World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2012, English
Softcover, 304 pages (140 b&w ill.), 215 x 156mm
Published by
Afterall / London
Van Abbemuseum / Eindhoven
Walther König / Köln
$28.00 - Out of stock
Four exhibitions of contemporary art curated by Lucy Lippard have become renowned as her 'numbers shows'. Each took the population of the city in which it was shown as its title: 557,087 in Seattle, 955,000 in Vancouver, 2,972,453 in Buenos Aires and c.7,500 opening in Valencia, California, before touring the US and to London.
This book follows Lippard's curatorial trajectory, analysing her transition from a writer about art to a maker of exhibitions, and tracing her growing political engagement and involvement with feminism.
Extensive photographic material is complemented by a major new essay by Cornelia Butler and interviews with Seth Siegelaub and artists Agnes Denes, Alice Aycock, Eleanor Antin and Mierle Laderman Ukeles.
The volume also includes critical responses written at the time by Peter Plagens and Griselda Pollock, and an analysis of artists initiatives in Argentina that give a context for Lippard's emerging political consciousness by Pip Day.
This is the third publication in the Exhibitions Histories series, co-published with Afterall Books, London.
2015, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 14 x 20 cm
Published by
Independent Curators / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
Since the publication of "Thinking Contemporary Curating" in 2012, art historian Terry Smith has continued his travels through the globalizing art world, talking to curators. The dozen searching conversations in this book--with Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Claire Bishop, Zdenka Badovinac, Mami Kataoka, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Okwui Enwezor, Germano Celant, Jens Hoffmann, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Maria Lind, Zoe Butt and Boris Groys--provide a vivid sense of contemporary curatorial thought at work. They show curators deeply immersed in thinking about the exigencies of practice, the contexts of exhibition-making, the platforms through which art may be made public, and about what their work can contribute toward understanding what it means to be alive today.
Terry Smith is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2010 he was named Australia Council Visual Arts Laureate by the Australian Government, and won the Mather Award for art criticism conferred by the College Art Association (USA). He is the author of "Making the Modern: Industry, Art and Design in America" (University of Chicago Press, 1993); "The Architecture of Aftermath" (University of Chicago Press, 2006), "What is Contemporary Art?" (University of Chicago Press, 2009), "Contemporary Art: World Currents" (Laurence King and Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2011) and "Thinking Contemporary Curating" (Independent Curators International, 2012).
2016, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 178 x 229 mm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$40.00 - Out of stock
First paperback edition of Paul O'Neill's "Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s)" (2012).
" O’Neill – a Bristol-based artist, curator and writer – has edited several useful books, including Curating and the Educational Turn (2010), and this latest publication is certainly one of the most invaluable histories of contemporary curating that I’ve come across. Though relatively slim, it combines a good deal of primary research (such as interviews with Seth Siegelaub and Brian O’Doherty) with wide-ranging case studies and an impressive synthesis of the now-vast body of related writing. The book tracks a shift from the curator as a behind-the-scenes carer, to a nomadic, semi-autonomous and very public figure – a cultural producer as diplomat. O’Neill identifies three key postwar developments: what Siegelaub calls the ‘demystification’ of the curatorial role during the late 1960s (when the terms Austellungsmacher and faiseur d’expositions first emerged, signifying an organizer of large exhibitions unaffiliated with a museum); the primacy of the curator-as-author model of the late 1980s (Harald Szeemann, Jean-Hubert Martin, Rudi Fuchs); and, most recently, the consolidation of a curator-centred discourse in the 1990s." -- Sam Thorne, Frieze magazine, 01/01/13
"Paul O'Neill guides us through the conflicting claims that surround the development of curating as an implicated set of roles. Focusing on the debates and differences that are part of curatorial practice, this book shows what is still required and may be possible. By exposing the historical origins and congested terrain of contemporary curatorial practice, O'Neill will stir a new generation to action."--Liam Gillick, Artist
"In this timely book, Paul O'Neill provides a much-needed overview of the historical development and central issues of contemporary curating. In clear, jargon-free prose he mines the curatorial literature to discuss disparate exhibition strategies and critically analyze the changing self-conception of the curator. This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in exhibitions and exhibition-making."--Bruce Altshuler, Director of New York University's Museum Studies Program
"This book is a thorough and convincing survey of the curatorial. It covers the changing relations between the curator and the artist or art institution over the last fifty years and shows how this triangle has been crucial to the way the public perceives the possibilities of art. It offers readers a digestible history of a phenomenon that profoundly influences our perception of art and how it is understood today." -- Charles Esche, Director, Van Abbemuseum; Eindhoven/Co-editorial Director, Afterall, London
Once considered a mere caretaker for collections, the curator is now widely viewed as a globally connected auteur. Over the last twenty-five years, as international group exhibitions and biennials have become the dominant mode of presenting contemporary art to the public, curatorship has begun to be perceived as a constellation of creative activities not unlike artistic praxis. The curator has gone from being a behind-the-scenes organizer and selector to a visible, centrally important cultural producer. In The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), Paul O'Neill examines the emergence of independent curatorship and the discourse that helped to establish it. O'Neill describes how, by the 1980s, curated group exhibitions--large-scale, temporary projects with artworks cast as illustrative fragments--came to be understood as the creative work of curator-auteurs. The proliferation of new biennials and other large international exhibitions in the 1990s created a cohort of high-profile, globally mobile curators, moving from Venice to Paris to Kassel. In the 1990s, curatorial and artistic practice converged, blurring the distinction between artist and curator. O'Neill argues that this change in the understanding of curatorship was shaped by a curator-centered discourse that effectively advocated--and authorized--the new independent curatorial practice. Drawing on the extensive curatorial literature and his own interviews with leading curators, critics, art historians, and artists, O'Neill traces the development of the curator-as-artist model and the ways it has been contested. The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) documents the many ways in which our perception of art has been transformed by curating and the discourses surrounding it.
