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.
1989, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Da Capo Press / New York
$40.00 - Out of stock
In the twenties, Surrealists proclaimed that words had stopped playing around and had begun to make love. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the writings of Marcel Duchamp, who fashioned some of the more joyous and ingenious couplings and uncouplings in modern art. This collection beings together two essential interviews and two statements about his art that underscore the serious side of Duchamp. But most of the book is made up of his experimental writings, which he called "Texticles," the long and extraordinary notes he wrote for The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Eben (also known as The Large Glass ), and the outrageous puns and alter-ego he constructed for his female self, Rrose Selavy ("Eros, c'est la vie" or arouser la vie", drink it up" celebrate life"). Wacky, perverse, deliberately frustrating, these entertaining notes are basic for understanding one of the twentieth century's most provocative artists, a figure whose influence on the contemporary scene has never been stronger.
1985, English
Softcover (w. dust-jacket), 200 pages, 21 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$190.00 - Out of stock
The exquisite "Café du Reve" book by the British-based artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz (b. post-war Paris). This is a copy of the first English printing from 1985.
Scarce these days, this beautiful artists book's content is entirely composed, designed and collated from cover to cover by Chaimowicz in the style of a somewhat autobiographical scrap-book. Each page is designed by hand and illustrated with Chaimowicz's decorative motifs and patterns that carry upon them his hotel letterhead correspondence, writings and poetry, paired with photographs of objects, places and people - snapshots taken by Chaimowicz or appropriated from magazines.
"Café du Reve" remains a perfect early example of Chaimowicz's encompassing artistic practice that is immersed in the spatial and emotional experience of environments and décor, literature, the domestic sphere, interior design, ceramics, applied art, wallpaper and textiles.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present. His works are in the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and Victoria and Albert Museum collections.
Highly recommended.
Very Good in VG dust jacket.
2016, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 14 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Nightboat Books / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
This evocative book by leading Arab-American writer and artist Etel Adnan places night at its center to unearth memories held in the body, the spirit and the landscape. This striking book of writing continues Adnan's meditative observation and inquiry into the experiences of her remarkable life.
2020, English
Softcover, 680 pages, 19 x 13.2 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$65.00 - Out of stock
Bringing together more than 350 texts written between 1953 and 2016, this comprehensive volume establishes artist and activist Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) as a towering figure of the 20th century, a long-overdue recognition of the artist’s influential vision.
Renowned for his use of unstable materials and chemical reactions to create artworks that embody processes of change, destruction, and renewal, Metzger was also a prolific writer, theoretician, and satirist.
His interest in technology and science lead him to create such concepts as auto-destructive and auto-creative art—terms he coined with his manifestos on ‘Auto-destructive Art’ in 1959 and ‘Auto-creative Art’ in 1961. He put these ideas into action with artworks made to decay, disintegrate, or change following natural processes.
Edited by Gustav’s long-time friend and curator Mathieu Copeland, this anthology of writings makes Metzger’s key thinking from the 1950s onward available to a wide audience.
It includes seminal writings such as his manifestos of auto-destructive and auto-creative art (both 1961), ‘On Random Activity in Material/Transforming Works of Art’ (1964), ‘The Possibility of Auto-Destructive Architecture’ (1966), his inspiring interview with R. Buckminster Fuller from 1970, ‘The Artist in the Face of Social Collapse’ (1998), and his legacy manifesto entitled ‘Remember Nature’ from 2013, as well as art criticism, political satires, and lecture transcriptions.
His writing allows a challenging reading of the contemporary (art) period as analysed by one of its most discerning figures—a pioneering artist and thinker involved in environmental and societal issues very early on.
2016, English
Hardcover, 224 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Nero / Rome
$88.00 - In stock -
The catalogue of Metzger's first extensive overview: divided into sections—each of which is accompanied by a critical text—corresponding to those presented in the exhibition, the publication provides systematic insight into an artistic oeuvre considered as one of the most important in the 20th century (with texts by Mathieu Copeland, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono, Hermann Nitsch…).
