1946) is an English-Australian poet who has published around 20 collections of poetry. Through the late 1960s and '70s he was involved in poetry workshops at La Mama, and edited the literary magazines Our Glass, The Ear in a Wheatfield, and others. The Ear played an important role in providing a place where poets writing outside what was then the mainstream could publish their work. In 1969 and 1970 he presented the program Kris Hemensley's Melbourne on ABC Radio. In the 1970s he was poetry editor for Meanjin. He and Retta Hemensley ran the Collected Works Bookshop in the Nicholas Building, Melbourne, until 2018.
Very Good well-preserved copy, light age/tanning, uncreased margin.
2025, English
Softcover, 266 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Published by
And Other Stories / UK
$42.00 - In stock -
Published in Australia in 2009, Barley Patch was Murnane’s first book in fourteen years, written after a period in which he had thought he would never write fiction again. The book begins with the question, ‘Must I write?’ What follows is both a chronicle of the images that have endured in the author’s mind and an exploration of their nature. The clarity of the images is extraordinary, as is their range, from Mandrake the Magician to the bachelor uncle kicked in the ‘stones’ as a child, from a cousin’s doll’s house to the mysterious woman who lets her hair down, from the soldier beetle who winks messages from God to the racehorses that run forever in the author’s mind.
The narrator lays bare the acts of writing and imagining, finally giving us a glimpse of the mythical place where the characters of fiction dwell before they come into existence in books. With something of the spirit of Italo Calvino and Georges Perec, this is a cornerstone of Murnane’s unclassifiable project, for which he is a deserving Nobel Prize candidate.
2024, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 19.8 x 13 cm
Published by
And Other Stories / UK
$42.00 - Out of stock
Inland is a work which gathers in emotional power as it moves across the grasslands of its narrator's imagination - from Szolnok County on the great plains of Hungary where a man writes in the library of his manor house, to the Institute of Prairie Studies in Tripp County, South Dakota, where the editor of the journal Hinterland receives his writing, to the narrator's own native district in Melbourne County, between Moonee Ponds and the Merri, where he recalls the constant displacements of his childhood. 'No thing in the world is one thing,' he declares; 'some places are many more than one place.' These overlapping worlds are bound by recurring motifs - fish pond, fig-tree, child-woman, the colours white, red and green - and by deep feelings of intimacy and betrayal, which are brought to full expression as the book moves to its close.
'The most ambitious, sustained, and powerful piece of writing Murnane has to date brought off. The underlying narrative is of the twelve-year-old boy and the girl from Bendigo Street, their friendship and their parting, and of the man's later attempts, Orpheus-like, to summon her back, or if not her, then her shade, from the realm of the dead and the forgotten. Woven into this narrative are a number of motifs whose common element is resurrection: the violated serf girl who returns as an angel of defiance; the lovers in Wuthering Heights united beyond the grave; the great recuperative vision experienced by Marcel in Time Regained; and verses from the Gospel of Matthew that foretell the second coming of Christ.'—JM Coetzee, New York Review of Books
'Murnane's unique body of work certainly merits the world's most prestigious literary prize, boasting an ability to convey the workings of human consciousness that is unlike anything else I've read. His deep, strange, mesmerising books - a dozen novels, numerous short stories and essays - seem less like discrete entities than one enormous work in which the author meditates over and over on various talismanic images and subjects.'—Jack Kerridge, The Daily Telegraph
'The sort of writing Murnane gives us - focused, precise - probably depends upon a life free from disruption: free to think and take time and put one word after another with as much care as possible ... It doesn't have what most novels do - plot, characters in the traditional sense, even a clear setting at times - and yet to read it with an eye on what's not there is to overlook what is. It plunges deep into the way our minds work, the connections between memories and images that make up what we call our selves. Indeed, reading Murnane's fiction, stripped of the usual elements, actually makes other novels seem thin by comparison.' John Self, Irish Times
1972, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 46 pages, 23 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Dark Areas / Adelaide
$45.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of Dark Areas, a small press poetry zine founded in Adelaide in 1971 by Sandy Clark and Jane Donald. This issue (No 5, May 1972) features contributions from a wealth of Australian and international poets, including Jerry Almoots, lau Bradtke, Denise Fraser, Steve Sneyd (U.K.), David McCandless, Andrew Darlington (U.K.), Sally Day, Steve Davey, R. Preston (VIC), Andrew Darlington (U.K.), Phillip Warren (N.S.W.), Evan Rainer (N.S.R.), Annette Hauschild, Rae Desmond Jones (N.S.W.), Joshua Hudd, Colleen McPharlin, Steve Evans, Ralph Miller (A.C.T), Glen Donnellan, Christopher Robin (Qld), Peter, Catherine (N.S.W.), Tan Zing Hai, Stuart Flavell (A.C.T.), Larry Buttrose, Les Davidson, Peter Steven Holmes, Peter Finch (Wales), Peter Murphy (Vic), Lawrence Ferlinghetti (U.S.), Judi Evans, Gary R. Langford (N.Z.), Karen Hughes, Murchie Ewing (Qld), Sue Parham, Alexandra Seddon (Vic), Christopher Polinitz (U.K.), Mark Burford, Rob Andrew (N.S.W.), Plantman (Qld), Graham Rowlands, John Peter Horsam, Alex, Sue Grocke, Sue Germein, Sandy Clark, Rae Desmond Jones, Leanne Temme, D.S. Long (N.Z.), Jane Southcott, Derek Holmes (Vic), Kathie Muir, Roderick Gibson, R. Trinca, Eric Beach (Vic), John Coleman, Donna, Jane Donald, Keith Wilson, plus illustrations throughout, and cover artwork by David Hall. Includes an ex-libris paste-in of "Francis Alfred Wilson".