Paul O'Neill is a curator, artist, and writer who has curated or co-curated more than fifty projects. As author and editor, he has published widely in books, anthologies, journals, and art magazines. He lives in Bristol, U.K.
2016, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 17.8 x 26.7 cm
Published by
Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College / New York
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$73.00 $40.00 - Out of stock
Today curators are sometimes more famous than the artists whose work they curate, and curatorship involves more than choosing objects for an exhibition. The expansion of the curatorial field in recent decades has raised questions about exhibition-making itself and the politics of production, display, and distribution. The Curatorial Conundrum looks at the burgeoning field of curatorship and tries to imagine its future. Indeed, practitioners and theorists consider a variety of futures: the future of curatorial education; the future of curatorial research; the future of curatorial and artistic practice; and the institutions that will make these other futures possible. The contributors examine the proliferation of graduate programs in curatorial studies over the last twenty years, and consider what can be taught without giving up what is precisely curatorial, within the ever-expanding parameters of curatorial practice in recent times. They discuss curating as collaborative research, asking what happens when exhibition operates as a mode of research in its own right. They explore curatorial practice as an exercise in questioning the world around us; and they speculate about what it will take to build new, innovative, and progressive curatorial research institutions.
Contributors: Nancy Adajania, Melanie Bouteloup, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Luis Camnitzer, Eddie Chambers, Zasha Cerizza Colah, Galit Eilat, Liam Gillick, Koyo Kouoh, Miguel A. Lopez, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paul O'Neill, Tobias Ostrander, Joao Ribas, Sarah Rifky, Sumesh Sharma, Simon Sheikh, Lucy Steeds, Jeannine Tang, David The, Jelena Vesic & Vladimir Jeric Vlidi, What, How & for Whom/WHW, Mick Wilson, Vivian Ziherl
Copublished with the Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College/Luma Foundation
2015, English
Softcover, 280 pages 14.8 x 21 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$46.00 - Out of stock
In this book devoted to the field of curating and “institutional art”, Žerovc raises questions about the character and limitations of the “exhibition-maker as artist” and the “exhibition as a work of art”, asking whether the socio-political objectives for the latter actually manifest contradictory or even opposite effects given the inescapable conditions of capitalism. The book culminates with Žerovc’s queries about the ritualistic function of contemporary art exhibitions, and this is evocatively expressed in her introduction: “There was once great discussion about how removing artworks from their original context and installing them in the museum meant their certain death. Today, it seems, we need to be thinking about different questions. Does the institution of visual art bring something to life … what, in fact, are we summoning to life?” (Mary Anne Staniszewski)
Pierre Restany, Zoran Kržišnik, Harald Szeemann, Daniel Buren, Charles Esche, Beautiful Freedom, Walter Benjamin, Mary Anne Staniszewski
2013, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 21 x 29 cm
Published by
Artists Space / New York
Culturgest / Lisbon
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
Museum für Gegenwartskunst / Basel
$85.00 - Out of stock
Julie Ault is an artist, curator, writer, and editor, whose work emphasizes and celebrates the complex interrelationships between cultural production and politics. Ault cofounded the New York artists' collaborative Group Material, which between 1979 and 1996 explored this relationship between art, activism and politics through socially themed exhibitions and publicly-sited projects. The collection of artworks Ault has assembled over the last 30 years speaks to her practice as one built on exchange, friendship and a critical notion of mutable histories.
Tell It To My Heart – Collected by Julie Ault is published by Hatje Cantz in collaboration with Artists Space, New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; and Culturgest, Lisbon, and accompanies a three-part exhibition staged around the artworks in Ault's possession. The exhibition was initiated by Nikola Dietrich and Scott Cameron Weaver at Museum für Gegenwartskunst, and was presented in Basel, Lisbon and New York between 2013 and 2014. The first volume of the publication was published to coincide with the exhibitions, and centers on an index of works along with detailed commentary on these works from the diverse voices of the book's editors – Julie Ault, Martin Beck, Nikola Dietrich, Heinz Peter Knes, Rasmus Røhling, Jason Simon, Scott Cameron Weaver, Danh Vo and Amy Zion. Over the course of her 35-plus years at the forefront of New York's art culture, Ault has amassed a superb collection of contemporary art, most of it given to her by artist friends and admirers. Almost more of an interiors book in the style of "Apartamento" magazine, "Tell It to My Heart" takes us through Ault's New York apartment, reproducing works by artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Andres Serrano, Nancy Spero and Danh Vo among many others. Together, and in situ, the artworks disclose a highly personal experience of an art community, initially centered in New York during Ault's formative years, but with a reach that has long since transcended regional classifications.
