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.
2013, English
Softcover, 148 pages, 15.5 x 24 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$35.00 - Out of stock
In Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating ten distinguished contemporary curators—Jessica Morgan, Juan A. Gaitán, Chus Martínez, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Elena Filipovic, Maria Lind, João Ribas, Peter Eleey, Adriano Pedrosa and Dieter Roelstraete—pose and then propose answers to a series of key questions related to curating, art and exhibition making today: What Is a Curator? What Is the Public? What Is Art? What About Collecting? What Is an Exhibition? Why Mediate Art? What To Do with the Contemporary? What About Responsibility? What Is the Process? How About Pleasure?
The book, which began as a series of ten commissioned essays for Mousse magazine written over a period of two years, in 2011 to 2012, contains a text by Jens Hoffmann—Deputy Director and Head of Exhibitions and Public Programs of the Jewish Museum in New York and editor of the publication—and Milovan Farronato, Director of the Fiorucci Art Trust.
Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating is a project published by Mousse in collaboration with the Fiorucci Art Trust.
2013, English
Hardcover (w. cloth binding), 320 pages (134 b/w and 32 color ills.), 18.5 x 26.5 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College / New York
LUMA Foundation / Zürich
$105.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
With contributions by Ariella Azoulay, Bassam El Baroni, Roger M. Buergel, George Didi-Huberman, Michel Feher, Hal Foster, Anselm Franke, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, Maja Hoffmann, Denis Hollier, Thomas Keenan, Alex Klein, Suhail Malik, Marion von Osten, Katya Sander, Hito Steyerl, Eyal Weizman, Tirdad Zolghadr
The Human Snapshot draws upon a conference of the same name organized by the LUMA Foundation and Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College that took place in Arles, France, in 2011. The conference contributions and subsequent essays examine contemporary forms of humanism and universalism as they circulate and are produced in art and photography. The look toward these two terms stems from theorist Ariella Azoulay’s research on the seminal exhibition “The Family of Man,” first installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955, which she frames as a lens through which to view universalism at play. These values have been under conceptual assault in recent years, yet they continue to proliferate—even through the visual arts, where humanism and universalism are customarily dismissed. The Human Snapshot takes these themes and wrestles with their application in the use of photography, the exhibition format, contemporary democracy, human rights discourse, and the power of the image at large.
Copublished by the LUMA Foundation and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard)
Design by Zak Group
2013, English
Hardcover, 256 pages (30 b/w ills.), 16.9 x 23.9 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$32.00 - Out of stock
With contributions by Agency, David Berry, Nils Bohlin, Sean Dockray, Rasmus Fleischer, Antonia Hirsch, David Horvitz, Mattin, Open Music Archive, Matteo Pasquinelli, Claire Pentecost, Florian Schneider, Matthew Stadler, Marilyn Strathern, Kuba Szreder, Marina Vishmidt; preface by Binna Choi, Maria Lind, Emily Pethick
Undoing Property? examines complex relationships inside art, culture, political economy, immaterial production, and the public realm today. In its pages artists and theorists address aspects of computing, curating, economy, ecology, gentrification, music, publishing, piracy, and much more.
Property shapes all social relations. Its invisible lines force separations and create power relations felt through the unequal distribution of what is otherwise collectively produced value. Over the last few years the precise question of what should be privately owned and publicly shared in society has animated intense political struggles and social movements around the world. In this shadow the publication’s critical texts, interviews and artistic interventions offer models of practice and interrogate diverse sites, from the body, to the courtroom, to the server, to the museum. The book asks why propertization itself has changed so fundamentally over the last few decades and what might be done to challenge it. The "undoing" of Undoing Property? begins with the recognition that something else is possible.
Design by Konst & Teknik
2011, French
Softcover, 160 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$30.00 - In stock -
A unique project, between the artist's book and the book on art history, juxtaposing, through a succession of personal documents, the history of different art movements (minimal, conceptual, relational...) and Ghislain Mollet-Viéville's own history.
Features the work of André Cadere, Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Donald Judd, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, On Kawara, Robert Barry, Sol Lewitt, Olivier Mosset, and many more.
2012, English
Hardcover, 200 pages (31 b&w ills.), 178 x 229 mm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$34.00 - Out of stock
" 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.