If the retrospective, which started at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Torun before travelling to Oslo, was presented in distinctively different formats—the former providing audiences with a wide overview of Metzger's career and works, including attention to his early years of political activism and engagement and concomitant radicalization, and the latter focusing upon deeper researched aspects of the artist's production,—the exhibition catalogue provides readers with a rich array of theoretical contributions, including a conversation between Dobrila Denegri and Yoko Ono, Ivor Davies, Hermann Nitsch and Jon Hendricks, as well as Metzger's own writings.
The contributors Pontus Kyander, Andrew Wilson, Mathieu Copeland, Dobrila Denegri, Leanne Dmyterko, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Manuel Olveira take up different aspects of Metzger's work, from the artist's early political activism, to his experimentation with painting to his drafting of the manifestoes for Auto-Destructive Art, providing us with an invaluable and much awaited document for consultation in contemporary art.
Published following the eponymous exhibition at Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, Poland, from November 8, 2015, to January 17, 2016, and the joint exhibition “Gustav Metzger in Oslo – Extremes Touch and Liquid Crystal Environment” at Kunsthall Oslo and Stiftelsen Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, from November 14, 2015 to January 31st, 2016.
The artistic oeuvre of Gustav Metzger (1926-2017), in which the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike hold a central role, is considered as one of the most important in the 20th century.
2021, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 112 pages, 22.23 x 14.61 cm
Published by
Hayward Gallery Publishing / London
$48.00 - Out of stock
The abiding presence of spiritualism in art, from af Klint to Susan Hiller.
Bringing together more than 30 international artists from the late 19th century to the present day, Not without My Ghosts surveys work inspired by spiritualism and its rich cultural history.
With original essays by art historian Susan L. Aberth and curators Simon Grant and Lars Bang Larsen, this publication explores the anti-authoritarian political agendas of 19th-century spiritualism and the movement’s close association to the history of feminism, as well as its continued influence on contemporary practitioners. Spanning diverse artistic approaches, Not without My Ghosts offers a unique insight into the ties that bind spirit and mediumistic art across the centuries.
Artists: William Blake, Cameron, Ann Churchill, Ithell Colquhoun, Louise Despont, Casimiro Domingo, Madame Fondrillon, Chiara Fumai, Madge Gill, Susan Hiller, Barbara Honywood, Georgiana Houghton, Anna Mary Howitt, Victor Hugo, Augustin Lesage, Pia Lindman, Ann Lislegaard, André Masson, Grace Pailthorpe, František Jaroslav Pecka, Olivia Plender, Sigmar Polke, Lea Porsager, Austin Osman Spare, Yves Tanguy, Suzanne Treister with The Museum of Blackhole Spacetime Collective
2021, English
Softcover, 204 pages, 23 x 32 cm
Published by
Victorian Spiritualist’s Union (VSU) / Melbourne
$100.00 - In stock -
A Gift from Spirit is the long-awaited first-ever monograph committed to the incredible work of British artist and spiritualist medium Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884). Published by the Victorian Spiritualist’s Union (VSU), this handsomely designed, lavishly illustrated book catalogues all thirty-five Georgiana Houghton watercolour and gouache paintings held at the Victorian Spiritualist’s Union (VSU), the largest collection of Houghton's works in the world. Beautiful reproductions of each work are accompanied by the spirit-assisted work annotations, hand-written by Houghton in copperplate script and affixed to the verso of each painting, and here for the first time deciphered, transcribed and commented on. Accompanying texts on the history of the VSU and Houghton’s paintings in Australia by past VSU president Alan Bennett and current VSU president Lorraine Lee Tet, plus extensive texts by editor Jeff Stewart, reproductions of Georgiana Houghton's texts from her first exhibition in 1871, an illustrated essay on understanding and conserving the artistic work of Georgiana Houghton's now famous abstract spiritualist paintings, list of works and biography.
Highly recommended!
British artist, Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884), developed skills as a medium after attending her first séance in 1859 and achieved her first mediumistic drawings in 1861. For the next decade, under the guidance of a spirit called Lenny followed by master painters and 70 Archangels, she produced over 155 extraordinary watercolour spirit drawings. Most of these have been lost, hopefully awaiting rediscovery. Of the 46 that have survived the majority are in the collections of spiritualist societies. The College of Psychic Studies, formerly known as the London Spiritualist Alliance, have 7 and around 35 have been preserved by the Victorian Spiritualist Union in Melbourne.