2016, English
Hardcover, 156 pages, 21 x 29 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$89.00 $60.00 - In stock -
Julie Ault is an artist, curator, writer, and editor, whose work emphasizes and celebrates the complex interrelationships between cultural production and politics. Ault cofounded the New York artists' collaborative Group Material, which between 1979 and 1996 explored this relationship between art, activism and politics through socially themed exhibitions and publicly-sited projects. The collection of artworks Ault has assembled over the last 30 years speaks to her practice as one built on exchange, friendship and a critical notion of mutable histories.
Tell It To My Heart – Collected by Julie Ault is published by Hatje Cantz in collaboration with Artists Space, New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; and Culturgest, Lisbon, and accompanies a three-part exhibition staged around the artworks in Ault's possession. The exhibition was initiated by Nikola Dietrich and Scott Cameron Weaver at Museum für Gegenwartskunst, and was presented in Basel, Lisbon and New York between 2013 and 2014. Over the course of her 35-plus years at the forefront of New York's art culture, Ault has amassed a superb collection of contemporary art, most of it given to her by artist friends and admirers. The "Tell It to My Heart" books take us through Ault's collection in different contexts, reproducing works by artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Andres Serrano, Nancy Spero and Danh Vo among many others. Together, and in situ, the artworks disclose a highly personal experience of an art community, initially centered in New York during Ault's formative years, but with a reach that has long since transcended regional classifications.
Volume 2 follows a more reflective and distanced mode than its predecessor, including installation images of the exhibitions, and a series of essays from scholars and curators that respond to the overall character and process of Tell It To My Heart. The publication also includes a comprehensive checklist of artworks exhibited across the three venues, as well as those works included in the film programs accompanying each exhibition.
Tell It To My Heart – Collected by Julie Ault, Volume 2 is edited by Richard Birkett, Martin Beck and Julie Ault, and includes texts by curator Richard Birkett; art historian Patricia Falguières; writer Sarah Schulman; and archivist Marvin J. Taylor, with graphic design by Project Projects, New York.
2016, English / German
Softcover, 448 pages, 24 x 30.5 cm
Published by
Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite / Berlin
K.M Kunstverein / Munich
$56.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Bart van der Heide and Manuel Raeder.
This book is an overview of the exhibition program of Bart van der Heide from 2010 – 2015, which he realised as the director of Kunstverein München. This program includes exhibitions by Silke Otto-Knapp, Ian Kiaer, Tobias Madison, Keren Cytter, Cathy Wilkes, Group Affinity, Willem de Rooij, Trisha Baga, Richard Tuttle, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Simon Denny, Nicolas Ceccaldi, Ger van Elk, James Richards, and others. Each exhibition is presented by a corresponding booklet, containing all texts and images. These accompanying publications were designed individually for each exhibition in cooperation with Studio Manuel Raeder. The different designs play with various fonts, formats, and graphic elements. Together with these publications, a variety of coloured images of exhibition views conveys the curatorial direction as well as the identity of the Kunstverein in those years. A reflection by Bart van der Heide and all booklet texts are included in both German and English.
designed by Studio Manuel Raeder
2016, English / Italian
Softcover (newspaper), 334 pages, 25 x 36 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$20.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
MOUSSE #54, Summer 2016
Contents:
IEVA MISEVIČIŪTĖ
Character Studies of Primeval Life Form
by Jacquelyn Ross
EXTEND, EXCEED, ENHANCE: PROSTHETICS AND SCULPTURE
by Lisa Le Feuvre
ANNE IMHOF
Choreographed layers
by Hans Ulrich Obrist
RAYMOND BOISJOLY, TANYA LUKIN LINKLATER, WALTER SCOTT
Native North America
by Andrew Berardini, Richard William Hill and Candice Hopkins
INSIDE TO OUTSIDE TO INSIDE
by Jens Hoffmann
NEW SCENARIO
Curating Holes
by Melanie Bühler
ROLE PLAY
by Maurizio Cattelan,
Liam Gillick,
Thomas Demand,
Barbara Bloom,
Christian Jankowski,
Elmgreen&Dragset,
Michelle Grabner,
Tobias Rehberger,
Ugo Rondinone,
Harrell Fletcher,
John Miller,
Paulina Olowska
RONALD JONES
What You See Is What You See
by Krist Gruijthuijsen
GARY INDIANA
I Can Give You Anything But Love
by Andrew Durbin
WILLA NASATIR
Psychic Junkyards
by Lauren Cornell
RAGNA BLEY
An Idiosyncratic Abecedary
by Filipa Ramos
NOAH BARKER
Projecting an Island from Another
by Mark Beasley
ISIAH MEDINA
The impossible is the only (no-)thing that ever happens
by Pia Bolognesi
ME
by Dieter Roelstraete
SHIFTING BACKGROUNDS
by Anselm Franke
NOBODY IS SLEEPING IN THE SKY
by Geoffrey Farmer and Dora García
NOW, I AM AFRAID...