2010, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 348 pages, 215 x 115 mm
Published by
De Appel / Amsterdam
Open Editions / London
$32.00 - Out of stock
An anthology of new writing that argues for acknowledgment of an educational turn in recent art and curatorial production. Through reasoned and attentive debate, the course of curating and exhibition making into the realm of the ‘educational’ is analysed, using both empirical and theoretical tools.
In recent years there has been increased debate about the incorporation of pedagogy into art and curatorial practice – about what has been termed ‘the educational turn’. In this follow up volume to the critically acclaimed Curating Subjects, artists, curators, critics and academics respond to this widely recognised sense of art’s paradigmatic re-orientation towards the educational. Consisting primarily of newly commissioned texts, from interviews and position statements to performative texts and dialogues, Curating and the Educational Turn also includes a small number of previously published writings that have proved pivotal in the debate so far. This anthology presents an essential enquiry for anyone interested in the cultural politics of production at the intersection of art, curating, and education.
Design: Jonathan Hares
Published with de Appel Arts Centre
2012, English
Softcover, 256 pages (colour & bw ill.), 16 x 22 cm
Published by
Independent Curators / New York
$29.00 - Out of stock
In these five essays, art historian and theorist Terry Smith surveys the international landscape of current thinking by curators; explores a number of exhibitions that show contemporaneity in recent, present and past art; describes the enormous growth world wide of exhibition infrastructure and the instability that haunts it; re-examines the contribution of artist-curators and questions the rise of curators utilizing artistic strategies; and, finally, assesses a number of key tendencies in curating as responses to contemporary conditions. Thinking Contemporary Curating is the first book to comprehensively chart the variety of practices of curating undertaken today, and to think through, systematically, what is distinctive about contemporary curatorial thought.
2011, English
Softcover, 246 pages, 150 x 210 mm
Fourth edition,
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$24.00 - Out of stock
11 interviews with curatorial pioneers
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.
2012, English
Softcover, 294 pages, 150 x 210 mm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$29.00 - Out of stock
Nonprofit collective organizations in the 1960s and 1970s
This volume was developed in collaboration with founders of important and exemplary artist-run spaces of the 1960s-1970s. It represents the first extensive research on this subject and introduces spaces such as Art Metropole in Toronto, Artpool in Budapest, Ecart in Geneva, Franklin Furnace in New York, MOCA in San Francisco, La Mamelle in San Francisco, Printed Matter in New York, Western Front in Vancouver, and Zona in Florence, whose founders include Carl Andre, John Armleder, AA Bronson, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Tom Marioni, and Maurizio Nannucci. At a time of transition to new aesthetic approaches, these artists promoted community spirit and organizational skills, pioneering a revaluation of traditional art concepts.
The book documents not only the activities of these spaces, but also maps the artistic strategies and positions that took currency during this period. It thus shows how the inner life of collective self-organization and the exchange between like-minded artist-run spaces developed dynamically.
With contributions by Julie Ault, Fern Bayer, Lionel Bovier, AA Bronson, Christophe Cherix, Gabriele Detterer, Terry Fox, Peggy Gale, Julia Klaniczay, Lucy Lippard, Carl Loeffler, Tom Marioni, Maurizio Nannucci, Toni Sant, Darlene Tong, Michael Turner, Keith Wallace and Martha Wilson.
The book is part of the Documents series and is co-published with Zona Archives.
2012, English
Softcover, 376 pages, 17 b/w ill., 14 x 21 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$26.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Beatrice von Bismarck, Gabriele Brandtstetter, Helmut Draxler, Liam Gillick, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Hannah Hurtzig, Pirkko Husemann, Maria Lind, Marion von Osten, Raqs Media Collective, Dorothee Richter, Irit Rogoff, Jörn Schafaff, Avinoam Shalem, Simon Sheikh, Barbara Steiner, Nora Sternfeld, Hito Steyerl, Anton Vidokle, Eyal Weizman, Thomas Weski, Tirdad Zolghadr
Cultures of the Curatorial assumes a curatorial turn in contemporary cultural practice and discourse. Encompassing a whole field of knowledge relating to the conditions and relations of the appearance of art and culture, the curatorial has developed as a field of overlapping and intertwining activities, tasks, and roles that were formerly divided and more clearly attributed to different professions, institutions, and disciplines. This development has affected the notion of curating—principally an activity of putting together—and widened its scope beyond showing or presenting to include enabling, making public, educating, analyzing, criticizing, theorizing, editing, and staging. Embedded in the globalization of the art field, on the one hand, and the conditions of labor in the twenty-first century, on the other, the curatorial has gained a specific sociopolitical relevance within contemporary society.