Houghton's paintings were produced by an automatic process, occurring under the direction of spirits. This technique would be later revisited by such artists as Austin Osman Spare in 1913, the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint and, from about 1919, by the surrealists. Houghton's earliest known works depicted extremely stylized flowers and fruits. Following a period of formal experimentation, Houghton developed a completely abstract or non-objective style, at least 40 years before Kandinsky, Malevich, Kupka and Mondrian – all of whom were in some measure inspired by spiritual themes. She exhibited a collection of abstract watercolour drawings to the public at an exhibition at the New British Gallery in Bond Street, London in 1871.
2021, English
Hardcover, 152 pages, 23 x 27 cm
Published by
Royal Academy of The Arts / London
$70.00 - In stock -
Born in 1885 to a working-class family in Connecticut, Milton Avery left school at 16 to work in a factory. Intending to study lettering but soon transferring to painting, he attended evening school for fifteen years before moving to New York in the 1920s to pursue a career as a painter.
Although he never identified with a particular movement, Avery was a sociable member of the New York art scene. He became a figure of considerable influence for a younger generation of American artists, including Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman. His talent was praised by Rothko, who said of his work 'the poetry penetrated every pore of the canvas to the last touch of the brush'.
Edith Devaney introduces Avery and his work, while Erin Monroe looks at Avery's early years in Hartford, and Marla Price examines Matisse's influence upon his art. A conversation with the artist's daughter March Avery Cavanaugh and an illustrated chronology by Isabella Boorman complete the book.
2021, English
Hardcover, 184 pages, 27 x 23 cm
Published by
MoMA / New York
$70.00 - Out of stock
How the celebrated Surrealist traversed the many movements of 20th-century art with a thrilling disregard for categories and constraints.
Over the course of her protean career, Meret Oppenheim produced witty, unconventional bodies of work that defy neat categorizations of medium, style and subject matter. “Nobody will give you freedom,” she stated in 1975, “you have to take it.” Her freewheeling, subversively humorous approach modeled a dynamic artistic practice in constant flux, yet held together by the singularity and force of her creative vision.
Published in conjunction with the first ever major transatlantic Meret Oppenheim retrospective, and the first in the United States in over 25 years, this publication surveys work from the radically open Swiss artist’s precocious debut in 1930s Paris, the period during which her notorious fur-lined Object in MoMA’s collection was made, through her post–World War II artistic development, which included engagements with international Pop, Nouveau Réalisme and Conceptual art, and up to her death in 1985. Essays by curators from the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Menil Collection and the Museum of Modern Art critically examine the artist’s wide-ranging, wildly imaginative body of work, and her active role in shaping the narrative of her life and art, providing the context for her creative production pre– and post–World War II.
About the Authors:
Nina Zimmer is the Director of the Kunstmuseum Bern. Natalie Dupêcher is Assistant Curator of Modern Art at The Menil Collection, TX. Anne Umland is The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Lee Colón is a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA.
Meret Oppenheim was born in 1913 and lived in Germany and Switzerland during her childhood. At the age of 18, she moved to Paris to study art, and there exhibited alongside members of the Surrealist group. Oppenheim returned to Switzerland in 1937, where she trained as a conservator at the Basel School of Design. Already a storied member of the pre–World War II avant-garde, in the last two prolific decades of her life she was embraced by a younger generation of artists for her conceptual approach to art and progressive views on gender. Oppenheim died in 1985.
1989, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Art & Text / Prahran
$45.00 - Out of stock
ART & TEXT 32
AUTUMN 1989
Edited by Paul Foss
CONTENTS:
David Wills — Deposition: Introduction To "Right Of Inspection" [Droit De Regards]
Marie-Francoise Plissart and Jacques Derrida — Right Of Inspection
David Bennett — Art And Rubbish: Contemporary British Colour Photography
Paul Gilroy — Cruciality And The Frog's Perspective: An Agenda Of Difficulties For The Black Arts Movement In Britain
Art &c.
Allen S. Weiss — Golem In Gotham
Mark S. Roberts — Lyotard And Art "After Auschwitz"
Therese Lichtenstein — Boltanski's "Lessons Of Darkness"
Therese Lichtenstein — Aborigines, Representation, Necrophilia John Von Sturmer
Art & Text, one of the landmark contemporary art magazines of the 1980s and 1990s. Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1981 by Paul Taylor (1957–92), who soon moved to New York City to make his mark as an art critic, the magazine went on to become one of a handful of international art magazines that succeeded in capturing the turmoil and passing brilliance of that period of postmodernism.