by Chus Martínez
CECILIA BENGOLEA AND FRANÇOIS CHAIGNAUD
Emotional Aesthetics
by Kathy Noble
MORAG KEIL AND GEORGIE NETTELL
Domestic Battlegrounds
by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen
AN ESSAY ON DRESS-UP AND OTHER THINGS
by Sabrina Tarasoff
2016, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 18.7 X 26 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$20.00 - Out of stock
The Exhibitionist #12
Journal on Exhibition Making
Reflection
Jens Hoffmann, Julian Myers-Szupinska, and Liz Glass
Exhibitions are a social and collective form. Whether the products of a single artist or of a group, they gather together artworks (or objects, projects, residues) and construct from them an image of a social field. Just as understanding an exhibition involves thinking about the relations that exist among, and engender the possibility of imagining, that field, no less are exhibitions produced by a group. Beyond the artists and the exhibition maker(s) involved, an exhibition radiates from an expansive network: conservators, shippers, installers, writers, editors, designers, administrative types of all sorts, interns, guards, funders, promoters, and so on. Exhibitions are, furthermore, perceived by an audience or a public—another group—who are themselves internally divided and classed, cohesive or cacophonous....
contents
Response I: Artists and curators
Fia Backström and Anthony Huberman
Re: family dynamics
Anne Ellegood and Kerry Tribe
Long Term Relationship
Claire Fontaine and Jens Hoffmann
Artistic Bitches and Curatorial Bastards
Inés Katzenstein and Juan José Cambre
Agreement
Response II: Archival
Introduced by Liz Glass
Dear King Harry
James Lee Byars: Correspondence with Harald Szeemann (1988)
La critique
Triple Candie: Let the Artists Die
Emiliano Valdés: Who Has the Power?
Nontobeko Ntombela: Remastered
Daniel Birnbaum: Hijacking the Situationists
Slavs and Tatars: The Splits of the Mind, If Not the Legs
Rachel Rose: Artist, Curator, Meaning
+
An Illustrated Bibliography of the exhibitionist, Issues IX–XII
2016, English
Softcover (spiral-bound w. flexidisc), 208 pages, 20 x 31 cm
Published by
Walker Art Centre / Minneapolis
$85.00 $45.00 - Out of stock
Despite its apparent throwaway status, the stock image comprises the primary commodity of a billion-dollar global industry with far-reaching effects in the marketplace and the public sphere. Taking this overlooked facet of contemporary life as a point of departure, "Ordinary Pictures" explores the photographic apparatuses and commercial interests that have given rise to our generic image culture through the conceptual image-based work of some 40 artists, including John Baldessari, Steven Baldi, Sarah Charlesworth, Anne Collier, Liz Deschenes, John Divola, Aleksandra Domanovi c, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Morgan Fisher, Hollis Frampton, Jack Goldstein, Rachel Harrison, Robert Heinecken, Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Steve McQueen, Jack Pierson, Peter Piller, Seth Price, Amanda Rossotto, Ed Ruscha, Steven Shore, Sturtevant, Mungo Thomson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Tseng Kwong Chi, Julia Wachtel and Christopher Williams. Spanning generations, movements and artistic strategies from the 1960s to the present day, this publication brings together works by artists who have probed, mimicked and critiqued this aspect of our visual environment as well as its industrial modes of production and distribution. Through the work of these artists and a series of scholarly essays, the catalogue aims to examine different operations of the generic image in culture, namely its anonymous circulation and editorial uses, its adaptability and reproducibility, its technical processes of production, its claim to copyright and artistic license and its tendency toward abstraction. Featuring a unique, coil-bound design reminiscent of stock photo catalogues and a flexidisc recording by the artist Jack Goldstein, this highly collectible book ultimately reflects on contemporary art's own complicit function as an expanding industrial image economy.
Edited by Eric Crosby, texts by Lane Relyea and Thomas Beard.
2014, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 16 x 22 cm
Published by
Open Editions / London
$48.00 - Out of stock
This anthology of newly commissioned texts presents a series of detailed examples of the different kinds of knowledge production that have recently emerged within the field of curatorial practice. The first volume of its kind to provide an overview of the theme of research within contemporary curating,Curating Research marks a new phase in developments of the profession globally. Consisting of case studies and contextual analyses by curators, artists, critics and academics, including Hyunjoo Byeon, Carson Chan and Joanna Warsza, Chris Fite-Wassilak, Olga Fernandez Lopez, Kate Fowle, Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Liam Gillick, Georgina Jackson, Sidsel Nelund, Simon Sheikh, Henk Slager, tranzit.hu, Jelena Vestic, Marion von Osten and Vivian Ziherl, and edited by curators Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, the book is an indispensible resource for all those interested in the current state of art and in the intersection between research and curating that underlies exhibition-making today.
