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.
2019, English
Hardcover, 236 pages, 24.6 x 33.8 cm
Published by
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art / SF
$98.00 - Out of stock
The richly illustrated catalogue Repositioning Paolo Soleri: The City is Nature presents the drawings, sculptures and models the seminal artist and architect produced from 1947 until the mid-1970s--during the richest years of his artistic evolution. These selected works represent Soleri's most creative moments when he was making his artwork and constructing his home-studio, primarily with his own hands.
Four chapters by expert historians closely examine Soleri's often-overlooked achievements within the disciplines of design and craft, futurist and utopian architecture, and 1970s theories of consciousness-raising and therapy. The book demonstrates the widespread popular interest and excitement about Soleri's ideas in 1970 and offer a variety of possibilities for the steep decline in his popularity and the resulting lack of historical attention paid to this important artist.
Repositioning Paolo Soleri: The City Is Nature is the only monograph to analyze Soleri's art and ideas after 2009. Radical new material includes an extensive annotated bibliography, a previously unpublished 1974 interview with the architect and a photographic essay of Soleri's two experimental communities, Cosanti and Arcosanti.
1995, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 145 pages, 25 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Chihiro Art Museum / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
Scarce, first and only edition of what might be the only major publication and survey exhibition on the work of Czech artist and illustrator Květa Pacovská, published in Japan on the occasion of the retrospective at Chihiro Iwasaki Picture Book Museum, Tokyo, in 1995. Printed in Japan with various stocks, illustrated wax film overlays and metallic elements, this beautiful catalogue is lavishly illustrated throughout with Pacovská's drawings, lithographs, children's books, visual poetry, picture objects, designs and much more, accompanied by photographs, biography, list of exhibitions, list of authored and illustrated books, and much more, revealing so many seldom seen works. Texts in Japanese and English. A treasure for any fan!
Květa Pacovská (b. Prague 1928) is Czech artist and illustrator. She received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1992 for her "lasting contribution to children's literature". Pacovská was born in Prague and studied at its School of Applied Arts, where she mainly worked in graphic art, arts, conceptual art and artist book fields. For many years she developed a career as a graphic designer and participated in more than 50 exhibitions. In 1961 she started drawing picture books for her own children. Her work is characterised by the use of geometric forms and vibrant, saturated colours, mainly red.
Very Good copy in illustrated dust jacket. Some light tanning to edges/cover.
1978, Japanese
Softcover, 102 pages, 28 x 21 cm
Published by
PARCO / Tokyo
$40.00 - Out of stock
Somewhere between Fiorucci and National Lampoon, Surprise House SUPER was a live-fast, die young quarterly magazine from art director Ryōichi Enomoto and published by the mighty Parco gallery, imprint and department-store-like-no-other in Tokyo. With the theme of "parody", SUPER was a spin-off from the subculture magazine "Surprise House", also published by Parco/Enomoto, showcasing the wildest reaches of graphic art cultural parody - this 1978 issue centering around the 2nd Japan Advertising Parody competition! Hosted by leading Japanese graphic artists Shigeo Fukuda, Kiyoshi Awazu, Yoshitaka Amano, Harumi Yamaguchi, and moderated by Enomoto, this issue presents the endless stream of hectic appropriated and reimagined commercial poster advertisements from Japan at the time. Plus much other photo montage, collage madness.
Very Good copy.
2019, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 30 pages, 20 x 20 cm
Published by
Printed Matter Inc. / New York
Primary Information / New York
$38.00 - In stock -
Originally published in 1971, Four Basic Kinds of Lines & Colour is a classic artist’s book by preeminent conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007). Featuring 34 pages of drawings, the work is an early example of LeWitt’s rigorous, algorithmic process in which a set of rules, applied to generate an image, are subsequently run through all of their permutations.
In the late 1960s LeWitt began applying this technique, first developed for his wall drawings, to 'artists’ books', a term that was coined two years after this book appeared. In this publication, LeWitt demonstrates the 34 ways that basic lines (horizontal, vertical, left-facing diagonal and right-facing diagonal) can be rendered in four colours (red, yellow, blue and black), with each page displaying a single combination (for example, horizontal lines in blue).