Good—VG copy, light wear and tear to extremities. Age tanning.
2015, English
Hardcover, 234 pages, 21.6 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Palgrave Macmillan / UK
$65.00 - In stock -
A bold work of synthetic scholarship, Writing Australian Unsettlement argues that the history of Australian literature contains the rough beginnings of a new literacy. Michael Farrell reads songs, letters and visual poems by Indigenous farmers and stockmen, the unpunctuated journals of early settler women, drover tree-messages and carved clubs, and a meta-commentary on settlement from Moore River (the place escaped from in The Rabbit-Proof Fence) in order to rethink old forms. The book borrows the figure of the assemblage to suggest the active and revisable nature of Australian writing, arguing against the "settling" effects of its prior editors, anthologists, and historians. Avoiding the advancement of a new canon, Farrell offers instead an unsettled space in which to rethink Australian writing.
"Writing Australian Unsettlement is a daring and remarkable study of intertextuality and appropriation as poetic tools. Disassembling and reassembling a variety of generic models, he demonstrates with the greatest aplomb how such contemporary techniques as collage, recycling, visualization, and translation are currently reanimating the field of Australian poetry. Only a scholar who is himself a discerning poet could have brought it off so elegantly."—Marjorie Perloff, Emeriti Professor of English, Stanford University, USA
"A brilliantly original piece of critical and scholarly work, Writing Australian Unsettlement is intellectually adventurous, investigating and challenging foundational assumptions of the literary and postcolonial fields. Drawing from an eclectic range of source material and theorists, Michael Farrell makes a major contribution to the rethinking of the postcolonial paradigm as it is currently happening around the globe."—Philip Mead, Professor of Australian Literature, University of Western Australia
Fine copy with only lightest cover wear.
2014, English
Softcover, 72 pages
Ed. of 300 ,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Anne Ferran / Sydney
$20.00 - In stock -
Self-published artist book by Sydney photographer Anne Ferran, issued in 2014 in an edition of 300 copies. "Prison Library is about a very particular place – a library that used to exist inside Fremantle Maximum Security Prison in WA. Talk to anyone who grew up in the town when Fremantle Prison was still a working gaol and they’ll have stories of its looming presence in their lives: the high stone walls, razor wire, the guard towers and massive gates that they drove or walked past every day. Yet twenty-plus years after Fremantle Prison ceased to operate, its library had become one of those subjects hardly anyone seems to know about. I set out to find all remaining shreds of evidence of the library and to make a photo book that would stand in for the 10,000 odd items that were in it when it closed.[..]"—Anne Ferran
Photomedia artist Anne Ferran investigates the margins, gaps and silences of colonial history, uncovering what scattered evidence there remains from structures of social control such as prisons, workhouses, women’s homes and ‘lunatic asylums’.
Very Good copy.
1993, English
Softcover, 334 pages, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Coronet Books / NSW
$40.00 - In stock -
Scarce first 1993 edition of Mortal Fire: Best Australian SF, presented by acclaimed science fiction writers and editors Terry Dowling and Van Ikin who launched the critical journal, Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature in 1977. This book is their first book-length collaboration, featuring the stories of Peter Carey, Damien Broderick, George Turner, Lucy Sussex, Greg Egan, David Ireland, Leanne Frahm, Sean Mcmullen. Published by Coronet Books, with cover art and design by Nick Stathopoulos.
"The lightning flash of imagination. Seventeen dazzling stories from Australia's finest writers of the fantastic. Unexpected pasts, surprising todays, fabulous and fearful tomorrows. Acclaimed science fiction writers and editors Terry Dowling and Van Ikin, award-winning sf reviewers for leading newspapers, serve up an alien's handful of the very best stories."
• Identities bought for any occasion – even murder?
• Dinosaur sightings in the Queensland rainforest.
• The puzzle of an alien artefact in the Dead Sector.
• Getting by in overcrowded, flooded 21st century Melbourne.
• The ultimate entertainment: playing at God.
• The secret life of skyscrapers after dark.
• The great composers performing their own masterpieces.