2009, English
Softcover, 30 pages, 17 x 20 cm
$10.00 $5.00 - In stock -
Catalogue produced on the occasion of the exhibition, "Primary Views" at MUMA, Monash University Museum of Art in 2008, curated by artists Stephen Bram, Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley, and Juan Davila, with co-ordinating curator Kirrily Hammond.
Primary Views invited the insights of four artists represented in the Monash University collection. Each has been invited to curate a self-contained exhibition from the Monash University collection, according to their own areas of interest, expertise and aesthetic/discursive predilections. Alternative to classical or canonical art-historical readings, Primary Views considers the role of the artist as curator, encouraging new readings of the collection, and more partial, polemical and aberrant artistic historiographies.
Features texts by the curating artists and Max Delany.
Artists featured in the exhibition were: Howard Arkley, Paul Bai, Chris Barry, Charles Blackman, Peter Booth, Arthur Boyd, Stephen Bram, Horace Brodzky, Janet Burchill & Jennifer Mccamley, Ian Burn, Jane Burton, Domenico De Clario, Clyde Clinton, Noel Counihan, Mutlu Cerkez, Juan Davila, John Dunkley-Smith, Richard Dunn, Louise Forthun, John Heartfield, Bill Henson, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Ronnie Van Hout, Raafat Ishak, Rosemary Laing, Robert Macpherson, Tracey Moffatt, John Nixon, Jacky Redgate, William Robins, Paul Saint, Dada Samson, Jan Senbergs, Wolfgang Sievers
2010, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 232 pages, 215 x 115 mm
Published by
De Appel / Amsterdam
Open Editions / London
$39.00 - Out of stock
This sleek and serious anthology of new curatorial writing documents the inter-dependent relationships between the curatorial past, present and speculative futures and, instead of following the convention of curators writing about themselves, invites the authors to provide a text about the curatorial work of others. The result is an eclectic volume of accessible responses that provides a dynamic curatorial discourse where critical essays, theoretical explorations, propositions, historical overviews, interviews, exhibition critiques and fictional accounts sit side by side. Essential reading for students and professionals alike.
This book is a welcome addition to the growing literature about exhibition making. Moving away from autobiographical first-person narratives, Curating Subjects instead invites its broad range of contributors to comment upon the curatorial endevours of others. Conflating and colliding the past and present with possible futures, this book unfolds as an idiosyncratic conversation that is at once informative, entertaining and often revealing.
Matthew Higgs
Introduction by Paul O'Neill & Annie Fletcher; Design by Jonathan Hares.
Published with de Appel Arts Centre
2015, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$26.00 - Out of stock
Theater of Exhibitions analyzes “art after the end of art,” questioning whether inherited frameworks of making, theorizing, and exhibiting art still apply to contemporary practice. The book also considers the current commodification of the art industry and the distribution of images in the digital age. Drawing from his formation in theater and his own curatorial work, Jens Hoffmann reflects on the spaces of contemporary art—the gallery, the institution, the biennial—and ultimately positions the discipline of curating in the context of a larger cultural sphere shaped by the political, social, and economic conditions of its time, while demanding new attitudes and new thinking. Hoffmann’s theater posits the exhibition as an anthropological endeavor, and the curator as its agent.
“Jens Hoffmann inventively connects the epic theater of Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator with the most recent developments in curatorial practice in a book that flows forcefully with the insights gained from his extensive and remarkable curatorial experience.”
—Jessica Morgan
“Do curators today possess their own radical concepts of freedom? Jens Hoffmann’s answer to this question is yes. Walter Benjamin would have admired his description of the reality of the work. John Dewey would have praised him for living forward. Curators will find worlds of use for Theater of Exhibitions.”
—Molly Nesbit
“What is an appropriate form of assembly, an adequate embodied ritual for a global society in the twenty-first century? The exhibition still offers the best solution, yet it is increasingly perceived as falling short. To join Jens Hoffmann on his journey to the heart of exhibition making is to enter into the center of this negotiation, and there is no better travel guide than him.”
—Tino Sehgal
Design and illustrations by A Practice for Everyday Life
2014, English
Softcover, 246 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$35.00 - Out of stock
This publication is dedicated to pioneering curators and presents a unique collection of interviews by Hans Ulrich Obrist: Anne d'Harnoncourt, Werner Hofman, Jean Leering, Franz Meyer, Seth Siegelaub, Walter Zanini, Johannes Cladders, Lucy Lippard, Walter Hopps, Pontus Hultén, and Harald Szeemann are gathered together in this volume.
The contributions map the development of the curatorial field, from early independent curating in the 1960s and 1970s and the experimental institutional programs developed in Europe and in the USA at this time, through Documenta and the development of biennales.
