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.
1983, English
Single-sheet (folded into 8-panels, double-sided), 64 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Monash University Exhibition Gallery / Victoria
$120.00 - Out of stock
Excellent, rare, over-sized single sheet/poster catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition and lecture series, 'Masterpieces' out of the Seventies, at the Exhibition Gallery, Monash University Department of Visual Arts, curated and designed by artist Peter Cripps in 1983, featuring the work of Peter Tyndall, Imants Tillers, Peter Cripps, John Nixon, and Sam Schoenbaum. In what could easily be the precursor to Cripps' wonderful "Recession Art & Other Strategies" (1986), 'Masterpieces' out of the Seventies, as Cripps states in his catalogue text, "locates an approach which emerged in this period (but which has yet to be acknowledged) and attempts to show how it informs the new Australian Art of the Eighties. The essence of this new approach was in its reformulation of the idea of what could constitute the 'parts' of a work. "Masterpieces" is thus not only an exhibition composed of parts but also an exhibition about 'parts'. There are 5 artists in the exhibition and they are represented by works produced 7 to 10 years ago as well as by more recent works. The first 21 weeks of the 8-week exhibition are devoted to contemporary works, followed by 1 'historical' work by each artist per week for the remaining 5 weeks."
Illustrated with documentation of some of the works alongside texts by the artists, portraits, drawings, full exhibition catalogue, biographies...
First, only edition of this rare historical piece, As New copy with light tanning and wear.
2021, English
Hardcover, 176 pages, 22.5 x 30.5 cm
Published by
Mamco / Genève
JRP Editions / Zürich
$99.00 - Out of stock
An extensive overview of Olivier Mosset's six-decade painting practice
Olivier Mosset (b. 1944, Bern; lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Switzerland) is one of the central figures in postwar abstract painting, and a pivotal reference for generations of Swiss, European, and American painters. The acute historical awareness of Mosset’s practice is characterized by his continual questioning of the medium of painting itself and the means by which it resists the repeated assaults of “spectacle” and reification.
Published on the occasion of the artist’s retrospective at MAMCO Geneva, this publication offers an extensive overview of his six-decade transatlantic painting practice: from his first experiments in Paris in the 1960s within the BMPT collective and his famous “Circle Paintings” to his shaped canvases from the 1980s and his recent monumental works, exploring “appropriation,” “radical painting,” and his interest in experimental cinema along the way. Designed by Gavillet & Cie, the book proposes a journey through the rooms of the exhibition and the successive steps of Mosset’s art, thanks to generous documentation and the life-size reproduction of the paintings’ details. The book’s cover is silkscreened and reproduces a life-size detail of one of Mosset’s most iconic paintings.
Introduced and edited by MAMCO director Lionel Bovier, the book features three essays focusing on specific aspects of Mosset’s practice: MAMCO’s curator Paul Bernard on the artist’s filmmaking activities and how cinema constituted a visual model for Mosset; art historian Arnauld Pierre on his “Striped Paintings”; art critic Vincent Pécoil on his idiosyncratic vision of painting; and two essays by fellow painter Marcia Hafif—they met in 1978 in New York—which decipher why Mosset’s painting acted as a form of resistance to the figurative and decorative wave that swept the art scene in the late 1970s.
Published with MAMCO Geneva on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition Olivier Mosset, February 25–December 12, 2020.
1971, French
Softcover, 28.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kitsch / Paris
$160.00 - Out of stock
Rare 2nd volume of this wonderful two-part French avant-garde journal, published in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s. A visual manifesto against the prudishness of that time, KITSCH presented hundreds of illustrations of mostly erotic and fantastic/grotesque artwork by artists from all over the world, and spanning generations, including Aslan, Roy Lichtenstein, Virgil Finlay, Jim Osborne, Ronald Lipking, Greg Irons, George Grosz, Egon Schiele, Mel Ramos, alongside photo essays on subjects such as "Pop Art", "Human Concern" and Paris' "Pigalle" district, further featuring work by H.C.Westermann, Paul Thek, Edward Keinholz, William Tunberg, Christian Schad, William Weegee, James Rosenquist, Frank Gallo, and many more.
