World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—SAT 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1992, English
Softcover, 460 pages, 24 x 17.25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Godine / New England
$40.00 - In stock -
An anthology of writing on modernism edited by Brian Wallis and foreword by Marcia Tucker. Includes essays by Kathy Acker, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Jorge Luis Borges, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Jonathan Crary, Douglas Crimp, Hal Foster, Michel Foucault, J. Hoberman, Robert Hughes, Fredric Jameson, Mary Kelly, Rosalind Krauss, Donald Kuspit, Thomas Lawson, Kate Linker, Lucy R. Lippard, Laura Mulvey, Craig Owens, Constance Penley, Martha Rosler, Abigail Solomon-Godeau. Photographs selected and arranged by Louise Lawler in collaboration with Wallis. Includes short biography for each contributor.
"The waning of the century-old modernist movement in the arts has called forth an astonishing array of artistic and critical responses. The twenty-five essays in Art After Modernism provide a comprehensive survey of the most provocative directions taken by recent art and criticism, exploring such topics as the decline of the ideology of modernism in the arts and the emergence of a wide range of postmodern practices; recent directions in painting, film, video and photography; visual artists' investigations of mass-media systems and imagery; and the dynamics of the social network in which art is produced and disseminated. This major collection is an indispensable guide to the ideas and issues animating this decade's art the far-reaching cultural reorientation known as postmodernism."
Good copy with general handling wear/cover creasing.
1988, English
Softcover, 180 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Columbia University Press / New York
$20.00 - Out of stock
From one of our most outspoken feminist critics, this collection explores various ways in which the body can be rethought of as a site of knowledge rather than as a medium to move beyond or dominate. Moving between a theoretical and confessional stance, Gallop explores Sade's relation to mothers both in his novels and his life; Barthe's The Pleasure of the Text; Freud's work, read not as a psychological text but as a literary endeavor and from a woman's point of view; and Luce Irigarary's famous This Sex Which Is Not One.
Average copy with price clipping to title page, general wear to corners, foxing to block edges.
1977, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 308 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$65.00 - In stock -
First 1977 hardcover edition of Passages in Modern Sculpture, Rosalind E. Krauss classic study of major works by important sculptors since Rodin in the light of different approaches to general sculptural issues to reveal the logical progressions from nineteenth-century figurative works to the conceptual work of the present.
"...Krauss's book is undoubtedly the best treatment of its subject yet written. As a textbook, it ought to raise the level of discourse in art history classes, for it is the meaning, not the chronology, of sculpture since Rodin that is the book's central concern. Krauss avoids the conventional plodding survey and divides the book into a sequence of 'case studies' that permit sustained attention to specific works and artists. In so doing, she attempts to trace a 'tradition' to stand behind that portion of American sculpture of the past 15 years which she espouses critically."—Art in America
"Distinguished art historian and critic Rosalind Krauss analyzes with exceptional clarity and insight the major works that have led 20th century sculpture from the traditional and figurative to the revolutionary conceptual art of the 1970s—an art which has developed a new 'syntax' that discards 'narrative' for instantaneous impact and boldly breaks new ground. Beginning with a penetrating study of Rodin's modernity in rejecting 'narrative' in his 'The Gates of Hell,' she moves successively through detailed examinations of futurism, constructivism, Duchamps' 'readymades,' Brancusi, David Smith's 'Tanktotem,' sculptural realism, and the introduction of light, motion, and theatrical elements into sculpture by Picabia, Calder, Oldenburg, and others right up to younger sculptors like Carl Andre, Blochner, and others [including Robert Morris, Don Judd, Richard Serra, Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson, and Michael Heizer]. As critic and theorist, Krauss makes demands that will challenge even the most sophisticated."—Publishers Weekly
Rosalind E. Krauss, editor and cofounder of October magazine, is University Professor at Columbia University. She is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, The Optical Unconscious, Bachelors, and Perpetual Inventory, all published by the MIT Press.
Very Good in VG dust jacket designed by Krauss with interior architect Alan Buchsbaum!