The book is part of the Documents series, co-published with Les presses du réel and dedicated to critical writings.
Sixth edition.
2013, English
Softcover, 302 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$38.00 - Out of stock
Following the success of "A Brief History of Curating" (now available in five different languages, in its fifth reprint, and as an e-book), this publication gathers together interviews with pioneering musicians of the 1950s to the 1980s. The book thus brings together avant-garde composers such as Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen; originators of electro-acoustic music such as François Bayle, Pauline Oliveros, Iannis Xenakis, Robert Ashley, and Peter Zinovieff; Minimalist and Fluxus-inspired artists such as Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley; as well figures such as Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Arto Lindsay, and Caetano Veloso. Their contributions map the evolution of the musical field, from early experiments in concrete and abstract music, to the electronic development and the hybridization between Pop and avant-garde culture.
Hans Ulrich Obrist (*May 1968) joined the Serpentine Gallery (London) as Co-Director of International Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects in 2006.
The book is part of the Documents series, co-published with Les presses du réel and dedicated to critical writings.
"What a generous and incredible documentation of modern composers' minds and spirits!! It reveals their different characters, moods, methods, and more—proper fertile!!!" —Björk
2013, German/English
Softcover, 272 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$29.00 - Out of stock
With the title of “Globalism,” this year’s September issue of Texte zur Kunst proposes a critique of the discourse on “Global Art” as it has emerged in the wake of economic globalization. The main questions are: Does a global world need Global Art—or—does a globalized world produce globalized art? What, precisely, is the difference between these two phrases, between making a political claim and the economic structure? When did the term “Global Art” become the assertion of a “contemporary world art” that is composed along the lines of global economization, and what possible alternatives and other historiographies exist? Where do the potentials and surpluses of the global lie, if we grasp them as a political horizon of common action—no matter how inherently contradictory that notion may be? Is the current pervasiveness of “Global Art” in exhibition titles, conferences, funding programs, and their implementation in study courses symptomatic of a (self-)surmounting of the Global North? Or does it indicate a universalization of its concepts of art that remain linked to capitalism’s colonizing power of definition?
Instead of accepting “Global Art” as a new category of covert European and Western self-definition, we would like to cast a view on a differentiated and pluralized notion of the “Global” on the possibility of writing the narrative of art as transnational entangled histories, and of bringing the exchange relations between actors from different regions of the world to the fore. Such a perspective also affects the attention paid to the transnational effects of capitalist crises in the Northwest and the ongoing political scenarios of upheaval in the “Middle East.” In light of this persistent global multitude of crises, one must also discuss the question as to the role of art and of artists beyond regionalist structures of advantage and prejudice. Instead of establishing new patterns of dominance with the world-spanning gesture of a Global Art, then, talk of the global in art should challenge not only one’s knowledge of what is distant, but also one’s own practice as the globality of what is close by.
Plus a picture spread by Sophie-Therese Trenka-Dalton and reviews from Beijing, Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Lüneburg, Munich, Münster, Oporto, Santa Barbara, Stuttgart, and Vienna.
Exclusive new artists’ editions by Annette Kelm and Matthias Weischer.
English Content:
Preface
Main Section
Susanne Leeb
Asynchronous Objects
Anke Bangma
Response to Susanne Leeb: Some Thoughts on the Uncomfortable Timeliness of Ethnological Museums
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie
Response to Susanne Leeb: Contemporary Art, Ethnology Museums and Relational Politics
an email-conversation between
Kerstin Stakemeier, Maurizio Lazzarato, and Sarah Rifky
No New “New Deal”
Michaela Ott
The Small Aesthetic Difference
Christian Kravagna
Toward a Postcolonial Art History of Contact
Marion von Osten and Sarat Maharaj in conversation
The Surplus of the Global
Johannes Paul Raether and Eva Birkenstock
ask
Amilcar Packer, Zoe Zhang, Dmitry Vilensky, and Raqs Media Collective
A Dance of Growth and Terror
Reviews
John Beeson
Public Theater
On Liz Magic Laser at Westfälischer Kunstverein Münster
Pedro de Llano
The Periphery of the Others is Our Center
On Daniel Steegman at Uma certa falta de coerência, Oporto
Avigail Moss
Working Mothers of Invention
On My Barbarian at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
Drew Hammond
Globalism in Reverse
On Wang Xingwei at UCCA, Beijing
Ellen Feiss
A Dandy Flavor
On “Notes on Neo-Camp” at Studio Voltaire, London
Jenni Sorkin
Soft and Entitled
On Dasha Shishkin at MCA, Santa Barbara
Yuki Higashino
The Formalities of Curating
On “The Content of Form” at the Generali Foundation and “Unrest of Form. Imagining the Political Subject” at the Secession, both Vienna
Artists’ Editions
Annette Kelm
Untitled (TZK), 2013
Matthias Weischer
Berg, 2013
2012, German/English
Softcover, 287 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$29.00 - Out of stock
The June issue of Texte zur Kunst is dedicated to the curator, a figure in the art field that has gained authority over the past two decades. Ever since Harald Szeemann’s trendsetting documenta 5 (1972), “the independent curator” has counted as a new preeminent player in the art world. No longer employed by a museum but instead an initiator and author of project-based presentations at various institutions, the figure of the curator is also associated with the emergence of thematic group shows in which artworks, everyday objects, and documents, as equally treated exhibits, are meant to illustrate a hypothetical curatorial concept. In the art world of the 1990s—which was characterized by relations and interdisciplinarity, contexts and displays—curatorial activities were both popularized and professionalized. Curators increasingly acted as skilled networkers whose influence also grew due to the rising number of international biennials. At the same time, the notion of the curator or of curating has expanded beyond the confined boundaries of the art field and can now be found in all areas of cultural production. Against this backdrop the June issue of Texte zur Kunst examines how this rapid rise came about and what curatorial power really means. Thus, a perspective is opened that allows taking a fundamental look at the hegemonic structures in the art business and its effects.