The book is one of LeWitt’s signature bookworks, which in its original edition remains quite scarce, so this new facsimile edition is significant; almost none, if any, of his books (he produced over 50) have been reprinted.
1994, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 150 pages, 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sezon Museum of Art / Tokyo
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this scarce, heavily-illustrated Japanese catalogue on the work of pioneer American sculptor David Smith, published on the occasion of an major survey exhibition at the Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, in 1994.
Broken into the sections: Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings, each profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with Smith's prolific and diverse work spanning his entire career. This rare volume also features texts in both Japanese and English, including David Smith's "Questions to Art Students", a foreward by Peter Stevens, and a full biography, bibliography and list of exhibitions (all in English).
Among the greatest American sculptors of the twentieth century, David Smith was the first to work with welded metal. He wove a rich mythology around this rugged work, often talking of the formative experiences he had in his youth while working in a car body workshop. Yet this only disguised a brilliant mind that fruitfully combined a range of influences from European modernism including Cubism, Surrealism, and Constructivism. It also concealed the motivations of a somewhat private man whose art was marked by expressions of trauma. Smith was close to painters such as Robert Motherwell, and in many respects he translated the painterly concerns of the Abstract Expressionists into sculpture. But far from being a follower, his achievement in sculpture was distinctive and influential. He brought qualities of industrial manufacturing into the language of art and proved to be an important influence on Minimalism.
Very Good copy with with original obi-strip and dust jacket. Tanning to edges, light wear.
2017, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 24 x 19 cm
Ed. of 200,
Published by
Hopkinson Mossman / Auckland
$55.00 - In stock -
Monograph on New Zealand artist Nick Austin (b. 1979), published in an edition of 200 copies in 2017, surveying Austin's paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations, alongside text by Austin and Wystan Curnow, designed by Warren Olds.
Simultaneously concrete and elusive, Austin’s work is always open-ended and inconclusive. A master of the quotidian, Austin's works have referenced socks, fish aquariums and spider-webs, inspired by formal structures derived from concrete poetry, ideograms, puns and crosswords. His works trigger fluid, accidental associations and digressive meanings rather than convey any fixed or predetermined ideas. The disjunctive space between the titles of Austin’s individual works and what is visible in them delays the inference of meaning and creates a distance that enables poetic qualities to develop. Austin likens his work to a poetry collection that dramatises the mysteries of the creative process.
2013, English
Document folder containing 10 loose-leaf items, 31 x 23 cm
Edition of 200,
Published by
University of Otago / Otago
$50.00 - In stock -
This wonderful artist edition by New Zealand-based Nick Austin (b. 1979) was produced in an edition of 200 copies on the occasion of the exhibition "The Liquid Dossier" at the University of Otago in 2013. It collects a gathering of collateral (documents and ephemera including poster, postcard, photographs, CD, instant coffee, etc), alongside texts by Jon Bywater and Natalie Poland, in a hand-titled/numbered manilla foolscap document folder, designed by Nick Austin and Gilbert May.
Simultaneously concrete and elusive, Austin’s work is always open-ended and inconclusive. A master of the quotidian, Austin's works have referenced socks, fish aquariums and spider-webs, inspired by formal structures derived from concrete poetry, ideograms, puns and crosswords. As with the contents of a dossier, the works in "The Liquid Dossier" exhibition are loosely bound to each other in a manner that draws our attention to overlooked or absent items. As a result his works trigger fluid, accidental associations and digressive meanings rather than convey any fixed or predetermined ideas. The disjunctive space between the titles of Austin’s individual works and what is visible in them delays the inference of meaning and creates a distance that enables poetic qualities to develop. Austin likens his work to a poetry collection that dramatises the mysteries of the creative process.