2024, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 334 pages, 32 x 22 cm
Published by
Centre Pompidou / Paris
$110.00 - In stock -
The defining book for the centenary of Surrealism. From September 2024 to January 2025, the Centre Pompidou will celebrate the 100th anniversary of André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto. For the next two years, their unprecedented Surrealist exhibition will tour the art galleries of the world, accompanied by this special catalogue.
Perhaps more than any other artistic movement, Surrealism had a cataclysmic effect on the modern mind, changing forever the way we think about experiencing the world. By rejecting the gross linearity that typified several centuries of preceding artworks, the legendary Surrealists Magritte, Ernst, Carrington, Dali, Tanning and so many others reached beyond the facade of that which is patently visible and found something more. Featuring original essays from leading academics and excerpts from the Surrealist Manifesto itself, this stands among the most essential Surrealist catalogues ever published.
2017 / 2022, English
Softcover, 600 pages, 15.2 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Nightboat Books / New York
$58.00 - In stock -
At last a major anthology of New Narrative, the movement fueled by punk, pop, porn, French theory, and social struggle to change writing forever.
Impossible to get for years, now finally back in print, and back in stock!
In the twenty years that followed America’s bicentennial, narrative writing was re-formed, reflecting new political and sexual realities. With the publication of this anthology, the New Narrative era bounds back to life, ripe with dramatic propulsion and infused with the twin strains of poetry and continental theory. The reader will discover classic New Narrative texts, from Robert Glück to Kathy Acker, as well as rare supplemental materials, including period interviews, essays, and talks, which form a new map of late 20th century creative rebellion.
"Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian’s edited anthology, Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative 1977–1997, takes an expansive view. A monumental tome decades in the making, it contains the work of forty-two recognised and little-known authors… Published, unpublished, and long-forgotten works, interviews, illustrations, and ephemera are all included, and each piece is accompanied by an invaluable note by Bellamy and Killian offering context and contributing to a sense of an exceptionally large, diverse, and exciting writing scene. Proof that nothing sticks a scene together like bodily fluids, the editors’ notes are also heavy on gossip and innuendo. Like New Narrative prose itself, which often used salacious, intimate asides to establish a conspiratorial relationship with its reader, Bellamy and Killian’s reminiscences seem designed to make their reader feel included or at least momentarily implicated in their community." — Diarmuid Hester, Critical Quarterly
Includes the writings of : Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Robert Glück, Kathy Acker, Edith A. Jenkins, Carla Harryman, David O. Steinberg, Michael Amnasan, Judy Grahn, John Norton, Marsha Campbell, Brad Gooch, Camille Roy, Sam D'Allesandro, Bruce Boone, Dennis Cooper, Kathe Burkhart, Roberto Bedoya, Steve Abbott, Gabrielle Daniels, Gary Indiana, Leslie Dick, Scott Watson, Gail Scott, Richard Hawkins, Kevin Killian, Matias Viegener, R. Zamora Linmark, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Rebecca Brown, Nayland Blake, Lynne Tillman, Bruce Benderson, Cecilia Dougherty, Eileen Myles, Sarah Schulman, Laurie Weeks, Bob Flanagan, Lawrence Braithwaite, Chris Kraus.
2025, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 23.5 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$49.00 - In stock -
I Am Abandoned documents a little-known, but visionary performance by Barbara T. Smith. Taking place in 1976, it featured a conversation in real time between two psychoanalytic computer programs (known today as two of the earliest chatbots) alongside a staging of Francisco Goya’s The Naked Maja (1795–1800) and The Clothed Maja (1800–1807), in which the artist projected an image of the famous painting on top of a female model. The publication includes a full transcript of the “conversation” between the two programs; documentation and ephemera from the performance; Smith’s reflections on the night; and an afterword by scholar and artist Mashinka Firunts Hakopian.
I Am Abandoned was part of the exhibition The Many Arts and Sciences at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and rather than simply celebrate new technology, Smith also sought to challenge what she saw as a “built-in problem” that “computers were only a new example of the male hypnosis.” In collaboration with computer scientist Dick Rubinstein, she enlisted the computer science teams at Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to mount a conversation between a program named DOCTOR, which was designed to be a surrogate therapist, and another named PARRY, which was trained to mimic a paranoid schizophrenic patient.