Very good copy!
2022, English
Printed envelope w. 10 cards, 22.5 x 15 cm
Published by
Galerie Buchholz / Köln
$38.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published to accompany Jutta Koether’s exhibition How goes it? at Galerie Buchholz, Köln in September 2021. This orange envelope contains 5 colour plate reproductions of the paintings featured in the exhibition, alongside 5 black and white text cards with a written correspondence between Sabeth Buchmann and the artist.
2012, English / German
Softcover (silkscreened), 48 pages, 21.3 x 22.5 cm
Ed. of 800,
Published by
Galerie Buchholz / Köln
$33.00 - In stock -
Wonderful publication documenting an exhibition that took place in 2010 in the window of Galerie Buchholz's antiquarian bookstore in Cologne, Germany. Michael Krebber presented here, in collaboration with Sebastian Höckelmann, works by artists Antonius Höckelmann and Jack Smith.
Produced in an edition of 800.
Antonius Höckelmann (1937 – 2000) was a German postwar artist. Höckelmann trained as a wood sculptor from 1951 to 1957 in his native city of Oelde, and studied from 1957 to 1961 at the College of Fine Arts in Berlin with Karl Hartung. In 1977 he participated in the documenta 6, and in 1982 at documenta 7 in Kassel. Many of his works combine sculpture and painting. Wooden sculptures and sculptures made of other materials (bronze, silver foil, straw) were often completely painted.
Jack Smith (1932 – 1989) was an American filmmaker, artist, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema. He is generally acclaimed as a founding father of American performance art, and has been critically recognized as a master photographer, though his photographic works are rare and remain largely unknown. Apart from appearing in his own work, including the legendary Flaming Creatures (1963), Smith played the lead in Andy Warhol's unfinished film Batman Dracula, Ken Jacobs's Blonde Cobra, and appeared in several theater productions by Robert Wilson.
2015, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 27 x 31 cm
Published by
Marot / Brussels
$90.00 - Out of stock
From the start, the Belgian Surrealists—among them René Magritte, Paul Delvaux, Paul Nougé, E.L.T. Mesens and Marcel Mariën—distinguished themselves from their Parisian counterparts with their dry wit, brilliant conceptualism and knack for combining the fantastical and the everyday (e.g., Magritte's bowler-hatted men, or Marcel Mariën's iconic single-lensed spectacle), and their disinclination to issue Breton-style manifestos.
This revelatory volume celebrates the Surrealist movement in Belgium through a group of more than 250 paintings, drawings, photographs, prints and books by artists such as Rachel Baes, Paul Delvaux, Camille Goemans, Jane Graverol, Tom Gutt, Jacques Lacomblez, René Magritte, Marcel Mariën, Jacques Matton, Edouard (E.L.T.) Mesens, Paul Nougé, Gilbert Senecaut, Louis Scutenaire, Max Servais, Armand Simon, André Stas Raoul Ubac, Louis Van de Spiegele, Rogier Van de Wouwer and Robert Willems.
2001, German
Softcover, 50 pages, 23 x 17 cm
Published by
Galerie Buchholz / Köln
$48.00 - In stock -
This early artist's publication by the artist Kai Althoff features drawings, photographs and installation views of his exhibition 'Aus Dir' at Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne. The book, entirely designed by the artist, contains pieces of artist-writings in German which parallels in his work of the two installations. Heavily illustrated throughout with Althoff's paintings, drawings and collected photographs.
Kai Althoff (born 1966 in Cologne) is a German visual artist and musician. Borrowing from moments of history, religious iconography, and counter-cultural movements, Althoff creates imaginary environments in which paintings, sculpture, drawing, video, and found objects commingle. Tapping a multitude of sources, from Germanic folk traditions to recent popular culture, from medieval and gothic religious imagery to early modern expressionism, Althoff’s characters inhabit imaginary worlds that serve as allegories for human experience and emotion. His image bank and painterly style also draw on the past, especially early-20th-century German Expressionism, reconfigured by introducing collaged technique.