1987, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Art & Text / Prahran
$45.00 - Out of stock
ART & TEXT 25
JUNE / AUGUST 1987
Edited by Paul Foss
CONTENTS:
Terry Smith — Black Swan in the City ... Detroit, first week of August, 1986
Christina Thompson — A Piece of Savage Mischief
Meaghan Morris — Tooth and Claw: Tales of Survival, and Crocodile Dundee
Merryn Gates — Transparency and Reinvention 70 in Rosslynd Piggott.
Eric Michaels — My Essay on Postmodernism
George Alexander — Get Back, Martin Sharp
Art & Text, one of the landmark contemporary art magazines of the 1980s and 1990s. Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1981 by Paul Taylor (1957–92), who soon moved to New York City to make his mark as an art critic, the magazine went on to become one of a handful of international art magazines that succeeded in capturing the turmoil and passing brilliance of that period of postmodernism.
1996, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Artspace / Sydney
$60.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this now very scarce volume of collected texts from Australian art critic and professor Rex Butler that resulted from five lectures by the author at Artspace Sydney in 1995: 'The 80s in Retrospect', 'Art & Text in the '90s', 'The Critics', 'The Object, Again' and 'On Michael Fried's Literary 'Impressionism'.
Very Good copy with dedicated / inscription from Rex on inside front cover.
2021, English / Dutch
Softcover, 176 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Nai010 Publishers / Rotterdam
$60.00 - Out of stock
Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) is one of the most important avant-garde artists of the 20th century and continues to inspire artists, designers and architects. He is known for his iconic monochromatic paintings with vertical cuts. Lucio Fontana: The Conquest of Space highlights the ideas of Fontana's Concetto spaziale and shows how these spatial notions took shape not only in his slashed canvases, but also in his sculpture, jewellery, and installations. With photography by Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm, and texts by Colin Huizing and Paulo Campiglio, this publication is an indispensable overview of Fontana's innovative spatial views on art.
1999, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 400 pages, 28 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Charta / Milan
$150.00 - Out of stock
First edition of one of the largest and most comprehensive English-language books on Lucio Fontana, edited by esteemed Italian art critic and leading Fontana author Enrico Crispolti and published on the occasion of a major Lucio Fontana retrospective exhibition held in Milan, 23 April—30 June, 1999. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with a huge array of Fontana's works, accompanied by texts from Enrico Crispolti, Antonello Negri, Luciano Caramel, Paolo Biscottini, Tommaso Trini, and a conversation between art critics Guido Ballo and Tommaso Trini, together covering every dimension of this highly original and influential artist's career. Also includes an incredible photo album edited by Nini Ardemagni Laurini and Valeria Ernesti, documenting the artist's world, studio, exhibitions, social life through the lens of many photographers, including many by the great Ugo Mulas, whose photographs adorn the covers. Includes a biography, list of works, exhibitions and a selected bibliography. A rare and in-depth insight into the life and work of a rare artist.
Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) is one the most innovative artists of the 20th century. A major figure of postwar European art and a binational resident of Argentina and Italy, Fontana blurred numerous boundaries in his life and art, crossing borders both literally and figuratively. The founder of Spatialism, a movement focused on the spatial qualities of sculpture and paintings with the goal of breaking through the two-dimensionality of the traditional picture plane, he pushed the painterly into the sculptural and redefined the relationship between the arts. He was best known for his monochrome canvases known as Concetti Spaziale that he would cut or puncture, leaving distinctive gaping slash marks and holes that imbued the finished work with an almost violent energy. In his seminal writing, White Manifesto (1946), the artist traced ideas for creating a new medium that blended architecture, painting, and sculpture. “I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space, create a new dimension, tie in the cosmos, as it endlessly expands beyond the confining plane of the picture,” he said of his work. Fontana had widespread impact on the following generation of artists, who began to use installation media more aggressively to address the dynamics of space in gallery environments and Land Art. Fontana died on September 7, 1968 in Varese, Italy at the age of 69, just two years after being awarded the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1998, English / German
Hardcover, 222 pages, 24.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Kunsthaus Zürich / Zürich
Walther König / Köln
$580.00 - Out of stock
"Between 1977 and 1997 Martin Kippenberger created 178 posters, mostly for his exhibitions but also announcing concerts, parties, lectures, readings and birthdays." Very rare first 1998 hardcover edition catalogue raisonné of posters designed by, and for, German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997). Published in conjunction with the exhibition "Martin Kippenberger - Frühe, Bilder, Collagen, Objekte, die gesamten Plakate und späte Skulpturen" held at Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, September 12 - November 15, 1998, this profusely illustrated catalogue of his prolific poster work has become an invaluable resource addressing this important aspect of the German artist's practice. All posters reproduced in colour and b/w with texts by Bice Curiger and Martin Kippenberger and a full checklist of the posters. Also includes a lovely fold-out exhibition check-list/poster inserted illustrating many further works including many paintings and sculptures. Text in English and German.