While the computer operator worked in the next room, each new page of the conversation was projected on the wall where a model dressed as The Clothed Maja reclined beneath the text, with a slide of the nude version of the same painting, The Naked Maja, projected onto her. The audience was rapt with attention for the livestreamed conversation. The performance went on for nearly two hours, before the model eventually grew furious from being ignored (abandoned) by the computer operator, stormed over, and attempted to seduce him. Shortly after, the gallery director pulled the plug on the entire event, claiming it distracted the audience for too long from the other works on view.
To revisit I Am Abandoned today is to see the artistic and truly liberatory potential that art can have when it intervenes in new technologies. Much like the original performance, in which the model grew alienated from the proceedings, what gradually emerges are the stakes these new technologies present. Against today’s backdrop of AI and a still male-dominated tech field, Smith’s early work with emerging technologies, and in this case chatbots, is prophetic and hints at the contemporary conversation around the gendered and racialized machinic biases of our current computational landscape. Though Smith, like many women of her generation, was overlooked by the landmark surveys of art and technology during the 1960s and 70s, her career incisively probed new technologies, using them to question gender dynamics, community, and self. Her projects from the Coffin books (1966–67), created with a 914 Xerox copier in her dining room, to performances like Outside Chance (1975), which created a small snow squall in Las Vegas out of 3,000 unique, computer-generated snowflakes, and the interactive Field Piece (1971), where participants’ movements altered the soundscape of a fiberglass forest, all exemplify her open-ended approach to art and tech. “Each person lit their own way,” Smith remembers, “And produced their own soundtrack.”
Barbara T. Smith is an important figure in the history of feminist and performance art in Southern California. Her work—which spans media and often involves her own body—explores themes of sexuality, traditional gender roles, physical and spiritual sustenance, technology, communication, love, and death. Smith received a BA from Pomona College in 1953, and an MFA in 1971 from the University of California, Irvine. There she met fellow artists Chris Burden and Nancy Buchanan, with whom she co-founded F-Space in Santa Ana, the experimental art space where many of her performances were staged. Smith’s work has been exhibited since the 1960s in solo exhibitions, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2024), the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2023), and Pomona College Museum of Art (2005), and featured in group exhibitions, including how we are in time and space: Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Barbara T. Smith, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena (2022), State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970, Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana (2012); WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007); and Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949–1979, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1998). Smith is the recipient of the Nelbert Chouinard Award (2020), Civitella Ranieri Visual Arts Fellowship, Umbria, Italy (2014); Durfee Foundation’s Artists’ Resource for Completion (2005, 2009); Women’s Caucus for Art, Lifetime Achievement Award (1999); and several National Endowment for the Arts Grants (1973, 1974, 1979, 1985). The Getty Research Institute acquired Smith’s archive in 2014 and published her memoir, The Way to Be, in 2023. Her survey catalog, Proof: Barbara T. Smith was published by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2024.
1994, Englsih
Softcover, 256 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Routledge / London
$20.00 - Out of stock
In Womanizing Nietzsche, Kelly Oliver uses an analysis of the position of woman in Nietzsche's texts to open onto the larger question of philosophy's relation to the feminine and the maternal. Offering readings from Nietzsche, Derrida, Irigaray, Kristeva, Freud and Lacan, Oliver builds an innovative foundation for an ontology of intersubjective relationships that suggests a new approach to ethics.
VG copy.
2000, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 21 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Other Press / New York
$25.00 - In stock -
A gem of a personal exploration by Julia Kristeva, examining contemporary issues such as European identity, the role of religion in political life, and the meaning of equality for women.