These marvels and many more in this top-flight line-up of Australian genre classics.
SEIZE THE DAY – AFTER TOMORROW!
Very Good copy with light cover wear.
1983, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 198 pages, 22 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Norstrilia Press / Brunswick
$150.00 - In stock -
Very rare first 1983 hardcover edition of Dreamworks: Strange New Stories, an anthology of speculative fiction from Australian writers, edited by David King and published by Norstrilia Press, Brunswick. Features Gerald Murnane, Greg Egan, George Turner, Russel Blackford, Lucy Sussex, Andrew Whitmore, Kevin McKay, Henry Gasko, David King, Bruse Gillespie, Damien Broderick, David J. Lake, dedicated to Philip K. Dick.
Norstrilia Press is a small press established in 1975 prior to Aussiecon, Australia's first world science fiction convention, by Rob Gerrand, Bruce Gillespie and Carey Handfield. Specialising in science fiction and speculative fiction, they published books by Gerald Murnane, Greg Egan, George Turner, Damien Broderick, Roger Zelazny, and many others.
Are you tired of sheepdip in your fiction and suntan oil in your reading matter?
Are you sick of the short stories you read today—even those which win prizes and make the bestseller lists?
What is the missing ingredient in the short story today?
Dreamworks provides the answer—the missing element in today's short stories. It's a radical new perception of what is 'real'.
This is not the old 'reality' which everybody around you accepts. This is the newer, more vivid reality of...
... an Australia colonised by the Spanish ('Life the Solitude')
an Australia which was never really colonised at all ('Land Deal')
... a next-door apartment in which lives God, who is just as threatened by the dangerous future as we are ('What God Said To Me When He Lived Next Door')
... a 'reality' where reality disappears altogether, only to re-emerge unexpectedly ('Feedback').
Dreamworks includes twelve stories which show radical shifts of perspective, surprising twists of fate, and delightful glimpses of cosmic humour-all part of the book's 'new reality'.
'The reader becomes imbued with a zest- fulness,' writes critic Dr Van Ikin, 'responding to the questing philosophical spirit with which these writers have con- fronted their troubled times.'
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket with discolouration. Some tanning/foxing to book block edges.
1977, English
Softcover, 124 pages, 20 x 12.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Norstrilia Press / Brunswick
$40.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1977 edition of The View From The Edge, an anthology of new Australian science fiction stories that resulted from a major SF workshop with Nebula Award winning author Vonda McIntyre and Arthur C. Clarke Award winning author Christopher Priest, edited by Australian novelist and critic George Turner and published by Norstrilia Press, Brunswick. Features George Turner, Philippa C. Maddern, Bruce Barnes, Randal Flynn, Christopher Priest, Edward Mundie, Sharon Goodman, Malcolm English, Paul Voermans, Petrina Smith, D.W. Walker, Micheline Cyna-Tang, Graeme Aaron, Sam Sejavka, Vonda N. McIntyre.
The View From The Edge... science fiction stories looking at our world and ourselves from the outside.
The problems of pet food, of being caught in a daydream, of meeting an alien in your own backyard... these and other hazards of modern life are examined with wit and feeling in this remarkable book.
The View From The Edge also documents the writing process, in a splendid running commentary by prizewinning novelist George Turner. The book is essential to any writing course.
George Turner is known as novelist and critic - and now anthologist. His novel The Cupboard Under The Stairs won the Miles Franklin Award in 1962. He has a forthcoming sf novel, Beloved Son, from Faber & Faber, and a mainstream novel from Nelson's.
Very Good copy with light foxing to block edges, light wear to covers. Light corner crease to back cover.
1985, English
Softcover,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hale & Iremonger / Sydney
$65.00 - In stock -
First 1985 edition of this wild and rare collection of Australian speculative fiction edited by Damien Broderick, published by Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, and featuring Broderick, Gerald Murnane, Cherry Wilder, David Foster, George Turner, Lucy Sussex, Russell Blackford, Greg Egan, Norman Talbot, Carmel Bird, Yvonne Rousseau...
"A group of perfectly ordinary unemployed kids who literally 'create' a better world for themselves... a sinister conflict between the Nazi SS and SD in the Barossa Valley, following the triumph of the Third Reich... Emily Brontë's Mr Lockwood cast up mysteriously into the 21st century a chilling study of the life and opinions of an uncontrolled cancer cell... the brilliantly realised quest of an interstellar hitchhiker in a world where the Answer is most assuredly nothing so comfortable as the number 42...
From the utterly alien to the unnervingly mundane, these original stories of hard-edged fantasy by Australians will beguile and shock, delight and disconcert. Published to commemorate the second World Science Fiction Convention hosted by Australia, Strange Attractors carries this country's recent notable triumphs in film and art into a new realm of creative achievement Speculative Fiction. And does so with wit, intelligence, pace and style.