Good copy with some edge wear to the cover and rubbing/tanning to spine. Interior Very Good.
2001, English
Hardcover (w. obi-strip), 80 pages, 21.3 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Little More / Tokyo
$180.00 $100.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition copy of KAWS One, the first artist monograph/artist's book of New York artist and designer Kaws, published in a limited edition in Japan in 2001 by Little More and long out of print. Illustrated from cover-to-cover in full-colour, KAWS One is the definitive look back at the development of the artist's style and early beginnings, paying particular attention to his late 1990s bus shelter, phone booth and billboard fashion advertising appropriations in New York City. Working as an animator by day, and graffiti artist by night, Kaws would use a skeleton key gifted to him by friend and fellow graffiti artist Barry McGee to remove posters adorned with the likes of Iggy Pop and Kate Moss, to re-work with his characters using animation call paints before returning them to the streets. This book introduces some of his earliest characters including Companion, Chum, Bendy, and The Kimpsons.
Very Good copy complete with Very Good, seldom present, obi-strip.
2021, English / German
Softcover, 224 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
This September issue of Texte zur Kunst examines envy as the operating system of an art world based largely on networking, competition, and interdependencies. Envy, as understood here, develops when individuals orient and compare themselves to others. One could characterize the art world as a prototype for a competition-driven, envy-generating society; achievement in art is difficult to measure and counts less than success. Issue #123 takes a closer look at the productive as well as destructive potentials of envy in the field of art and examines the extent to which the diagnosis of envy plays into the competitive nature of work and life today. The specific social effects of contemporary forms of online communication are discussed here, as well as the political economy of envy with particular regard to art.
2017, English / French
Softcover, 456 pages, 15 x 21.5 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$85.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
This book offers a first report on the activities of the Cercle d’art des travailleurs de plantation congolaise (CATPC), an association based in Lusanga, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. CATPC brings together a unique gathering of individuals—along with its members and partner institutions that are engaged in dialogue with it—and attempts to rethink postcolonial power relations within the global art world. Initiated in 2014 by Renzo Martens, an Amsterdam-based artist whose radical and controversial practice feeds into many current debates, and René Ngongo, a Kinshasa-based biologist and environmental activist, this cooperative continues to develop independently and to redefine the relations between art, agriculture, industry, and value creation.
The publication CATPC—Cercle d’art des travailleurs de plantation congolaise/Congolese Plantation Workers Art League is part of an artistic research project initiated by Renzo Martens, affiliated as a researcher at KASK/School of Arts of University College Ghent, from 2012 to 2016.
Edited by Eva Barois De Caevel and Els Roelandt. Texts by Ariella Azoulay, Eva Barois De Caevel, Eléonore Hellio, Ruba Katrib, Alexander Koch, J. A. Koster, Renzo Martens, René Ngongo, Els Roelandt, Charles Sikitele Gize, Charles Tumba, Françoise Vergès
Photos by Léonard Pongo
Design by Jurgen Maelfeyt, Jonas Temmerman, 6'56''
2010, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
David Findlay Jr. Fine Art / New York
$35.00 $15.00 - In stock -
Out-of-print exhibition catalogue published on the occasion of Geometry and Gesture, an exhibition of abstract expressionist painters at David Findlay Jr. Fine Art, New York, April 8 through 29, 2010. Illustrated throughout, the catalogue reproduces in colour the works of the exhibiting artists: Alcopley, Charles Cajori, Herman Cherry, Howard Daum, Hans Hofmann, Richard Hunt, Emily Mason, George Mcneil, Robert Richenburg, Nína Tryggvadóttir.