"In these four packed meditations, bursting with intellectual vitality, Kristeva comes forth as an erudite as well as a personal, political, religious, and philosophical thinker, without relinquishing her (un)usual, exquisite poetic style.... Engaging the issue of the contemporary failure of oedipal subjectivity and attacking our era of technology and robotization, she bravely calls for a return to the origins of our cultural memory. This is a provocative book for intellectuals of every stripe."—Frances L. Restuccia, Boston College and author of Melancholics in Love
"The essays in this collection again prove that Julia Kristeva is one of the most profound and courageous thinkers of our time. From her intimate reading of Hannah Arendt to her diagnosis of Eastern Orthodoxy, Kristeva gives us a fresh perspective. In a noteworthy move in terms of her own work, in her essay on Arendt, Kristeva gives priority to active narrative over poetry. Her very personal reflections on the contemporary situation in the Balkans is stunning. Her diagnosis of the European Union and the role of religion in political economy fascinates with its provocations. And, her insightful comments on the meaning of legal equality for women complicates feminist debates over equality versus difference."—Kelly Oliver, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Julia Kristeva is one of our most brilliant and original theorists, widely acclaimed for her work in linguistics, psychoanalysis, and literary and polit- ical theory. As a linguist, she has created a revolutionary theory of the sign in its relation to social and political emancipation. As a practicing psychoanalyst, she has explored the nature of the human subject and sexuality.
VG copy.
1991, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 230 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Harvester Wheatsheaf / New York
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1991 hardcover Harvester Wheatsheaf English language edition.
This book is concerned with the notion of the stranger—the foreigner, outsider, or alien in a country and society not their own—as well as the notion of strangeness within the self, a person’s deep sense of being, as distinct from outside appearance and their conscious idea of self.
Julia Kristeva begins with the personal and moves outward by examining world literature and philosophy. She discusses the foreigner in Greek tragedy, in the Bible, and in the literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the twentieth century. By considering the legal status of foreigners throughout history, Kristeva offers a different perspective on our own civilization.
Translated by Leon S. Roudiez
Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 “for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature.”
NF copy in NF dust jacket preserved under mylar wrap.
1991, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Columbia University Press / New York
$35.00 - In stock -
First 1991 Columbia edition.
Published in France in 1980, Marine Lover is the first in a trilogy in which Luce Irigaray links the interrogation of the feminine in post-Hegelian philosophy with a pre-Socratic investigation of the elements. Irigaray undertakes to interrogate Nietzche, the grandfather of poststructuralist philosophy, from the point of view of water.
According to Irigaray, water is the element Nietzsche fears most. She uses this element in her narrative because for her there is a complex relationship between the feminine and the fluid. Irigaray's method is to engage in an amorous dialogue with the male philosopher. In this dialogue, she ruptures conventional discourse and writes in a lyrical style that defies distinction between theory, fiction, and philosophy.
Luce Irigaray (b. 1930) is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist who examined the uses and misuses of language in relation to women.
Very Good copy.
2000, English
Softcover, 22.5 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Columbia University Press / New York
$40.00 - In stock -
Linguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist, Julia Kristeva is one of the most influential and prolific thinkers of our time. Her writings have broken new ground in the study of the self, the mind, and the ways in which we communicate through language. Her work is unique in that it skillfully brings together psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, literature, linguistics, and philosophy.
In her latest book on the powers and limits of psychoanalysis, Kristeva focuses on an intriguing new dilemma. Freud and psychoanalysis taught us that rebellion is what guarantees our independence and our creative abilities. But in our contemporary "entertainment" culture, is rebellion still a viable option? Is it still possible to build and embrace a counterculture? For whom—and against what—and under what forms?
Kristeva illustrates the advances and impasses of rebel culture through the experiences of three twentieth-century writers: the existentialist John Paul Sartre, the surrealist Louis Aragon, and the theorist Roland Barthes. For Kristeva the rebellions championed by these figures—especially the political and seemingly dogmatic political commitments of Aragon and Sartre—strike the post-Cold War reader with a mixture of fascination and rejection. These theorists, according to Kristeva, are involved in a revolution against accepted notions of identity—of one's relation to others. Kristeva places their accomplishments in the context of other revolutionary movements in art, literature, and politics. The book also offers an illuminating discussion of Freud's groundbreaking work on rebellion, focusing on the symbolic function of patricide in his Totem and Taboo and discussing his often neglected vision of language, and underscoring its complex connection to the revolutionary drive.
Julia Kristeva is a practicing psychoanalyst and professor of linguistics at the University of Paris. She is the author of many acclaimed books, including Time and Sense; Strangers to Ourselves, and New Maladies of the Soul, all published by Columbia.
Translated by Jeanine Herman
NF copy.