Damien Broderick specially commissioned these tales of wonder from Australian writers both new and established. Editor of the well-known 1977 collection The Zeitgeist Machine, and twice holder of a senior Fellowship from the Literature Board of the Australia Council, he is the author of the thematically cross-linked novel sequence The Faustus Pentacle, comprising the award-winning The Dreaming Dragons, The Judas Mandala, Transmitters, The Black Grail, and a fifth novel still in progress. The Age's sf reviewer, he also writes and broadcasts on topics ranging from quantum physics and cosmology to parapsychology"
Very Good copy
1984, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 19.5 x 13 cm
Signed copy,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ebony Books / Melbourne
$35.00 - In stock -
Scarce first 1984 edition of Australian SF writer Damien Broderick's Transmitters: An Imaginary Documentary, 1969-1984, published by Ebony Books, Melbourne. Signed by Broderick to title page and wittily dedicated to "Marj".
"Sensual and heartbreaking, epic and ironical, funny and elegant, Transmitters mirrors the changing consciousness of the years 1969 to 1984 in Australia. Broderick provides a rare and witty insight into that period of upheaval with a headlong literary chase through the oddest subculture Kurt Vonnegut never thought of. The novel's hilarious portrayals of schizophrenia and personal tragedy embody Broderick's profound meditations on fatalism and freedom."
Damien Broderick (b. 1944) is an Australian science fiction and popular science writer and editor of some 74 books. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction credits him with the first usage of the term "virtual reality" in science-fiction, in his 1982 novel The Judas Mandala.
VG copy, light wear, single spine crease.
2015, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Collective Effort Press / Melbourne
$35.00 - In stock -
Wonderful anthology of works by Greek-Australian visual poet t h a l i a, edited and introduced by TT. O. and published by Collective Effort Press, Melbourne, which was co-founded by t h a l i a in the 1970s. Issued in 2015 and now out of print, "this exploration into the poetry & poetics of shorthand writing" is packed with t h a l i a's incredible visual poetics, and includes an index and selected bibliography/discography.
"Simone de Beauvoir in the Second Sex sez "It is evident that woman's "character" - her convictions, her values, her wisdom, her morality, her tastes, her behavior are to be explained by her situation". thalia (small-t) was born in 1952 in Katerini / Greece. She migrated to Australia as a child in 1954, and grew up in the working class suburb of Fitzroy in Melbourne. Her family ran a number of cafes, restaurants, and hamburger shops (all mainly fronts for gambling and sly grog outlets). She attended Fitzroy Girls Secondary School, in Bell St., Fitzroy. By the time she reached 3rd Form (aged 14) she was taken out of school (in preference to her brother) to help out in the Milk Bar, as her mother developed acute symptoms of depression and schizophrenia. thalia suffered (and still does) occasional bouts of epilepsy, dyslexia, and ambidextrousness. In 1971 (after the collapse of the Milk Bar business), she attended Stott's Business College in Melbourne to try and get a qualification as a Stenographer & Secretary. She obtained Certificates for both speed and accuracy in typing, shorthand, business practices, and worked at a number of secretarial jobs. During a prolonged exposure to speed typing, and under pressure from managerial tyrants, she developed Tenosynovitis a crippling work related injury affecting the tendons, to hands, elbows, arms and shoulders.
Her involvement in the continued "small magazine explosion" of the late 60s included extensive labours on such magazines: as Fitzrot, 925, thalia publications, Unusual Work, as well as others. Publications of her work include Night Flowers (A6 Books), and thalia new & selected poems (collective effort press), Words Penciled on Paper (a homage to Jas Duke). She was one of the founders of "performance poetry" in Australia, and collective effort press. In a now famous incident (elaborated in Off The Record Penguin Books 1985) she was physically punched in the face by a misogynist who objected to her staging a "women only" reading. The incident "split" the poetry world "in Australia" and particularly "performance poetry" down the middle. [...]—from introduction by TT. O.
t h a l i a (b. 1952) has lived and worked in the inner suburbs of Melbourne and began writing poetry in the 1970s with a particular interest in concrete poetry. Her work has been read on Radios 3CR, 3RRR, 3PBS and Radio ABC and she has read at numerous venues including 'prisons, schools, universities, pubs, festivals and clubs'. She has exhibited her work in Melbourne, Perth, New South Wales and Queensland as well as in Brazil, Canada, Russia, America and Italy.
Very Good copy, light buckling, light wear.
1980, English
Softcover (w. insert), 142 pages, 21 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
LIP / Melbourne
$50.00 - In stock -
The incredible book-sized 1980 edition of Melbourne's great LIP journal. Published out of Carlton between 1976-1984, LIP encapsulated Australian feminist artistic practice of the period, publishing articles and interviews by women on women in film, sound, theatre, painting, photography, poetry, criticism, activism, journalism, publishing, sculpture, design, education, and much more.