2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 400 pages, 23 x 15.3 cm
Published by
Bard Graduate Center Gallery / New York
$95.00 - Out of stock
For as long as people have made things and kept things, they have cared for them and repaired them. The field of conservation developed in Europe and the United States and then spread around the world. Today’s conservator uses a variety of tools and categories developed over the last 150 years to do this work. But in the next decades, new kinds of materials and a new scale of change will pose unprecedented challenges. Thinking through the lens of “active matter,” as understood by philosophers, historians, materials scientists, conservators, and those who work on Indigenous artifacts, this project raises questions and establishes new lines of inquiry for the future rethinking of conservation and the human sciences of the object.
Conserving Active Matter draws together the main lines and interim conclusions of a five-year research project embedded in a ten-year effort to reimagine the relationship between conservation knowledge and the humanistic study of the material world—Cultures of Conservation. The effort to conserve things is part of the human struggle with the pervasive activity of matter.
Peter N. Miller is dean and professor at Bard Graduate Center.
Soon Kai Poh is a conservator and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postgraduate Fellow at Bard Graduate Center.
2011, English / German
Softcover, 300 pages, 22 x 29.5 cm
Published by
Distanz / Berlin
$99.00 - In stock -
The major monograph on German painter Sergej Jensen, published in 2011. Very highly recommended.
Since the mid-1990s, Sergej Jensen (born in Copenhagen in 1971) has been offering one of the most remarkable responses to the question of what painting can still be today. Painting in the classical sense plays only a minor role: in lieu of canvas, Jensen uses jute, coarse cotton, and jeans. He incorporates spots on fabrics which turn the “expressive gesture” of his paintings into a sign of wear from real life. Jensen sews fabrics together leaving the seams visible to evoke the fleeting impression of a drawing and he colors others with gouache, acrylics, and markers, but Jensen more often applies materials foreign to painting, such as patches, paper money, spices, beads, and glitter. Hanging his fabrics from windows, Jensen lets the sun and rain contribute a patina and treats them with chlorine and paints mixed with bleach to reduce their brilliance.
Jensen’s paintings are always at the edge of the abyss, but they do not fall in. Their brokenness is compensated by delicate sensual gestures—their decay and dirt, by an almost decorative beauty. Jensen operates within the narrow range between authenticity and fake, between punk and pose.
With texts by Peter Eleey, Helmut Draxler, Jacob Fabricius, Rainald Goetz, Dirk von Lowtzow, Melanie Ohnemus, Susanne Pfeffer, and Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson.
Design by Manuel Raeder.
2022, English
Softcover, 70 pages, 19 x 13 cm
Published by
Self-Published / Sydney
$25.00 - In stock -
Artist's book collecting the abstract print and sculptural works of Australian artist Connor Bugelli (b. 1994) produced between 2020—2022, between Melbourne and Sydney. Profusely illustrated with gallery and studio documentation in stark b/w monochrome, accompanied by a text, "a world behind a curtain / a thought behind a head", by Mahmood Fazal.
In memory of Liam Osborne
2022, English
Softcover box folio + posters
Published by
Provence / Nice
$48.00 - Out of stock
This limited edition of PROVENCE comes in the form of box folio filled with posters by contributing artists, galleries, historians, fashion designers, critics, enterprises, etc. including: Marc Asekhame, Brigade, Merlin Carpenter, CFGNY, Contemporary Art Writing Daily, Rhea Dahl, Damien & The Love Guru, DAY6, Simon Denny, galeriepcp — Perks and Mini, Gessnerallee, Edgars Gluhovs, Samuel Haitz & Leda Bourgogne & Anne Fellner, Gloria Hasnay & Moritz NebenfuÌuehr, Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff, Valeria Herklotz, Nina Hollensteiner & Albrecht Pischel, Karma International, Vera Kaspar, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Marie Karlberg, Milena Langer, Lulli 2020 — Jim C. Nedd — Nina Hollensteiner, Midway Contemporary Art, Olaf Nicolai, D’Ette Nogle, O-Town House, Walter Pfeiffer, Plymouth Rock, Sam Pulitzer, Ottolinger — Julien Ceccaldi, Marine Serre, Chen Shen featuring Gao Han, Wei Longwen & XYZ Lab, Kathrin Sonntag, suns.works, Swiss Art Awards, Una Szeemann, Galerie Tschudi, Hamish Fulton, Ilaria Vinci, Edition VFO, Nina Zimmer — Meret Oppenheim.