2002, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 392 pages, 23.67 x 16.15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Columbia University Press / New York
$30.00 - In stock -
First 2002 hardcover edition.
Julia Kristeva, herself a product of the famous May '68 Paris student uprising, has long been fascinated by the concept of rebellion and revolution. Psychoanalysts believe that rebellion guarantees our independence and creative capacities, but is revolution still possible? Confronted with the culture of entertainment, can we build and nurture a culture of revolt, in the etymological and Proustian sense of the word: an unveiling, a return, a displacement, a reconstruction of the past, of memory, of meaning? In the first part of the book, Kristeva examines the manner in which three of the most unsettling modern writers-Aragon, Sartre, and Barthes-affirm their personal rebellion.
In the second part of the book, Kristeva ponders the future of rebellion. She maintains that the "new world order" is not favorable to revolt. "What can we revolt against if power is vacant and values corrupt?" she asks. Not only is political revolt mired in compromise among parties whose differences are less and less obvious, but an essential component of European culture-a culture of doubt and criticism-is losing its moral and aesthetic impact.
"Kristeva... follows up The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt with this important, interdisciplinary tour de force."—Library Journal
"The reader will encounter in these pages the literary music of allusive, profound passages that uniquely characterize the expression of Kristeva's thoughts."—Choice
"Kristeva's work is an intricate mix of cultural criticism and psychoanalysis.... Kristeva's call to return to the intimate is salutory in a world given over to the dictates of production and consumption alone. The comments on patriotism, nationalism, hospitality and cosmopolitanism are politically astute and ethically humanist."—Pramod K. Nayar "Philosophy in Review "
Julia Kristeva is professor of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works and novels, including The Severed Head: Capital Visions, This Incredible Need to Believe, Hatred and Forgiveness, and Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila, all published by Columbia. She is the recipient of the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought and the Holberg International Memorial Prize.
NF—F copy in NF—F dust jacket.
1991, English
Softcover, 212 pages, 23 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Nebraska Press / Lincoln
$45.00 - In stock -
First 1991 edition.
"This book is destined to be a classic. It is one of Cixous's most widely recognized and celebrated fictional texts, and Betsy Wing's translation is masterful." —Alice A. Jardine, Harvard University.
In writing Le Livre de Promethea Hélène Cixous set for herself the task of bridging the immeasurable distance between love and language. She describes a love between two women in its totality, experienced as both physical presence and a sense of infinity. The result is a stunning example of l'écriture feminine that won kudos when published in France in 1983. Its translation into English by Betsy Wing will extend the influence of a writer already famous for her novels and contributions to feminist theory.
In her introduction Betsy Wing notes the contemporary emphasis on "fictions of presence." Cixous, in The Book of Promethea, works to "repair the separation between fiction and presence, trying to chronicle a very-present love without destroying it in the writing." Betsy Wing is a freelance translator and fiction writer. She translated Catherine Clément and Hélène Cixous's La Jeune Née (The Newly Born Woman) into English in 1986. A collection of her fiction, Look Out for Hydrophobia, was published in 1990.
VG copy.
1991, English
Softcover,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Routledge / London
$15.00 - In stock -
First 1991 Edition.
'The most inclusive and synthesizing study of Cixous to date'—Nicole Ward Jouve, University of York
Helene Cixous' analyses of the relations between sexuality and textual production have transformed theoretical discussion of gender and writing. Her work on the implications of a feminine economy in writing, and insistence on the bodily dimensions of textual production have led to a new understanding of the project of feminist literary criticism.
Morag Shiach provides an introduction for the English-speaking reader to the range of Cixous's creative and theoretical writings. In dealing with Cixous' theoretical arguments, Shiach both clarifies the philosophical and historical context of her work, and insists on its novelty and specificity. The book offers close analysis of Cixous' fictional texts, as well as her discussions of the relations between the political and the textual. There is also a detailed account of Cixous' theatrical writings, and of her collaboration with the Theatre du Soleil.
Morag Shiach is Lecturer in English at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.
Women's studies/Cultural studies/Literary theory/French literature
VG copy.
1998, English
Softcover, 198 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Routledge / London
$45.00 - In stock -
First 1998 Routledge edition.