In this issue:
Editorial; MEDIA : Heralding Women : A Visual Essay by Lesley Dumbrell, Freda Freiberg and Elizabeth Gower; The Women At Work Kit - a discussion with Judy Munro, Sylvie Shaw and Ponch Hawkes, by Jeannette Fenelon; Shoulder to Shoulder and Up Hill; The Way by Julie Copeland; The Coming Out Show : Five Years On by Julie Rigg; Nancy Dexter : In Her Own Accent by Elizabeth Owen; Fiona McDougall press photographer; Child's Image, Women's Hands by Barbara Hall; ART : Memories of Grace Crowley by Janine Burke, Ian North, Frank and Margel Hinder; "Mothers' Memories, Others' Memories" by Vivienne Binns; The Dinner Party - Introduction by Isabel Davies; Judy Chicago And The Dinner Party by Ailsa O'Connor; 'The Coming Out Show' discusses 'The Dinner Party'. Transcribed and edited by Isabel Davies; The Adelaide Women's Art Movement by Jane Kent and Anne Marsh; Adelaide Women's Performance Month, November 1979; River Murray Project by Bonita Ely; Joy Hester by Janine Burke; Janet Dawson - Painter, interviewed by Lesley Dumbrell; Monday To Monday by Maxienne Foote; Ethel Carrick (Mrs. E. Phillips Fox) by Margaret Rich; The Male Nude, Margaret Walters interviewed by Julie Copeland; Stella Sallman photographs; Don't Believe I'm An Amazon - Ulrike Rosenbach talking with Elizabeth Gower, Margaret Rose and Janine Burke, transcribed by Margaret Rose; Tertiary Visual Arts Education Study and Report by Alison Fraser; Holos - Whole, Graphos - Picture, The Work Of Margaret Benyon by Catherine Peake; Ceramic Sculpture - Maggie May; Artist-Decorated Trams - Statements by Erica McGilchrist and Mirka Mora on the tram design project, Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board; THEATRE/PERFORMANCE : At Home - A series of Five Solo Performances by Lyndal Jones (1977-80) documentation by Lyndal Jones and Suzanne Spunner; Beyond Glitter - The Role Of The Female Performer as seen by Robyn Archer in "A Star is Tom" by Suzanne Spunner; Wimmin's Circus by Katie Noad; Jeannie Lewis interviewed by Christine Johnston; Failing In Love by Ruth Maddison; By A Bamboo Blind : Jenny Kemp, writer and director of Sheila Alone interviewed by Suzanne Spunner; Brisbane Womens Theatre Group by Barbara Allen; FILM : The Women's Film In The Post-Haskell Era by Freda Freiberg; Making A Career Of Feminism by Suzanne Spurner; How Will We Learn To Remember Tomorrow? 'A Catalogue of Independent Women's Films' reviewed by Barbara Hall; The Problems Of Pluralism : Women's Films And Feminist Films by Kate Legge; Interview With Norma Disher; Margot Nash & Margot Oliver; Roma 'Just An Ordinary Life' by Jan Macdonald
Insert : Crosswords by Elizabeth Gower
Front Cover : Erica Mc Gilchrist
Back Cover : Mirka Mora
Co-ordinator : Elizabeth Gower
LIP Collective members: Annette Blonski, Janine Burke, Isabel Davies, Suzanne Davies, Lesley Dumbrell, Jeannette Fenelon, Freda Freiberg, Elizabeth Gower, Barbara Hall, Christine Johnston, Elizabeth Owen, Cathy Peake, Suzanne Spunner.
VG copy.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 224 pages, 29 x 29 cm
Published by
George Schwarz and Charis / East Sydney
$190.00 - In stock -
Powerful Paradise the Art of George Schwarz and Charis is an artists book, a collaboration between George Schwarz, his partner Charis, Linda Dement and Craig Judd. It is an introduction to a wonderful life and to beautiful, complex and intriguing art. Ernest Georg Schwarz and Charis Elizabeth McKittrick enjoy a unique partnership beginning 1964. The word collaborators in this case is an inadequate descriptor. In their presence one is witness to but a force of nature, a swirling vortex of creative mutuality. Simultaneously lovers, artists, apiarists, activists, authors, film and wine makers, 'Powerful Paradise' is a celebration and a legacy.
This extremely limited hardcover edition is the first survey of the couple's life in art, the last survivors of bohemian Kings Cross. Creators of the first Australian hardcore sex films to be passed by the censors (and also refused classification), George and Charis were ahead of the curve in every aspect of their practice. This volume features the only writing covering their film output, extensive photographic work and global travels. Simultaneously erotic, taboo, progressive, liberated; lives dedicated to their work and one another and perhaps too provocative/evocative for the Australian art establishment.
2025, English
Softcover, 16 silk-screened pages, 21 x 15 cm
Published by
Self-Published / Naarm
$60.00 - In stock -
Screen printed A5 zine by Oriette Wood with writing from Anonymous woman #1 is an ode to all the transvestite/transsexual/crossdressing publications that had shone the light before. This collection of poetry and prints draws upon sissification, trans exultation, obscurity and playfulness. Although there is particular reference to Virginia Prince’s magazine ‘Transvestia’, there are so many others like it that shared stories, educated and connected people to the community.