The publication aims to map the scope of perspectives from which this field of knowledge can be discussed. Coming from a variety of disciplines and professional backgrounds, the contributors exemplify the entanglement of theory and practice, consider recent developments within the curatorial field, allow self-reflexive analysis, and explore the conditions—disciplinary, institutional, economic, political, and regional—under which art and culture become public.
Copublished with Kulturen des Kuratorischen, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
Design by Surface, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin
2011, English
Softcover, 91 pages, 190 x 260 mm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$18.00 - In stock -
The Exhibitionist #4 – La Critique, Journal on Exhibition Making
In this issue: "Response I: the Artist and the curator - The Curatorial Paradigm", "Notes on the Paracuratorial", "The Limits of Interpretation, "Response II: toward a History of exhibitions - On the Value of a History of Exhibitions", "Inhabiting Exhibition History", "What History of Exhibitions?", "On Knot Curating", "Curating in the Academy", "Beyond Participation", "The Dog that Barked at the Elephant in the Room", "Curatorial Control", "Prolonged Exposure", "Curator with a Capital C or Dilettante with a Small d", and much more...
The Exhibitionist, a journal made by curators, for curators, focusing solely on the practice of exhibition making.The objective is to create a wider platform for the discussion of curatorial concerns – encourage a diversification of curatorial models, and actively contribute to the formation of a theory of curating.
Editor: Jens Hoffmann
Editorial board: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Okwui Enwezor, Kate Fowle, Mary Jane Jacob, Constance Lewallen, Maria Lind, Chus Martínez, Jessica Morgan, Julian Myers, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paul O’Neill, Adriano Pedrosa, Dieter Roelstraete, Dorothea von Hantelmann
Design: Jon Sueda and Jennifer Hennesy / Stripe, San Francisco
2011, English
Softcover, newspaper, 275 pages, 265 x 375 mm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$15.00 - Out of stock
In this issue:
Starring
by Federico Florian, Antonio Scoccimarro
GEOFFREY FARMER
Characters and Characteristics of the Work
by Monika Szewczyk
TALKING ABOUT
Is That All There Is to a Circus?
by Dieter Roelstraete
PHYLLIDA BARLOW
The Work Is Never Finished
by Nicholas Cullinan
PART OF THE PROCESS - DAVID LEVINE
Rothko’s Ruins
by Ana Teixeira Pinto
TALKING ABOUT
Criticism Hurts
by Jan Verwoert
PORTFOLIO - GEORGE KUCHAR
Carnivalesque George Kuchar
by Juan A. Suárez
LOST AND FOUND - LLYN FOULKES
The Lost Frontier: Llyn Foulkes
by Andrew Berardini
TALKING ABOUT
Melete (“The Society Islands”)
by Mark von Schlegell
NICE TO MEET YOU - DAN FINSEL
Art Therapy
by Cecilia Alemani
NICE TO MEET YOU - BEN SCHUMACHER
Things That Look Like Other Things
by Bob Nickas
NICE TO MEET YOU - JOHN HENDERSON
Absorption & Theatricality
by Barbara Casavecchia
NICE TO MEET YOU - WU TSANG
Wu Tsang: Body Quotations, Back-Breaking Sparkle and the Dissemination of Wildness
by Kevin McGarry
TEN FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF CURATING
Chapter 6: What Is an Exhibition?