1983, French
Softcover (w. plastic dust-jacket), 126 pages, 24 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Temps Futurs / France
$200.00 - In stock -
First 1983 edition of the one-of-a-kind L’Art Medical, edited by French author, artist and core member of the "Bazooka" art collective and early Metal Hurlant magazine, Romain Slocombe. Published by Temps Futurs in France in 1983, this incredible book celebrates the phenomenon of "medical art", lavishly illustrated throughout with the incredible work of Slocombe, who brought us the provocative cult classic photobook, City of Broken Dolls. Anyone familiar with that book would know what to expect here. Photographs, paintings and illustrations, alongside Slocombe's study, with artworks throughout by fellow "Bazooka" art collective members, Kiki Picasso, Bernard Vidal, Natsuko, Yoshi Ichimura, Fred Chalmer, Loulou Picasso, plus Didier Eberoni, Kim Tchoun Kwang, Jena-Baptiste Mondino, Natsuko, Yoichi Nagata, Shigenari Onishi, and more. Full of paintings and photography of women in casts and slings, in hospitals and at accident scenes, medical erotica, body manipulation/mutilation, plus many visual historical references to violent fantasy, medical fetishism and bondage in film, illustration, erotic magazines, and other forms of popular culture from Japan and Europe. Nothing like it, and a long out-of-print collector's item.
Very Good copy still in original publisher's plastic dust jacket. Light wear and age.
1992, English
Hardcover, 144 pages, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Arkady / Warsaw
$600.00 - Out of stock
Signed copy of the long out-of-print and collectible hardcover monograph on Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński, published in 1992 by Arkady, Warsaw. Profusely illustrated throughout with colour reproductions of Beksiński's surreal dystopian paintings spanning his entire career, alongside an introductory text in Polish by Tadeusz Nyczek.
Already a scarce title on Beksiński, this copy is extra special with signature by the master himself in pen on first blank page after his ("Beksinski"). Rarely does a signed book appear by this artist.
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
According to Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro "In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust."
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" H.R. Giger
Very Good copy in Very Good dust jacket.
1997, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 31 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Taschen / Cologne
$150.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover English-language edition of this exceptionally in-depth and comprehensive book by H.R. Giger, published by Taschen in 1997.
“I paint what frightens me,” says H.R. Giger, who compiled and designed this comprehensive retrospective himself, documenting and describing his work from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. Lavishly illustrated with reproductions of his biomechanical visions, accompanied by his own detailed commentaries offering privileged insight into a uniquely imaginative mind. The book cover Giger's life and working methods, followed by page after page of Giger's artworks and various lesser-seen creations from the deepest recesses of the mind and of the Giger personal archives — from his early oil experiments to the Giger Bar in Tokyo to his killer condoms to his nightmare garden train! Includes an extensive illustrated chronology. An uncommon book in the original, long out-of-print foiled hardcover issue with English text (not a later reprint). Highly recommended resource for any Giger fan.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1974, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 126 pages, 23.6 x 31.4 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Grove Press Inc. / New York
$60.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this classic volume on the work of one of the great elusive erotic-fantasy artists from Europe, Raymond Bertrand. Published in New York in 1974, this edition is one of the few publications on Bertrand outside France or Germany. A wonderful collection wrapped in hardcover with an introduction by Emmanuelle Arsan.