Oriette Wood is a Naarm/Melbourne based transgender printmaker and seamstress, her works explore the erotics of trans bodies, taking inspiration from influential fetish artists, cross-dressing forums, and personal fantasies.
2025, English
Softcover (thread-sewn), 12 hand-bound silkscreened pages, 30 x 21.5 cm
Numbered Ed. of 11,
Published by
Self-Published / Naarm
$220.00 - In stock -
'Cats Versus Dogs' is hand bound and screen-printed zine collection of prints published in a numbered edition of 11, self-published by Laurette Chiappa (Bicy) and Oriette Wood. “After meeting at our local screen printing studio (Troppo), this collaborative work started as a personal joke as we had conflicting opinions on which of these two domestic animals was best, drawing scenes in defence and attack of one another. Each print guiding and questioning the roles each animal plays in our lives, while technically teaching us a lot about multi-colour overlays, layouts, and binding. Over the course of a month and a half we drew, printed and bound the books.”
Oriette Wood is a Naarm/Melbourne based transgender printmaker and seamstress, her works explore the erotics of trans bodies, taking inspiration from influential fetish artists, cross-dressing forums, and personal fantasies.
Laurette Chiappa (Bicy) is printmaker and tattoo artist from Toulouse, living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Her works inquire what and where 'home' is using tattooing and ornamental design as reference.
Limited edition of 11 copies
1980, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 128 pages, 34 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Open House / London
$500.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this rare and truely wonderful book on the magical Australian artist Vali Myers (1930—2003), published in this hardbound edition in 1980 by Open House, London. Artist, dancer, muse, lover of animals and powerful creatrix, Vali Myers was a unique spirit born out of time. She lived her extraordinary life like a bright flame, cutting her own path and living on her own terms: a tightrope walker – one foot in this world and one in a dream world that we can only glimpse in her profound artwork. This remains the finest volume collecting Vali's drawings and paintings, her life's work. The life of a fearless, wild spirit that is manifested in her artworks, lavishly illustrated here in colour. Foreword by photographer Ed van der Elsken, and Introduction by George A. Plimpton, editor of ‘The Paris Review’.
“Let it all be animal, my life and death, hard and clean like that, anything but human… a lot I care, me with my red heart in the dark earth and my tattooed feet following the animal ways.”—Vali Myers, diary entry, 1963
Premiere danseuse of the Melbourne Modern Ballet at seventeen, Vali left her Australian home for Paris, living on the streets of the Latin Quarter of Saint Germain des Pres on the Left Bank for three years, surviving on bread and milk and carrying a knife for protection. Despite the poverty of city ravaged by war, she never ceased to draw and dance. Vali became notorious in the cafés and nightclubs of the Quarter for her phantom-like face and almost supernatural ability to dance. Photographer Ed van der Elsken made Vali the main subject of a series of photographs documenting bohemian life in postwar Paris published in the book ‘Love on the Left Bank’ in 1956, featuring her artworks. Her work was praised by George Plimpton in his Paris Review. After stints in prison for vagrancy, Vali left Paris and began her ‘walkabout’ of France, Italy, Britain, Brussels and Austria, to return again to Paris with young architect, Rudi Rappold. Vali Myers, the 'Australian queen of bohemia', friend to Jean Cocteau, Tennessee Williams, and Jean Genet, left Paris for the last time in an effort to escape an opium addiction that was slowly killing her. After months of wandering, Vali and Rudi literally stumbled into the wild green valley of ‘Il Porto’ in Positano, Southern Italy. Protected by 1,000-foot cliffs, the almost impenetrable valley opened to the sea and became Vali’s main residence and greatest inspiration. In the early summer of 1971, Italian artist Gianni Menichetti began living with Vali and together they took care of the large animal family that developed in the valley. Ironically, these same animals had filled Vali’s dreams and work for years – the owl, raven, and the fox. Over the years more animals came to the retreat until Vali had built up a menagerie numbering over one hundred. After years of battling with local police and government bureaucracy, Vali finally obtained permission to turn the valley into a wildlife sanctuary under the protection of the World Wildlife Fund and dedicated all of her money, time and energy into it’s preservation. During the ‘60s, after years of hibernation from the outside world, the legend of Vali and her artwork began to seep into the consciousness of the new psychedelic generation, praised by Andy Warhol, Ernst Fuchs, and Salvador Dali, inspiration to Patti Smith, Deborah Harry, Mick Jagger, Mary Ellen Clark, and Marianne Faithful. She began exhibiting her artworks and dividing her time between the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, a 14th-century cottage at Il Porto, near Positano, a residence in Paris and her adopted home in Melbourne. Later, after she began having seizures, she returned to Melbourne in 1993, and opened a studio in the Nicholas Building; only returning to Positano occasionally. She passed away in 2003.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket preserved under mylar wrap. DJ has one repaired tear with general light wear and tear to extremities, light tanning.