STIGMATA brings together Hélène Cixous' most recent essays for the first time in any language. It is a collection of texts that get away escaping the reader, the writer, the book-by one of the greatest authors and intellectuals of the modern world.
Signifying through a tissue of philosophical metaphor, poetic power, critical insight and disarming lightness, Cixous' writing is taken up in a reading pursuit, chasing across borders and through languages on the heels of works by authors such as Stendhal, Joyce, Derrida, Lispector, Tsvetaeva, and Rembrandt, da Vinci, Picasso-works that share an elusive movement in spite of striking differences.
Along the way these essays explore a broad range of poetico-philosophical questions that have long been circulating in the Cixousian universe: love's labours lost and found, feminine hours, autobiographies of writing, animal-human family ties, the prehistory of the work of art... woven into a performance of writing at the intersection of contemporary Western history and a singularity named Hélène Cixous. Evoking her 'origins', the economy of a departure from Algeria (so as) never to arrive, and the psychomythical events that are engraved as fertile wounds into the body's many bodies, this book is an extraordinary writer's testimony to our lives and times.
Fine copy.
1990, English
Softcover, 214 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Routledge / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
This volume begins with a new essay by Julia Kristeva, 'The Adolescent Novel', in which she examines the relation between novelistic writing and the experience of adolescence as an 'open structure. It is this blend of the literary with the psychoanalytic that places Kristeva's work central to current thinking, from semiotics and critical theory to feminism and psychoanalysis.
The essays in this volume offer insight into the workings of Kristeva's thought, ranging from her analyses of sexual difference, female temporality and the perceptions of the body to the mental states of abjection and melancholia, and their representation in painting and literature.
Kristeva's persistent humanity, her profound understanding of the dynamics of intention and creativity, mark her out as one of the leading theoreticians of desire. Each essay offers the reader a new insight into the many aspects that make up Kristeva's entire oeuvre.
Includes essays by Julia Kristeva, John Lechte, Noreen O’Connor, Alison Ainley, Tina Chanter, Elizabeth Gross, Victor Burgin, Cynthia Chase, Leslie Hill, Virginia Woolf, Makiko Minow-Pinkney, Maud Ellman
John Fletcher is Lecturer in English at the University of Warwick. He has published on literary, cinematic and psychoanalytic topics.
Andrew Benjamin is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is editor of Post-Structuralist Classics and The Problems of Modernity (both in the Warwick Studies in Philosophy and Literature series), co-author of What is Deconstruction? (Academy Edition), and author of Translation and the Nature of Philosophy (Routledge, 1989).
VG copy.
1990, English
Softcover, 222 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Harvester Wheatsheaf / New York
$30.00 - In stock -
The work of Helene Cixous, novelist, dramatist and critic has influenced the French feminist theoretical movement. These essays from British, French and American critics, cover a range of topics from feminist aesthetics and "Etudes Feminines", to the impact of Cixous' theory on teaching practice.
VG copy.
1997, England
Softcover, 272 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Routledge / London
$20.00 - In stock -
Foucault Said That Power Is Everywhere - But If This Is So Why Don't Women Exercise More Of It?
Why Should Feminists Be Interested In Foucault?
'A fascinating and stimulating read. I particularly liked the fact that the book's agenda is set by feminist questions. I think it fills a real niche in what is currently available on the topic.'—Mary Maynard, Centre for Women's Studies, York University
Questions of sexuality and power were central to the writings of Michel Foucault, yet Foucault largely ignored feminism.
This book considers how seriously feminists should take his challenge by exploring the problems that Foucault raises for feminism, and the implications of the absence of gender in his own work.
Caroline Ramazanoglu is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Goldsmiths' College, University of London.
Cover drawing: Erich Heckel, 'Girl Reading', MOMA, New York Cover design: Phil Bicker Gender studies/Sociology
VG copy.