"This beautiful volume presents a comprehensive selection of the drawings and paintings of a contemporary French artist whose sensuous fantasy and surrealistic obsession have paid homage to the female body in a series of works which has no equal in modern art. 'The body,' says Emmanuelle Arsan in her introduction, 'is beautiful only if it is invented.' In this collection of drawings and paintings, Raymond Bertrand invents a female unlike any ever beheld by human eyes." (from dust jacket)
Along with Leonor Fini, Raymond Bertrand became acknowledged as one of the major new artists dealing with the modern sexuality in a highly personal fashion in the late 1960s-early 1970s, a period that seemed to encapsulate the entire published work of this little-known artist. Bertrand's work became known through his incredible illustrations for French SF journals Fiction, Galaxie, illustrations for the erotic Emmanuelle novels, and Eric Losfeld published collections. Bertrand is a somewhat elusive and shadowy figure about whom it is hard to find biographical information, and it is sadly unknown whether he continued his work after this period.
1996, English
Softcover (staple-bound),
Ed. of 400,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
ACCA / Melbourne
$65.00 - Out of stock
Artist's publication published on the occasion Australian conceptual artist Peter Tyndall's solo exhibition, Death and the Viewer, 20 Sep—3 Nov, 1996, at ACCA, Dallas Brooks Drive. Curated by Jenepher Duncan. "Peter Tyndall has explored the nature of death in relation to art and social histories since 1971. This exhibition continued on from his 1987 survey at ACCA." Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w alongside texts by Tyndall. Edition of 400 copies.
Peter Tyndall (b. Melbourne, 1951, lives and works in Hepburn Springs).
Since the 1970s, Peter Tyndall’s paintings, drawings and prints engage with recursive relationships between art, language and meaning. He is known for his use of graphic lines, text and comic-style illustration. Tyndall’s art reflects and disrupts historical perspectives on art. His ongoing project (since 2008) is a blog entitled bLOGOS/HA HA, which offers commentary on unfolding contemporary history.
First edition, As New copies.
1987, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 21.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Greenhouse / Victoria
$30.00 - Out of stock
This 1987 monograph provides a wonderful study of the brilliant Australian conceptual artist Peter Tyndall (b. 1951). It provides a comprehensive survey of Tyndall’s work from 1952 – 1987. Starting with his parody work, Tyndall looks at the act of laugher and importance of jokes, as described by Pamela Hansford: “The truth is that a good joke, one sufficiently complex to sustain itself against the inevitable wear and tear of repetition, will still be funny at the end of the day”. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with texts by Pamela Hansford and appendices (Hand Space manifesto, Slave Guitars, etc.). Sponsored by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
"Ultimately, a painting continues to hang upon a wall by the good grace of those who do not cut its strings." — Peter Tyndall
Peter Tyndall (b. Melbourne, 1951, lives and works in Hepburn Springs).
Since the 1970s, Peter Tyndall’s paintings, drawings and prints engage with recursive relationships between art, language and meaning. He is known for his use of graphic lines, text and comic-style illustration. Tyndall’s art reflects and disrupts historical perspectives on art. His ongoing project (since 2008) is a blog entitled bLOGOS/HA HA, which offers commentary on unfolding contemporary history.
First edition, As New copies.
1992, English / German
Softcover, 82 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Daadgalerie / Berlin
$30.00 - Out of stock
Excellent catalogue published on the occasion of Australian conceptual artist Peter Tyndall's solo exhibition Double Crossed Again: Death To All Mirrors!, Daadgalerie, Berlin, May 16—June 14, 1992. Designed by Tyndall, the catalogue forms a survey of the artist's work to date alongside references, quotations, articles, and texts from the artist. Richly illustrated throughout with colour and b/w illustrations, works and exhibition documentation, edited by Inge Lindmann and Christine Stokes.
Peter Tyndall (b. Melbourne, 1951, lives and works in Hepburn Springs).
Since the 1970s, Peter Tyndall’s paintings, drawings and prints engage with recursive relationships between art, language and meaning. He is known for his use of graphic lines, text and comic-style illustration. Tyndall’s art reflects and disrupts historical perspectives on art. His ongoing project (since 2008) is a blog entitled bLOGOS/HA HA, which offers commentary on unfolding contemporary history.