1986—1994, English
Softcover (12 issues), approx 50-80 pages ea., 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
International Synergy Institute / Los Angeles
$600.00 - In stock -
"A thrice yearly exploration of ambiguous borders and dynamic (intellectual/artistic) frontiers."
Exceptionally rare lot of 12 issues (1986—1994) of the trail-blazing subscription-only one-of-a-kind journal published by the International Synergy Institute, a intermedia think-tank active in Hollywood between 1986—1987. IS was founded by American actress and philanthropist Andra Akers (Charlie's Angels, Dallas, Dukes of Hazzard...), edited by experimental composer, researcher and Harry Partch Ensemble member David Dunn, with a cast of incredible contributors spanning these issues that includes media theorist Gene Youngblood (Expanded Cinema...), Australian composer, poet and performer Chris Mann, American ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, American artist Bill Viola, American landscape architect Bonnie Sherk, parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake, mathematician Ralph Abrahams, composer Kenneth Gaburo, Australian experimental composer Warren Burt, early media artist visionaries Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz (Mobile Image, the Electronic Café...), Science Fiction theorist, philosopher and writer for Marvel comics Allyn B. Brodsky, American composer and writer Elaine Barkin, visionary Czech author Lukáš Tomin, aeronautical engineer and astronaut Russell Schweickart, mathematician and polymath Tim Poston, climate crisis artists Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison, American composer John Bischoff, cultural historian William Irwin Thompson, ecological philosopher and author Boleslaw Rok, essayist and activist Tomaž Mastnak, Chilean biologist and philosopher Francisco Varela, artist Michael Kalil, systems theorist Will McWhinney, percussionist and composer Stuart Saunders Smith, mathematician Gottfried Mayer-Kress, alternative broadcaster Jay Levin, British-American futurist Hazel Henderson, actress Debra Clinger (The Love Boat, The Krofft Supershow, Midnight Madness, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour...), musician Mark Trayle, artist Sheila Pinkel, VFX pioneer Mimi Gramatky (LOST, Miami Vice, Star Trek, Tron, Damnation Alley...), sonic healer Jill Purce, robot dance choreographer Margo K. Apostolos, American psychedelic artist Alex Grey, social critic and historian Morris Berman, futurist Riane Eisler, poet James Bertolino, British zoologist, anthropologist and author John Heathorn Huxley, multi-media artist Todd Siler, American philosopher of science Ervin László, Budapest dissident magazine Magyar Narancs, and more.
Issues present: #0, #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14 (12 issues total, not all pictured)
"INTERNATIONAL SYNERGY consists of a global network of vanguard artists, scientists, and meta-physicians who are united by a deep sense of commitment to crossing the boundaries of their individual disciplines. Integral to this awareness is a reconciliation between advanced technological resources and a sense of the planet's sanctity. INTERNATIONAL SYNERGY is dedicated to the premise that such an understanding can form the basis of a creative matrix for responsible action in the information age."
"At this hinge of history, it seems appropriate that we should publish a journal where the passion of the individual scientist/artist can meet in sovereign association with global concerns — spinning the wheel of knowledge so that each of us can create our own theoretical magic." [...] "I am deeply moved by the creative commonwealth in this community, filled with explorers of topology, morphology, chaos dynamics, cognition, mind video, the revisioning of nature and art, telecommunications, sonics, cybernetics, cultural history, fractal politics, and what it now means to be deeply human. The provocative interaction of these ideas cannot help but to create a new and uniquely meaningful story. Come with us."—Andra Akers
Most Good—Very Good, with a couple of issues Average (mostly due to cover rubbing or creasing), all with light wear/age.
1979, English
Softcover, 174 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Dolceamore Publishing / Carlton
$50.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of Australian performance artist Lin Van Hek's first 1979 collection of writings and short stories, The Slain Lamb Stories, published independently by Dolceamore Publishing in Carlton. Ten stories accompanied by photographs by photographer Jacqueline Mitelman and film-maker Monique Schwarz.
"Her precise bold style does not compromise. Her collaboration between reality and fantasy possess the bracing clarity of the woman who both involved and informed, stands alone."—Reina Nervi Underground, Writers Guild Germany
Lin Van Hek (aka Lyn van Hecke, Linn Van Hek, born Lyn Whitehead) is an Australian writer, singer, painter, designer and performance artist. Born in Melbourne, Van Hek lived in India (working in hospitals) and Belgium, studied painting in France, writing and performing there until the early 1970s when she returned to Australia. She was a vice-president of the Society of Women Writers and co-founder of the literary-music group Difficult Women, that began with a series of feminist literary salons van Hek held in the 1980s. Van Hek has acted in films, including the 1987 thriller "With Time to Kill", and with Joe Dolce, wrote and sang the song 'Intimacy' in the 1984 film The Terminator. Van Hek was also the lead singer with the 1980s electro-dance band Skin the Wig. The Lilian character in Helen Garner's Monkey Grip is said to be based on Van Hek. Lin is also a respected fashion designer, with her own label, Lin Van Hek Design, working in collaboration with women entrepreneurs in the mountain villages of North Vietnam since 1994.