2025, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 124 pages, 23 x 23 cm
Published by
Drill Hall Gallery / Canberra
$45.00 - In stock -
This title brings the collection of Canberra couple Susan Taylor and Peter Jones into focus on the advent of its 25th anniversary. Seeded from an initial interest in mid-century modern design and early twentieth century avant-gardes, the collection blossomed into an embrace of non-objective and abstract art. Artists featured include General Idea, Maria Kozic, Peter Maloneyi, Elizabeth Newman, John Nixon, Robert Rooney, Janet Burchill, Jennifer McCamley and many more.It has grown to revel in the intersections between conceptual art, geometric abstraction, seriality, non-objective painting, photography, contemporary jewellery and poetics to develop conjunctions across time, place and materiality.
The publication accompanies the exhibition curated by Peter Jones at the Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, 19 April – 15 June 2025.
Eye to Eye delves into several of the collection’s multi-faceted and revelatory cross-sections. In his essay Peter Jones explores how the couple’s interests have been refined and extended by the art they love and the people that surround that art. In an interview with Drill Hall Gallery director Tony Oates, Susan Taylor discusses the correlations between sustainable fashion and conceptual art with a focus on jewellery. National Gallery of Australia’s curator of photography, Shaune Lakin, traces developments in local conceptual photography from the 1960s as they play out across the Taylor Jones collection. Acclaimed writer Quentin Sprague offers illuminating insight into the work of Robert Rooney and John Nixon, two stalwarts in the Taylor Jones collection. The publication touches on a vast array of local and international art historically significant developments, revealing the power of the private collection to expose perspectives that may go unnoticed in larger, public collections.
1988, English
Hardcover, 282 pages, 22 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cambridge University Press / Cambridge
$45.00 - In stock -
Very rare first hardcover edition of Anna K. Kuhn's book-length chronological study in English of Christa Wolf's works, published by Cambridge in 1988. It traces the development and continuity of the writer's major themes and concerns against the backdrop of her constantly evolving relationship to Marxism, and documents the rise of her feminist consciousness. It does not, however, focus only on political and feminist issues, but addresses all facets of Wolf's identity by showing how her works reflect her own self-understanding. Forced by the clash between her vision of a humane socialism and the practice of socialism she observed in the German Democratic Republic to reassess her role as a writer and critic, Wolf broke through to her unique style in The Quest for Christa T., a work initially repudiated in the GDR both for its unorthodox subject matter and for its unconventional form. Since then, Wolf has effectively challenged the restrictions placed on writers in the GDR by writing on topics such as the Nazi past (Patterns of Childhood), Romanticism (No Place on Earth), patriarchal attitudes in the GDR (Cassandra) and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (Storfall)."
Anna K. Kuhn's research interests include women's literature, feminist theory, film studies and German cultural studies.
VG copy w/o dust jacket. Note: not the 2009 re-issue often listed as a 1988 edition.
1977, English
Softcover, 222 pages, 19 x 11.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Seven Seas Books / Berlin
$45.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1977 English edition of this collection of important essays by German novelist and essayist Christa Wolf (1929—2011) first published in German in 1973. Translated here by Joan Becker.
"The Reader and the Writer consists of a number of essays and prose pieces by a leading writer of the German Democratic Republic and a concluding portrait of the author by biogeneticist, Hans Stubbe. "Writing," says Christa Wolf in the title essay, "is only one operation in a more complex process to which we give the splendid name of living." Her concern for literature's function within the context of life is a theme that runs through all her pieces. Whether she is describing the simple heroism of people she has encountered or reminiscences of a darker past or a visit to a biogeneticist at his research center her sense of vitality, honest quest for answers and warmth of personality are always present. Essays on other writers include those on Bertolt Brecht, Vera Inber, Ingeborg Bachmann, Fred Wander and Anna Seghers who come alive first as people and as writers whose works express the profound commitment of their lives. Another is a sketch that recalls a date in 1948 when she read her first Marxist book, Engels on Feuerbach, in which she underlined: "In the place of moribund reality comes a new viable reality. That was the process which was to fill my life..."—publisher's blurb
Christa Wolf (1929—2011) was German novelist and essayist. She is considered one of the most important writers to emerge from the former East Germany. Wolf was a German writer of rare purity and sensitivity who grew up under nazism and became an adult under communism. Her work records the impact of these ideologies on individual lives. She was, as one critic put it, "a writer of scrupulous 'touchstone' honesty", and it is the pursuit and uncovering of truth, under the most beleaguered circumstances, that defines her.