First edition, As New copies.
2011, English
Hardcover (cloth bound), 152 pages, 28.5 x 23 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$65.00 $15.00 - In stock -
Florian Pumhösl’s latest production focuses on abstract films and paintings and their interaction with the surrounding space.
6 7 8 is made up of three new pieces: In his picture cycle Diminution, Pumhösl is concerned with the possibilities of portraits, the representation of individual characteristics and profiles.
The film installation Expressive Rhythm refers to Alexander Rodchenko’s painting of the same name from 1942/43.
Dance notations are the theme of the second film project Tract, an abstract animation.
2021, English
Hardcover, 144 pages, 17.6 x 23.1 cm
Published by
Spector Books / Leipzig
$52.00 - Out of stock
In the early 1990s, Martin Kippenberger developed the idea of a global underground network: METRO-Net. Although it is one of the artist’s most fascinating projects, his premature death in 1997 meant that it could only be implemented in rudimentary form. In 1993, a metro entrance was built on the Greek island of Syros, followed by two more: one in 1995 in Dawson City in Canada and the other in 1997 on the new Leipzig exhibition grounds. This created a means of travelling in the boundless space of the imagination. Its usability depends on the imagination: without the willingness to visualise tunnel tubes and moving underground trains, this project remains a 'nonsensical building plan'. But the moment we accept the artwork as a mode of transport for 'mind travellers', then its full power can unfold. Kippenberger’s METRO-Net was intended to counter life’s predictable, rationally oriented parameters with a romantic sense of the world.
1984, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 32 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Harry N. Abrams / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1984, this critical study of the life and work of the Polish-French artist Balthus serves as the catalogue of a major exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris. Heavily illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with Balthus' paintings, sketches and artistic references, alongside extensive texts by curator The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Balthus scholar, Sabine Rewald.
Balthus (1908—2001), was a Polish-French modern artist born in Paris to Polish expatriate parents. His given name was Balthasar Klossowski - his sobriquet "Balthus" was based on his childhood nickname, alternately spelled Baltus, Baltusz, Balthusz or Balthus. His father, Erich Klossowski, was an art historian who wrote a noted monograph on Daumier. His older brother was the philosopher and artist Pierre Klossowski. An unusual figure in the history of twentieth century painting, Balthus both traveled among and drew upon the work of other major artists of his time, while at the same time following a unique individual trajectory. He was mentored by, friends of, and/or even collaborated with seminal creative figures from different eras, including Antonin Artaud, André Breton, and Rainer Maria Rilke, while cultivating his own highly refined style of dreamlike, classically-informed painting. The scenes he usually depicted were very ordinary bourgeois interiors or outdoor settings, which nonetheless managed to reveal the heightened inner states of his subjects as well as the states of mind of those who might be viewing them.
"I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always with a slight touch of mystery in my paintings." - Balthus
Very Good copy with dedication to previous owner on title page.
2019, Japanese
Hardcover (cloth), 312 pages, 195 x 130 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Asahi Shimbun / Japan
$120.00 - Out of stock
Stunning new hardcover catalogue published on the occasion of the largest traveling Moomin exhibition ever staged, Moomin: The Art and The Story, Japan, 2019. Beautifully designed by the exhibition designer Yuria Oshima, this comprehensive book delves into the world of Tove Marika Jansson's Moomins in such detail that only a Japanese book could. Made in collaboration with the Moomin Museum in Tampere, who loaned 500 works for the exhibition, almost every exhibited item is captured here in in print across various paper stocks, including a miniature inlayed facsimile of the marvellous Trollvinter, first published in 1957. There is so much material captured in this book that has not been previously published, including countless original sketches and illustrations, paintings, first-edition Moomin books, all the original Moomin dolls, products and animations, commercial Moomin work, personal photographs of Jansson and much more, all thoroughly indexed. 2019 also marked the 100th Anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and Finland, Tove Jansson’s native country. Jansson visited Japan twice, in 1971 and 1990, each time making social and professional connections, sketches, and photographs. She also passionately collected the prints of 19th Century woodcut masters like Hiroshige, Hokusai and many more, which are captured here alongside her own artwork, drawing out the obvious influence, and admiration Jansson had for Japanese art. Also includes her Japanese hotel drawings, correspondences and photographs of her visits. An invaluable and inspiring resource for any Moomin fan.