Very Good copy
1985—1990, English
Softcover (broadsheet folded 4 times), 30 x 21 cm (folded)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Nosukumo / Melbourne
$150.00 - Out of stock
Rare lot of 3 issues of short-lived Melbourne experimental poetry broadsheet, The Carrionflower Writ, 'An art and literary broadsheet issued on an irregular basis', edited by Javant Biarujia and published by Biaruji's own Nosukumo Press, Melbourne, between 1985—1990. Each issue takes the form of a large fold-out broadsheet, two-colour printed on differing paper stocks, full of experimental type-setting and beautiful illustrations and devoted to Australian 'poetry on the margins' Poets included throughout its short history included Javant Biarujia, Ian Birks, Kris Hemensley, Chris Mann, Raimondo Cortese, Pete Spence, Jurate Sasnaitis, C.E. Roberts, Philip Sipp, Adrian Rawlins, amongst others.
"Javant Biarujia is an iconoclastic Australian poet, at once an unparalleled linguistic confabulator and an exponent of Melbourne avant-garde poetics since the 1970s. Biarujia's work marks out its own historical forebears and familiars in a way that I believe — although absolutely in association with contemporary histories of poetry such as American Language poetry, Australian bricolage, and European surrealism — happens to hybridise baroque linguistic ingenuity with deconstructive collage and games of poetic reality that defy straightforward historical alignment"—Corey Wakeling, Cordite Poetry Review
Good copies all with degrees of tanning and light wear. Folded as issued.
1980, English
Softcover, 33 leaves, 16 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Gregory Eiffe / Novar Gardens
$35.00 - In stock -
Rare Australian experimental phonetics typeface book self-published in 1980 by South Australian Interface Artist, writer and developer, Greg Eiffe. Hand-bound, this rather uncategorisable texual experiment/introductory educational study presents like a conceptual language artwork or concrete poetry book, the text reproduced photographically from computer video screen by the artist. "During the early days of personal computing, circa 1980, typing in programs was the main activity. I myself bought an Apple II in early 1979, carried a small U.S. television home from San Francisco, and, using a step-down transformer, was likely the first Apple Computer customer in my home state of South Australia." This book concerns the Soundex algorithm, which breaks down words (in English,) to their phonetic core in order to compare them, and more importantly, match them, with less specific criteria than perfect spelling, allowing for words to be compared phonetically.
Greg Eiffe's work as a writer/developer since the 1970's spans experimental poetry work and film/video foraying into an increasing engagement with language and computers. 'Interface Art', his chief concern, is the interface between the human mind and reality as mediated by language. He has published many books on such subjects.
Good copy, light general wear/age/light creasing to covers.
1974?, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 72 pages, 20.5 x 14.5 cm
Signed copy,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Noel Sheridan / Adelaide
$160.00 - In stock -
Very rare and terrific conceptual art/poetry book (c.1974) by performance artist, poet, actor, "amateur painter" and exceptionally valuable director of the Experimental Art Foundation (EAF) in Adelaide from 1975—1980, Noel Sheridan (1936—2006). Founded by a small group of artists, curators and theorists, the EAF was heralded as the first alternative art space in Australia, with a mission to promote art that interrogated the status quo. Seemingly self-published in 1974 once Irish-born Sheridan had relocated to Adelaide, and the year before Sheridan's controversial "Everybody Should Get Stones" installation at the Art Gallery of South Australia, composed of 25 tonnes of river stones strewn across the gallery's floor, "Everybody Should Get Stones" is a remarkably witty, instructional language-performance piece around collecting stones on a beach, very much in the Oulipo spirit, or Fluxus.
"These procedures are intended to bring a greater precision to your quality ascriptions. Initial tests were carried out by J. Neuner and N. Sheridan on Coynes cross beach, due east of Newcastle, Co. Wicklow, Ireland, during the Summer months of 1971. It is not essential to use the above location to perform these exercises. Any stony beach will do. Select an area of beach and begin."
Broken into four parts, from selection methods that are irrational and unpredictable, to mathematically exhaustive, to literary (the selection of stones that are most apt to specific quotes from Beckett, Goethe, Wittgenstein, Galvani, Descartes, Hume, and Sheridan's beloved fellow-Irishman Joyce, amongst many others — all reproduced).
Only one copy located on WorldCat (in Dublin).
This copy signed by Noel on the title page with dedication to American-Australian experimental composer Warren Burt. "For Warren, may all your penguins be green. Noel". Irish-born Noel was fondly known for his wardrobe of green attire. Very Good copy with tanning/wear to cover extremities.