by Elena Filipovic, visual concept by Nairy Baghramian
TALKING ABOUT
A New Fruit
by Nick Currie
LONDON - CALLY SPOONER
The Wor(l)d Is a Stage
by Michele Robecchi
PARIS - JONATHAN BINET
The Way Things Go: a Conversation with Jonathan Binet
by Vincent Honoré
NEW YORK - TIM ROLLINS & JULIE AULT
Shakers
BERLIN
Starship
by Gigiotto Del Vecchio
ARTIST PROJECT - LUTZ BACHER
The Gift
by Fionn Meade
ENRICO DAVID & THOMAS HOUSEAGO
I’m Fucked Out of Your Mind
ALISON KNOWLES
The Future Will Be Fragrant Bean Fields
by Hans Ulrich Obrist
REPRINT
Time Warp
by Rob Giampietro
TALKING ABOUT
As Little Time on The Ground as Possible. First Attempt on the Possibility of Artistic Significance Beyond Philosophy of History
by Chus Martínez
Books
by Stefano Cernuschi
Diary
WHAT’S ALTERNATIVE? ALTERNATIVE TO WHAT? - ANDREA FRASER
"Alternative to what, exactly?"
by Vincenzo de Bellis
TAMAR GUIMARÃES
A Strange Ritual
by Andrea Lissoni
TALKING ABOUT
Moving Gods Aside
by Philippe Pirotte
JESSICA WARBOYS
Waves Wave
by Emilie Renard
2011, English / Italian
Softcover, 273 pages, 265 x 375 mm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$15.00 - Out of stock
Starring
by Antonio Scoccimarro
LUCY MCKENZIE AND MARC CAMILLE CHAIMOWICZ
Adventures Close To Home
by Michael Bracewell
THOMAS SCHÜTTE
Reality Production Part II
by Hans Ulrich Obrist
TALKING ABOUT
Etica Da Ginga A Letter from Rio De Janeiro
by Dieter Roelstraete
PART OF THE PROCESS – ALLORA & CALZADILLA
Gloria
by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy
CAREY YOUNG AND JILL MAGID
The Color of Law
by Introduction by Alessandro Rabottini
DAVID MEDALLA
A Stitch in Time
by Adam Nankervis
TALKING ABOUT
Entangled Positions
by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev with Barbara Casavecchia, Daniel Baumann, Anthony Huberman, Raimundas Malašauskas, João Ribas
TEN FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF CURATING
"Chapter 5: What Is the Public?" Juan A. Gaitán Images selected by Christodoulos Panayiotou
by edited by Jens Hoffmann
R.H. QUAYTMAN
I Modi
by David Joselit
FABIO MAURI
Starting From The End
by Elena Volpato
TALKING ABOUT
A Readymade Mystery in Three Parts
by Adam Kleinman
Agenda
KERSTIN BRÄTSCH AND AMY SILMAN
Chromophilia
ALLEN RUPPERSBERG
The Art and Ephemera of Allen Ruppersberg
by Andrew Berardini
After Marcel Broodthaers, on Relationism & Lost Articles
by Guillaume Désanges and Hélène Meisel
LOST AND FOUND
All That Jess
by Jens Hoffmann
HARK!
Now or Never
by Jennifer Allen
DANAI ANESIADOU
On “Poesivski”, Oblivion and Cinema
by Vincent Honoré
SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET
Rodney Graham
by Rachel Rosenfield Lafo
REPRINT
by Will Holder
Books
by Stefano Cernuschi
Diary
by Antonio Scoccimarro
DARIUS MIKŠYS
Who Is Darius Mikšys
by Jennifer Teets
NICE TO MEET YOU – ADRIÁN VILAR ROJAS
The Aching Whale
by Cecilia Alemani
PORTFOLIO – ELIAS HANSEN
Glass Magnifies Things
by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
WHAT’S ALTERNATIVE? ALTERNATIVE TO WHAT?
Stefan Kalmár and Tirdad Zolghadr
by Curated by Vincenzo de Bellis
2011, English
Softcover, 63 pages, 190 x 260 mm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$18.00 - Out of stock
The Exhibitionist, a new journal made by curators, for curators, focusing solely on the practice of exhibition making.
The objective is to create a wider platform for the discussion of curatorial concerns – encourage a diversification of curatorial models, and actively contribute to the formation of a theory of curating.
In this issue: Victoria Noorthoorn, Aspara DiQuinzio, Lars Bang Larsen, Doryun Chong, Stéphanie Moisdon, Tobias Berger, Carol Yinghua Lu, Jessica Morgan, Elisabeth Sussman, Shelly Bancroft, Peter Nesbett, Maria Lind, Jane Alison, Kathrin Romberg, Tara McDowell and Jens Hoffmann.