2018, English
Hardcover, 244 pages, 21.5 x 28.5 cm
Published by
Guggenheim Museum / New York
$100.00 - Out of stock
When Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died in 1944 at the age of 81, she left behind more than 1,000 paintings and works on paper that she had kept largely private during her lifetime. Believing the world was not yet ready for her art, she stipulated that it should remain unseen for another 20 years. But only in recent decades has the public had a chance to reckon with af Klint's radically abstract painting practice--one which predates the work of Vasily Kandinsky and other artists widely considered trailblazers of modernist abstraction. Her boldly colorful works, many of them large-scale, reflect an ambitious, spiritually informed attempt to chart an invisible, totalizing world order through a synthesis of natural and geometric forms, textual elements and esoteric symbolism.
Accompanying the first major survey exhibition of the artist's work in the United States, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future represents her groundbreaking painting series while expanding recent scholarship to present the fullest picture yet of her life and art. Essays explore the social, intellectual and artistic context of af Klint's 1906 break with figuration and her subsequent development, placing her in the context of Swedish modernism and folk art traditions, contemporary scientific discoveries, and spiritualist and occult movements. A roundtable discussion among contemporary artists, scholars and curators considers af Klint's sources and relevance to art in the 21st century. The volume also delves into her unrealized plans for a spiral-shaped temple in which to display her art--a wish that finds a fortuitous answer in the Guggenheim Museum's rotunda, the site of the exhibition.
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) is now regarded as a pioneer of abstract art. Though her paintings were not seen publicly until 1987, her work from the early 20th century predates the first purely abstract paintings by Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich.
2018, English
Hardcover, 288 pages, 21.6 x 27.9 cm
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$100.00 - Out of stock
At the turn of the twentieth century, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) created a body of work that left visible reality behind, exploring the radical possibilities of abstraction years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, or Piet Mondrian. Many consider her the first trained artist to create abstract paintings. With Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods, we get to experience the arc of Klint's artistic investigation in her own words.
Hilma af Klint studied at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm where she was part of the first generation of female students. Up until the beginning of the century, she painted mainly landscapes and detailed botanical studies. Her work from this period was that of a young artist of her time who meticulously observed the world around her. But, like many of her contemporaries, af Klint was also interested in the invisible relationships that shape our world, believing strongly in a spiritual dimension. She joined the Theosophical Society, and, with four fellow female members who together called themselves "The Five," began to study mediumship. Between 1906 and 1915, purportedly guided by a higher power, af Klint created 193 individual works that, in both scale and scope of imagery, are like no other art created at that time. Botanically inspired images and mystical symbols, diagrams, words and geometric series, all form part af Klint's abstract language. These abstract techniques would not be seen again until years later.
Notes and Methods presents facsimile reproductions of a wide array of af Klint's early notebooks accompanied by the first English translation of af Klint's extensive writings. It contains the rarely seen "Blue Notebooks," hand-painted and annotated catalogues af Klint created of her most famous series "Paintings for the Temple," and a dictionary compiled by af Klint of the words and letters found in her work. An introduction by Iris Muller-Westermann illuminates this unique and important contribution to the legacy of Hilma af Klint.
2020, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 21 x 29.8 cm
Published by
SFMOMA / San Francisco
D.A.P. / New York
$100.00 - Out of stock
Part artist's book, part exhibition catalog, this book chronicles Tauba Auerbach’s multimedia syntheses of abstraction, science, graphic design and typography.
Tauba Auerbach studies the boundaries of perception through an art and design practice grounded in math, science and craft. Published in conjunction with the first major survey of the artist’s work, this volume, designed by Auerbach in collaboration with David Reinfurt, spans 16 years of her career, highlighting her interest in concepts such as duality and its alternatives, interconnectedness, rhythm and four-dimensional geometry.
Encapsulating Auerbach’s longstanding consideration of symmetry, texture and logic, the title S v Z offers a framework for this volume’s typeface, design and structure. Images of more than 130 paintings, drawings, sculptures and artist’s books created between 2004 and 2020 are mirrored by a comprehensive selection of related reference images, illuminating her multifaceted practice as never before. Essays by Joseph Becker, Jenny Gheith and Linda Dalrymple Henderson provide further context for the work.