Plus reviews from Berlin, Bregenz, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, New York, Siegen, Vienna, and Winterthur.
Exclusive new artists’ editions:
Nick Mauss, Thomas Ruff, and Imi Knoebel
English content
Preface
Oliver Marchart
The Curatorial Subject
The figure of the curator between individuality and collectivity
Beatrice von Bismarck
Curating Curators
Between Art and Public
A roundtable conversation with Natasa Ilic, Maria Lind, Nicolaus Schafhausen, and Jakob Schillinger
Sabeth Buchmann
29,687
Lucy R. Lippard: Curating (Within) the System
Heinz Bude
The Curator as Meta-Artist
The case of HUO
Values and Interests
Survey among artists on the relationship to curators, with contributions by Monica Bonvicini, Claire Fontaine, Mariechen Danz, Olaf Nicolai, Adrian Piper, Thomas Scheibitz
Dieter Roelstraete
Art Work
Some notes on status anxiety
Reviews
Mark Prince
Through a Looking Glass
On John Smith at Tanya Leighton, Berlin, and Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover
John Beeson
Kill yr. Idols
On You Killed Me First at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Tal Sterngast
Attention, Deficit, Disorder
On Dirk Bell at Sadie Coles HQ, London
Comments on the 7th Berlin Biennial By Sven Lütticken, Margarita Tupitsyn, and Victor Tupitsyn
Pedro De Llano
Eggs Theory
On Hans Haacke at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
Liz Kotz
Back to Basics
On Madison Brookshire and Tashi Wada at the Wulf., Los Angeles
Antek Walczak
Rites of Spring
On the Whitney Biennial 2012 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Mark Dion & Gareth James
Jackie McAllister – Silence with Great Eloquence
Artists’ Editions
Nick Mauss
Not another word for it, 2012
Thomas Ruff
Porträt 1989 (I. Graw), 1989/2012
Imi Knoebel
Anima Mundi, 2012
2014, English
Softcover, 84 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 18.7 X 26 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$19.00 - Out of stock
Overture
Jens Hoffmann and Lumi Tan
Curator’s Favorites
Monika Szewczyk – Idolizing Twilight
Chen Tamir – Liminal Spaces
Hendrik Folkerts – WACK the Canon!
Back in the Day
Inés Katzenstein – Experiencias 68: A Threshold
Missing in Action
Lucy Lippard – After a Fashion: The Group Show
introduced by Chelsea Haines
Attitude
Massimiliano Gioni – What I Did Last Summer
Assessments: Bergen Assembly 2013: Monday Begins Saturday
Christopher Y. Lew – Workers’ Compensation
Ase Lovgren – More Verbs, Please
Laurel Ptak – Art in the Age of the Norwegian Semi-Social-Democratic-Post-Welfare-State
Johanne Nordby Werno – Love for Labour
Rigorous Research
Germano Celant – The Territories of Exhibition
Six x Six
Ngahiraka Mason, Fionn Meade, Pable Léon de la Barra, Fillipa Ramos, Maria Inés Rodriguez, Syrago Tsiara
Rear Mirror
Daniel Baumann, Dan Byers and Tina Kukielsky – Considering the 2013 Carnegie International
Jennifer Gross – The Société Anonyme’s Dada Destiny
Edited by Jens Hoffmann, Julian Myers-Szupinska, Lumi Tan
2010, English
Softcover, 416 pages (150 b/w ill.), 140 x 215 mm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$34.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Brian Kuan Wood
Selections and responses by Beatrice von Bismarck, Ana Paula Cohen, Liam Gillick, Brian Kuan Wood, and Tirdad Zolghadr
Working in a number of contexts and capacities has shown Maria Lind to be a curator who, over time, has engaged in a rethinking of the art institution and the formats and methodologies connected with it, taking art itself as a starting point. Following on the various endgames outlined by institutional critique, Lind has forged paths out of hegemonic institutional regimes precisely by identifying other ways of working through them, from both inside and outside.