2011, English
Softcover, 116 pp, 170 x 245 mm
Published by
Projectile Publishing Society / Vancouver
$19.00 - Out of stock
Contents:
Measures of an Exhibition: Space, Not Art, Is the Curator’s
Primary Material / Carson Chan
Camps (or the Precarious Logic of Late Modernity) / Anthony Downey
Intangible Economies / Antonia Hirsch
The Golden Potlatch
: Study in Mimesis and Capitalist Desire / Candice Hopkins
Browsing the AAAARG Library / Jeff Khonsary
An Evidence Horizon / Lisa Marshall
Producing Images in Times of War / Haema Sivanesan
On Carnival and
Contractual Curating / Jesse McKee and Claire Tancons
When the time comes
you won’t understand
the battlefield / Kristina Lee Podesva and Ryan Trecartin
Faith Money Love / Jan Verwoert
2010, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 18.7 x 25 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$64.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
This book is the first overall presentation of Silberkuppe. Since it’s founding in May 2008, Silberkuppe has become one of Berlin's most outstanding independent spaces for contemporary art. Dominic Eichler and Michel Ziegler run the space from a twenty-five square metre room in a former concierge's office. Over the last two years they have initiated around twenty projects including exhibitions, lectures, presentations, film screenings, concerts and performances, which together have involved more than fifty cultural producers with diverse interests and backgrounds, including contemporary artists, architects, actors, dancers, designers, musicians and writers. This catalogue comes as a result of the exhibition “Under One Umbrella” (2010) in Bergen Kunsthall, a project that was the culmination of a series of institutional group exhibitions in which Silberkuppe extended their practice out from their own micro-space. It takes the form of a “photographic report” documenting all of Silberkuppe's main exhibitions and events, as well as presenting several essays related to the projects.
2010, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 195 x 295 mm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$18.00 - Out of stock
The Exhibitionist, a new journal made by curators, for curators, focusing solely on the practice of exhibition making.
The objective is to create a wider platform for the discussion of curatorial concerns – encourage a diversification of curatorial models, and actively contribute to the formation of a theory of curating.
The Exhibitionist will be published twice a year and will follow a strict editorial structure. In each issue, the Curators’ Favorites section will present three texts in which three curators write a personal essay about an exhibition, contemporary or historic, that has particularly impacted their thinking, followed by Back in the Day – an in-depth look at a historically important exhibition. In Assessments, the core of the journal, four curators will review a significant contemporary exhibition, each from his or her individual point of view. Typologies debates specific exhibition formats. Attitude features a text by a member of the editorial board reflecting on the current state of exhibition making. In Rear Mirror, two curators reflect upon exhibitions they have recently curated. And, finally, Endnote, a brief remark on a notable aspect of curatorial practice. Every fourth issue will include a conversation between some of the contributors about past issues; in this way the journal offers a forum for self-reflexivity.
Contributors this issue: Tara McDowell, Matthew Drutt, Juan A. Gaitan, Aurélie Voltz, Constance Lewallen, Eva Díaz, Robert Storr, Jenelle Porter, Jane Simon, Mary Jane Jacob, Nato Thompson, Joshua Decter, Okwui Enwezor, Jack Bankowsky, Peter Eleey, Jens Hoffmann.
Editor: Jens Hoffmann
Senior Editor: Tara McDowell
Editorial Board: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Okwui Enwezor, Mary Jane Jacob, Constance Lewallen, Maria Lind, Chus Martínez, Jessica Morgan, Julian Myers, Paul O’Neill, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Adriano Pedrosa, Dorothea von Hantelmann
Editorial Founders: Jens Hoffmann and Chiara Figone
Published by Archive Books / Berlin
$18.00 - Out of stock
The Exhibitionist, a journal made by curators, for curators, focusing solely on the practice of exhibition making.
The objective is to create a wider platform for the discussion of curatorial concerns – encourage a diversification of curatorial models, and actively contribute to the formation of a theory of curating.
In this issue: Jens Hoffmann, Jill Dawsey, Chus Martínez, Jean-Hubert Martin, Julian Myers, Jessica Morgan, Ulrike Groos, Jill Winder, Yilmaz Dziewior, Rob Bowman, Beatrix Ruf, Eungie Joo, Adriano Pedrosa, Massimiliano Gioni, Nancy Spector and Tara McDowell.