The book contains original marble patterns created specially for the book by the artist on both the endpapers and the edges of the book block. The cover is lettered in Auerbach’s calligraphy, applied in black foil on a silver paper. The typeface was designed by David Reinfurt with Auerbach expressly for this publication, and is based on her handwriting.
New York–based artist Tauba Auerbach (born 1981) grew up in San Francisco and graduated from Stanford University in 2003. She apprenticed and worked as a sign painter at New Bohemia Signs in San Francisco. In 2013 she founded Diagonal Press. She is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, and Standard Oslo.
1983, English /Japanese / Flemish
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Nippon Television Network Corporation / Japan
$85.00 - Out of stock
First edition hardcover Japanese catalogue published by the Nippon Television Network Corporation (!) in 1983 on the occasion of a major travelling retrospective of James Ensor's work in Japan. Through Ensor's (1860-1949) various depictions of masks, monsters, and skeletons, the somewhat shocking expression he employed to explore the human spirit had a significant influence on the Expressionist and Surrealist artists to come. Here over 140 works dating from early on in his career to his late years and consisting of oil paintings, drawings, and prints are presented in largely three sections. Beginning with his period of Realism and ending with his prolific graphic and painterly works of the grotesque, where Ensor's critical mentality toward religious or social themes was incisive and remorseless, yet witty. The special middle section focuses on the influence of the Orient on Ensor. The series of pictures known as the Hokusai mangwa, illustrated by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, is considered to have influenced Ensor's art. "There are a series of drawings in which Ensor copied these sketches and pictures depicting Chinese ceramics or Japanese fans. Ensor's family ran a souvenir shop, where there were all sorts of unusual things imported from the Orient and carnival masks. In recent years, the influence of such objects brought from the Orient has been focused on as part of the background to this artist's production of grotesque characters." Includes photographs from his life in Ostend, essays, descriptions of works, bibliography, biography, and much more. Texts in English, Flemish and Japanese.
James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for almost his entire life. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX. While Ensor's early works, such as Russian Music (1881) and The Drunkards (1883), depict realistic scenes in a somber style, his palette subsequently brightened and he favored increasingly bizarre subject matter. Such paintings as The Scandalized Masks (1883) and Skeletons Fighting over a Hanged Man (1891) feature figures in grotesque masks inspired by the ones sold in his mother's gift shop for Ostend's annual Carnival. Subjects such as carnivals, masks, puppetry, skeletons, and fantastic allegories are dominant in Ensor's mature work. Ensor dressed skeletons up in his studio and arranged them in colorful, enigmatic tableaux on the canvas, and used masks as a theatrical aspect in his still lifes. Attracted by masks' plastic forms, bright colors, and potential for psychological impact, he created a format in which he could paint with complete freedom. James Ensor is considered to be an innovator in 19th-century art. Although he stood apart from other artists of his time, he significantly influenced such 20th-century artists as Paul Klee, George Grosz, Wols, and many expressionist and surrealist painters of the 20th century.
Very Good copy.
1974 / 2001, German / English
Offset printed poster + English translation (41.5 x 29 cm + photocopy)
Published by
VG Bild-Kunst / Bonn
$30.00 - In stock -
Poster of Joseph Beuys' 1974 "Unbetitelt" (evolution drawing), printed in Germany in this offset edition in 2001 by VG Bild-Kunst in Bonn. This special edition comes with a photocopied English translation to accompany the original German-language work, courtesy of the Joseph Beuys Cafe, Melbourne.
Joseph Beuys sought the opportunity to make his evolutionary ideas comprehensible in a “parallel process” of exhibiting his work on the one hand and lecturing, discussing, and talking on the other. He thereby often accompanied his oral presentations with drawings and notes that he drew on blackboards or on sketch sheets. Here word and image (or character) complemented each other in such a way that they supported and explained each other and thereby became a unity that created a new type of work. The many diagram-like drawings that were created in this way essentially have – in terms of content – four directions, which often appear together with different emphasis: evolution of the earth, of the kingdoms of nature, of the human being and of the societal forms; "plastic theory"; the threefold social organism; information processes between the respective 'sender' and 'receiver'
The original drawing was sketched quietly at his home in pencil on paper measuring 42 × 29.7 cm and was signed on the back: 1.7.1974 for Volker Harlan. The drawing represents in a particularly aesthetic way the type of work that Beuys called the “work result from a cultural revolutionary activity”. Because this drawing primarily develops the aspect of evolution, it has been called 'evolution' (drawing) since its first publication in 1974 – although it was not titled by Beuys himself. (excerpt from an essay: The Threefold Social Order as a World-Principle by Volker Harlen)
Dimensions : 41.5 x 29 cm
As New.