Good—VG copy. Clear laminate peeling with age at cover edges, repaired by some pieces of tape, cover in tact with only light edge wear. Binding and interior VG throughout., a well preserved copy.
1990, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$40.00 - Out of stock
First 1990 edition of Shock Treatment, the collection of Karen Finley’s most provocative and acclaimed performance monologues, essays, and poems, with “The Constant State of Desire,” “We Keep Our Victims Ready,” “It's Only Art,” and “The Black Sheep.” Excoriating misogyny, homophobia, abusive families, greed, and state coercion of bodies and minds, Finley holds out hope for a world informed not by hate and fear, but by truth and unconditional love.
“If you haven’t read this book yet–buy it, take it home, and read it now! This is the work that made me get off my ass and actually do something, and it will inspire you, too.”–Kathleen Hanna, singer, Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin
“Finley’s Shock Treatment is more than just ‘art.’ It remains a searing and necessary indictment of America, a call to arms, a great protest against the injustices waged on queers and women during a time in recent American history where government intervention and recognition was so desperately needed. Twenty-five years on, Finley’s work continues to shock and provoke readers and audiences, demonstrating the powerful cultural and political impact her work has had on modern American art and performance art.”–Nathan Smith, Los Angeles Review of Books
No other artist captures the drama and fragility of the AIDS era as Karen Finley does in her 1990 classic book Shock Treatment. “The Black Sheep,” “We Keep Our Victims Ready,” “I Was Never Expected to Be Talented,”–these are some of the seminal works which excoriated homophobia and misogyny at a time when artists and writers were under attack for challenging the status quo. This twenty-fifth anniversary expanded edition features a new introduction in which Finley reflects on publishing her first book as she became internationally known for being denied an NEA grant because of perceived obscenity in her work. She traces her journey from art school to burlesque gigs to the San Francisco North Beach literary scene. A new poem reminds us of Finley’s disarming ability to respond to the era’s most challenging issues with grace and humor.
KAREN FINLEY’s raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. Karen Finley (b. 1956) is an American performance artist, musician, poet, and educator. Her raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity.Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement in her work. She is a professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
VG copy.
1975, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
YWCA Australia / Melbourne
$190.00 - Out of stock
Rare first and only edition of one of the great Australian photo-books of the 1970s. Woman 1975 was published as "a permanent record of the exhibition of photographs entitled Woman, which was the contribution made towards International Women's year, 1975, by the Young Women's Christian Association of Australia." A gorgeous and moving overview of womanhood in Australia in the 1970s through the images of countless Australian photographers of the period, including Carol Jerrems, Rennie Ellis, John Williams, Fiona Hall, Melanie Le Guay, Ingeborg Tyssen, Jacqueline Mitelman, Les Gray, Grace Lock, Reg Morrison, Phillip Quirk, Peter Tyndall, Howard Birnstihl, Juergen Hasenkopf, Richard Crawley and many more.
Good—Very Good copy, light marking/foxing.
1975, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 32 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jill Matthews / Adelaide
$80.00 - In stock -
Exceptionally rare independent publication issued for International Women's Day in 1975, compiled by Australian social and feminist historian Jill Matthews (b. Adelaide 1949) — a crucial, harrowing and inspiring chronology of women's life in Australia since white settlement which expands into texts on Aboriginal Women, The Vote, Work, Education, closing with a directory of Women's Organisations across South Australia.
"In 1974, the United Nations declared that the whole of 1975 would be International Womens Year. This booklet arises from research carried out specifically for Intermational Womens Day—March 8, celebrated in South Australia by a march through the streets of Adelaide and various goings-on at the Festival Centre. The booklet aims to provide some factual information concerning the herstory/history of women in Australia since white settlement and to offer a few interpretations of these facts for discussion"—Jill Matthews
In 1984 Matthew's authored her rewritten PhD thesis as Good and Mad Women: The Historical Construction of Femininity in Twentieth Century Australia, published by Allen & Unwin. In her 1987 review, British historian Catherine Hall considered it to be an "essential starting point for British readers into the rapidly extending world of Australian feminist history".
Very Good copy, well preserved copy with light general wear and a few light drip marks to the cover.