Tove Marika Jansson (1914 – 2001) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish author, novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. Brought up by artistic parents, Jansson studied art from 1930 to 1938 in Stockholm, Helsinki and Paris. Her first solo art exhibition was in 1943. She continued to work as an artist and a writer for the rest of her life, and it was with the creation of her much-loved Moomin characters that she become known around the world. Jansson wrote the Moomin books for children, starting in 1945 with The Moomins and the Great Flood. Her books became international classics translated to 35 languages. For her work as a children's writer she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966.
As New.
2014, Japanese
Hardcover, 253 pages, 25 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Asahi Shimbun / Japan
$120.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful hardcover catalogue of the extraordinary Japanese 2014-2015 travelling Tove Jansson Exhibition. This absolutely packed, comprehensive and profusely illustrated book covers Jansson's entire career, from her earliest childhood drawings, through her prolific painting career, political cartoons, commercial illustration, stage costume designs, and, of course, much of it's contents beautifully reproducing Jansson's sketches and illustrations for her famous Moomintroll books, spanning 1940s-1970s. This book gives a wonderful insight into the creative process of each page of Jansson's books, presenting her pencil sketch-ups alongside the final inked pages. Alongside the almost 400 illustrations in colour and b/w, it also includes many photographic portraits of Jansson, especially her island life and studio. It even reproduces her painting palettes! Texts in Japanese with a detailed index of all artworks. A book that will not disappoint any Moomin fan.
Tove Marika Jansson (1914 – 2001) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish author, novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. Brought up by artistic parents, Jansson studied art from 1930 to 1938 in Stockholm, Helsinki and Paris. Her first solo art exhibition was in 1943. She continued to work as an artist and a writer for the rest of her life, and it was with the creation of her much-loved Moomin characters that she become known around the world. Jansson wrote the Moomin books for children, starting in 1945 with The Moomins and the Great Flood. Her books became international classics translated to 35 languages. For her work as a children's writer she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966.
As New copy.
2022, English / French
Softcover, 316 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$55.00 - In stock -
Bi-lingual English/French publication of an in-depth essay by art historian Valérie Da Costa on the Italian period (1962-1976) of the American artist, Paul Thek (1933-1988), one of the most distinctive American artists of the latter half of the twentieth century, always refusing the artistic mainstream. Although never studied before now, Thek's life in Italy profoundly influenced the artist's imagination and his work.
From 1962 to 1976, he traveled to Italy, for multiple extended stays. In Rome, he discovered ancient sculpture, the achievements of the Renaissance, the Baroque churches, but above all the contemporary artistic effervescence of the capital. In Sicily, with his friend the photographer Peter Hujar, he was confronted with the question of death through reliquaries, religious processions or the extraordinary Capuchin catacombs. On the island of Ponza, he immersed himself in an ecstatic Mediterranean lifestyle, in osmosis with nature and the sea in particular. Many deeply felt experiences in Italy helped shape his artistic practice, from the famous Technological Reliquaries, to innovative installations and his return to painting and drawing.
Heavily illustrated throughout with Thek's many artworks, studies and cultural references in colour and b/w, this essay sets out to analyze, for the first time, the deep influence of this Italian life on the imaginary and work of Paul Thek.
Valérie Da Costa is an art historian, art critic and curator. She holds the position of associate professor in contemporary art history (twentieth-twenty-first centuries) at the University of Strasbourg. Her research focuses on Italian art of the second half of the twentieth century, on which she has published numerous articles and books, including Écrits de Lucio Fontana (Les presses du réel, 2013).
Translated from the French by Garry White.