1983, German
Softcover, 118 pages, 18 x 11.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ullstein KunstBuch / Frankfurt
$40.00 - Out of stock
German artist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975) was one of the most subversive artists associated with Surrealism, famous--notorious, even--for his erotic engravings, objects and photographs. The first edition of Die Puppe (The Doll) comprised a series of Bellmer's photographs "illustrated" with prose poems by Paul Éluard; Bellmer's hand-colored photographs subsequently acquired an iconic status as perhaps the purest exemplification of the Surrealist ideal of "convulsive beauty." Later editions of the book were expanded to incorporate a body of theoretical, poetic and speculative texts that together comprise one of the most important expositions of Surrealist cultural theory. Bellmer weaves a remarkably disparate set of concepts and intuitions--from fields as diverse as mathematics, morphology, optics and psychology--into a theory of eroticism that provides a totally unexpected rationale for his uncompromising art. His ideas are, in the words of poet Joë Bousquet, a "scandal to reason."
This 1983 printing from Frankfurt is in the original German language, as are majority of editions of Die Puppe, and includes Die Puppe, Die Spiele der Puppe, and Die Anatomie des Bildes, and more. Illustrated throughout. Very Good copy.
2019, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 21.4 x 28.5 cm
Ed. of 950,
Published by
3-Ply / Victoria
$38.00 - Out of stock
Angela Brennan: 19 Desires and One Belief is an artist-driven publication edited by Angela Brennan, a non-exhaustive slice of practice, spanning around thirty years. The monograph includes an essay by Jan Bryant, a poem by Justin Clemens and contributions by Mitch Cairns, Mel Deerson, Michael Graf, Elizabeth Newman, Lisa Radford, and Georgina Sambell. The texts have been dispersed amongst an array of images, arranged non-periodically, sequenced to reflect a circuitous approach to practice. The book decontextualizes artworks, liberating them from previous frameworks in which they have been presented, opening space for new readings and atemporal crosscurrents.
Angela Brennan: 19 Desires and One Belief continues 3-ply’s investigation of monograph-as-artist-book. Design by Lucy Russell. Published in an edition of 950 copies.
2019, English
Hardcover, 72 pages, 30 x 25 cm
Published by
Matthew Marks / New York
$89.00 - Out of stock
Expanding on Kelly's highly-regarded 1992 book, first published in 2017 in this expanded clothbound edition, "Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings" features more than 30 drawings made by Kelly between 1949 and 2008. Kelly made these gorgeously economical line drawings from life, sometimes barely lifting the pencil as he translated each plant’s contours to paper. Focusing on direct visual impression—“nothing is changed or added,” as he put it—Kelly used the natural forms of the plants to explore some of his painterly fixations, like the effects of volume, negative space and overlapping planes. Despite the immediacy of their execution and their representational content, the most striking surprise of Kelly’s plant drawings is how much they share with his abstract paintings and sculptures.
2016, English
Softcover, 28 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Edition of 500
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$14.00 - Out of stock
Special edition zine reproducing a selection of Tom of Finland's reference material, published on the occasion of Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA February 24 — 26, 2017.
Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly masculine homoerotic fetish art, and his influence on late twentieth century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3500 illustrations.
Edition of 500 copies.