For Lind, writing is integral to her curatorial work. It is where she accounts for her decisions, explains her intention, justifies her interest, toys with new possibilities and develops new ideas, and recognizes historical precedents. It is where the craft of curating, already pointed out towards a public, finds another channel of articulation.
Selected Maria Lind Writing brings together twenty-two essays selected by Beatrice von Bismarck, Ana Paula Cohen, Liam Gillick, Brian Kuan Wood, and Tirdad Zolghadr.
The collection of essays spanning from 1997 to 2010 forms a tapestry of Lind's own interweaving interests, but also of those of a panel of readers invited by Lind to project their own concerns onto her corpus of writing. Essays on individual artists, monographic and group exhibitions, funding structures, new contexts and spatial paradigms, together comprise a rare opportunity to swivel a spotlight on its axis back towards a figure who always tries to aim it at what really matters.
Maria Lind is a curator and writer based in Stockholm. She was the director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2008 to 2010. She was director of Iaspis in Stockholm 2005 to 2007 and from 2002 to 2004 was the director of Kunstverein München. From 1997 to 2001, Lind was curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, where she was responsible for Moderna Museet Projekt. She was co-curator of Manifesta 2 in 1998. Lind has contributed widely to magazines and other publications, as well as to numerous exhibition catalogues. She was the 2009 recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement.
Design by Liam Gillick
2014, English
Softcover, 172 pages, 12.8 x 19.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$20.00 - Out of stock
Edited by April Lamm
Introduction by Paul Chan, afterword by Etel Adnan, ode by Olafur Eliasson
Following Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Curating But Were Afraid to Ask, this second volume in the series on international curator Hans Ulrich Obrist presents a selection of his key writings from the past two decades, which elaborate on the manifold thinkers, curators, and events that influence his interdisciplinary practice of exhibition making.
The collected essays form the compartments of Obrist’s curatorial toolbox, along with elucidating his views on stewardship, patronage, and art itself. Influences and interlocutors cited and discussed here include, among others, Alexander Dorner, Édouard Glissant, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean-François Lyotard, Dominique de Menil, Josef Ortner, Cedric Price, Sir John Soane, and Harald Szeemann.
Design by Zak Group
2013, English
460 individual cards in wrapper, 15.25 × 10.15 cm
Published by
New Documents / New York
$38.00 - Out of stock
Between 1969 and 1974, the influential curator Lucy Lippard (born 1937) curated four decisive Conceptual art exhibitions, and in doing so reinvented the exhibition catalogue. 4,492,040 is a facsimile reprint of the extremely scarce and hugely important catalogues produced for these hugely important “numbers shows” - 557,087 (the Seattle Art Museum), 955,000 (the Vancouver Art Gallery), 7,500 (the California Institute of Art) and 2,972,453 (the Centro de Arte y Comunicación). Titled after the populations of the cities in which the shows were held, each catalogue was an envelope of loose note cards containing statements, documentation and conceptual works by each artist, to be rearranged, filed or discarded at will. If Lippard described Conceptual art as the dematerialization of the art object, these catalogues effectively announced the dematerialization of the art exhibition. (One reviewer claimed Lippard had been the artist, and that her medium had been other artists.) 4,492,040 includes such iconic figures as Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Siah Armajani, Terry Atkinson, John Baldessari, Michael Baldwin, Robert Barry, Rick Barthelme, Daniel Buren, Rosemarie Castoro, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets, Christos Dikeakos, Eleanor Antin, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, On Kawara, Edward Kienholz Sol LeWitt, Roelof Louw, Duane Lundon, Bruce McLean, Robert Morris, N.E. Thing Co., Bruce Nauman, Adrian Piper, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Jeff Wall and Lawrence Weiner.
2013, English
Softcover, 178 pages, 16.6 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Royal Institute of Art / Stockholm
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$29.00 - In stock -
Texts by Petra Bauer and Annette Krauss, Franco Bifo Berardi, Galit Eilat, Ronald Jones, Maria Karlsson and Måns Wrange, Nina Möntmann, Peter Osborne, Marcus Steinweg, Nato Thompson; conversations between Simon Critchley and Miguel Á. Hernández-Navarro, Renzo Martens and T. J. Demos
Recent encounters between art and real life, the ubiquity of images of violence and humiliation in visual culture and the media, and the persistence of controversial debates on public and participatory art projects are raising fundamental questions about the importance of ethical decisions in art and curating. How far can provocation in art go, before it becomes cynical and abusive? Does “good censorship” exist? Are ethical decisions seen as more urgent in participatory art?
This reader introduces current notions of ethics in several contexts related to the cultural field. Responding to the instrumentalization of ethics as a privileged tool of neoliberalism, the reader claims the need for an ethics that critically reflects the mechanisms of contemporary global power structures. The contributions discuss models of subjective and situational ethics and pit them against a canon of unquestioned principles and upturned notions of ethics and human rights.
Copublished with the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm
Design by Torsten Jahnke and Jens Reitemeyer, Hotmelt My Heart