2005, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. printed acetate dust jacket various inserts), 115 pages, 30 x 22.5
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Pie Books / Tokyo
$190.00 - Out of stock
The exceptional, lavish and quickly out-of-print Japanese Archigram book, published in 2005 to accompany a major retrospective exhibition that presented the Archigram archives, "Archigram: Experimental Architecture 1961-1974" at Contemporary Art Gallery Art Tower Mito. This first and only printing comes wrapped in a thick, transparent printed acetate dust-jacket and presents page after page of full-bleed colour photographic documentation of this exhibition (installations, drawings, collages, paintings, models, ephemera), punctuated with incredible facsimile inserts sampling Archigram's many influential publications from the 1960s and 1970s, enclosed in printed envelopes and fold-out spreads spanning different paper-stocks and formats across the book.
The Exhibition focused on the innovative concepts and visionary projects of Archigram, an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s - based at the Architectural Association, London - that was neofuturistic, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects, including "Capsule Homes" (1964), "Plug-In City" (1964), "Walking City" (1964), "Instant City" (1968), "Cushicle" (1969)...
The main members of the group were Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, Dennis Crompton, Michael Webb and David Greene. Designer Theo Crosby was the "hidden hand" behind the group. Especially active between 1961 and 1974, the group anticipated the global inter-relatedness of culture and technology and thus had an immediate influence on architectural discussions worldwide - the significance of their work continues to be felt today. Their radical re-definitions of domestic architecture and urban planning, as well as an aesthetic that transcends practical function, had wide-felt repercussions on contemporary British art of the 1960s and the subsequent avant-garde in architecture at that time in Europe, Japan, and America. Their work inspired two like-minded Italian collectives, Archizoom and Superstudio and Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers' Centre Pompidou (1972-76) in Paris, as well as buildings by Japanese "metabolist" architects such as Kenzo Tange's Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center (1965-70) in Tokyo. Archigram responded to comic books and pop music, space travel and moon landing, science fiction and the exciting new technologies of the sixties and seventies, their inspirations came from architects and artists such as Buckminster Fuller, Bruno Taut, and Friedrich Kiesler. As a result, they created radical alternatives to cities, houses and other architectural archetypes, communicating their ideas through Archigram magazine as well as though traditional architectural renderings, gallery exhibitions, multi-media installations, and collage. Their unique style of rendering often emphasized concepts over architectural forms, and had an enormous influence on modern architectural drawing techniques as well as the conceptualization of architectural ideas.
Texts in English and Japanese, including essays, profiles of Archigram members, and an interview with Peter Cook.
Very Good condition of this densely-layered and impressive book that reflects the Archigram ethos superbly.
2018, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 250 pages, 22.9 x 30.5 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$125.00 $60.00 - Out of stock
A revelatory reassessment of one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century
Charles White (1918-1979) is best known for bold, large-scale paintings and drawings of African Americans, meticulously executed works that depict human relationships and socioeconomic struggles with a remarkable sensitivity. This comprehensive study offers a much-needed reexamination of the artist's career and legacy. With handsome reproductions of White's finest paintings, drawings, and prints, the volume introduces his work to contemporary audiences, reclaims his place in the art-historical narrative, and stresses the continuing relevance of his insistent dedication to producing positive social change through art.
Tracing White's career from his emergence in Chicago to his mature practice as an artist, activist, and educator in New York and Los Angeles, leading experts provide insights into White's creative process, his work as a photographer, his political activism and interest in history, the relationship between his art and his teaching, and the importance of feminism in his work. A preface by Kerry James Marshall addresses White's significance as a mentor to an entire generation of practitioners and underlines the importance of this largely overlooked artist.
Edited by Esther Adler
Preface by Kerry James Marshall
Contributions by Ilene Susan Fort, Mark Pascale, Sarah Kelly Oehler, Deborah Willis, Kellie Jones
2020, English
Hardcover, 368 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
Museo Nacional del Prado / Madrid
$50.00 - Out of stock
Drawings by Francisco de Goya presents the fruits of the research undertaken for the publication of a new catalogue raisonné of Goya’s drawings, a subject to which the Museo del Prado has always devoted particular attention and which is one of the keystones of its collection. Since the publication of Gassier’s catalogue in 1973 the number of drawings attributed to Goya has changed, giving rise to the need for a new catalogue raisonné which updates the enormous body of information accumulated over the course of two centuries of literature on this subject.
This book brings together more than 100 drawings by Goya from the Prado’s own collections and from public and private ones around the world. It is presented as a chronological survey of his work that includes drawings from throughout his career, ranging from the Italian Sketchbook to the Bordeaux Albums. It also offers an up-to-date vision of the ideas that recurrently appear in Goya’s work, revealing the ongoing and long-lasting relevance of his thinking.
1974, Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 22 x 26 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Seibu / Tokyo
Shizenkan / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
One of the finest, rarely seen books on Allen Jones, published in Japan in 1974 on the occasion of a Japanese exhibition in that travelled across Tokyo (at Seibu) and Nagoya (at Meitetsu), the same year. Densely packed, this book is profusely illustrated in colour and black and white with Jones' drawings, painting, sculptures, designs, posters, prints, book editions, lithographic set editions, photographs of the artist's studio (by Tim Street-Porter and Yoshio Marumoto), an interview, biography, and bibliography.
Edited by Allen Jones and Yoshio Marumoto.
2010, English
Softcover, 40 pages, 21 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Douglas Stewart Fine Books / Melbourne
$10.00 - Out of stock
Published by Douglas Stewart Fine Books in 2010, this publication catalogues, as the title suggests, Australian artist Robert Jacks's archive of books, printed works, folios and ephemera - a central component of his practice. Compiled entirely from the artist’s collection and spanning 1969 – 2009, it forms an authoritative, fully illustrated listing of publications and works from the prolific Australian artist.
Robert Jacks (born 1943) is an Australian painter, sculptor and printmaker.
In 1966 he had his first solo exhibition at Gallery A, Melbourne from which a work was purchased for the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1968, he participated in ‘The Field’ an extremely influential exhibition at the new National Gallery of Victoria, which effectively launched colour field abstraction in Australia.
"I think my work has always been minimal and abstract because when I was being taught sculpture, it was expressed in abstract terms. Form in space, mass and volume - that sort of thing. Painting, for me, is an extension of sculptural ideas."
1990, English
Softcover, 32 pages, 21 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Melbourne / Melbourne
$25.00 - Out of stock
Published by the University of Melbourne in 1990, this catalogue celebrates Australian artist Robert Jacks's commitment to abstraction as well as his works' "authority and formal quality, suggestive colours and sensitivity". Forward by Frances Lindsay, expansive text by Simeon Kronenberg, written in 1989. Illustrated throughout (in colour and b&w) with Jacks' many works on paper using pencil, watercolour, gouache, collage, cut paper, stamps and ink. Includes biography and exhibition history.
Robert Jacks (born 1943) is an Australian painter, sculptor and printmaker.
In 1966 he had his first solo exhibition at Gallery A, Melbourne from which a work was purchased for the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1968, he participated in ‘The Field’ an extremely influential exhibition at the new National Gallery of Victoria, which effectively launched colour field abstraction in Australia.
"I think my work has always been minimal and abstract because when I was being taught sculpture, it was expressed in abstract terms. Form in space, mass and volume - that sort of thing. Painting, for me, is an extension of sculptural ideas."
2003, English
Softcover, 140 pages (b/w ill.), 21 by 29.8 cm
Published by
Self-Published
$30.00 - In stock -
Publication of artist pages curated by Stephen Bram & Justin Andrews, including the work of;
Justin Andrews
Stephen Bram
Daniel Gottin
Melinda Harper
Monika Kapfer
Karin Lind
Hermann Maier Neustadt
John Nixon
Rose Nolan
Karim Noureldin
Kerrie Poliness
Sandra Selig
Carmen Soraya
Ralf Werner
Ian Whittlesea
2004, English
Softcover, 104 pages (b/w ill.), 21 by 29.8 cm
Published by
Self-Published
$30.00 - In stock -
Publication of artist pages curated by Stephen Bram & Justin Andrews, including the work of;
Florian Balze
Renate Buser
Tom Fruchtl
Esther Hiepler
Kyle Jenkins
Gerard Kodde
W.J.M. Kok
Gerold Miller
Jan van der Ploeg
Masato Takasaka
Kees Visser
Albert Weis