Very Good copy.
2016, English
Hardcover, 105 pages, 22 x 24 cm
Ed. of 1000,
Published by
Karma / New York
$88.00 $50.00 - Out of stock
'Thirty-Four Reverse Telescopes and Three Buttons' catalogues the artist’s recent body of coloured Plexiglas works, made between 2013 and 2016, introduced obliquely with a poem by Ben Estes. Painter Matt Connors (born 1973) is known for combining a modernist visual vocabulary of grids and tense, minimal compositions with influences from design, poetry and music. Connors’ recent series of works brings this sensibility into the play of media: paintings in acrylic on paper are mounted on coloured matte board, framed behind colored Plexiglass, creating an effect of nested coloured forms in space.
2011, English
Softcover, 24 pages, 27 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hazland Holland-Hibbert / London
$45.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Now scarce catalogue published by Hazland Holland-Hibbert, London, on the occasion of the presentation of "Barbara Hepworth: Unique Sculptures / Bridget Riley: Early Paintings" at Art Basek 2011. Illustrated throughout, inc. fold-outs, with works by both artists and biographies.
Very Good copy.
1990, English
Softcover, 100 pages, 8 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
A&D / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
"New Art International" from 1990, a special "Art & Design Profile" edition from London's A.D. magazine. Articles/essays by Thomas Lawson, Victor Burgin, Germano Celant, Robert Rosenblum, Donald Kuspit, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, and many more. Profusely illustrated throughout with the work of Haim Steinbach, Cady Noland, Zoe Leonard, Jenny Holzer, Allan McCollum, Jannis Kounellis, Cindy Sherman, Mario Merz, Barbara Kruger, Susana Solano, Ashley Bickerton, Larry Johnson, David Salle, Peter Halley, Robert Longo, John Baldessari, Barbara Bloom, Laurie Simmons, Luciano Fabro, Christian Boltanski, Thomas Schütte, Günther Förg, Annette Lemieux, Gilbert & George, Victor Burgin, Jeff Koons, Tim Rollins + KOS, Giuseppe Penone, James Lee Byars, Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein, Thérèse Oulton, Kryzstof Wodiczko, and many more....
Very Good copy, light tanning to cover and some bumping to bottom back cover edge.
2014, English
Softcover, 115 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$30.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Texts by Mary Ceruti, Suzanne Cotter, Christiane Maria Schneider
Although deeply grounded in drawing, J. Parker Valentine’s diverse practice spans film, video, photography, collage, and sculpture. By pushing the limits of mark making, the many possibilities of narrative and image are encountered and explored. The drawn line exceeds its supports and materials, extending beyond the two-dimensional edges of material to something more sculptural. In the same way that Valentine uses erasure to create an image, the negative space or ephemeral material within a space, such as shadow and light, becomes part of the work.
This artist book includes a selection of images—a documentation of exhibited works and those in process—that offer a sense of Valentine’s approach to working, which gestures toward abstraction and improvisation. For this book, many images have been adapted, reoriented, and/or manipulated. Also included are three essays that investigate Valentine’s process, considering work that has emerged from her previous projects, residencies, and exhibitions to date. Mary Ceruti’s essay describes Valentine’s lasso sculptures as oscillating between drawing and sculpture, and discusses the suggestive narratives that play out in sculptural space. Suzanne Cotter touches on Valentine’s interrogation of the integrity of the medium of drawing and its limits, as well as the transformative nature of her work, as eluding any static reading. Describing the development of Valentine’s work in situ, Christiane Maria Schneider considers how each of the works presented are affected by the relationships they enter into, continually moving between the material and immaterial.
Valentine was born in Austin, Texas, in 1980. She was artist in residence at Artpace, San Antonio, in 2013. She has had solo shows at Supportico Lopez, Berlin (2010, 2012); Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf (2012); Taka Ishii, Kyoto (2010); Peep-Hole, Milan (2010); and Lisa Cooley, New York (2008, 2010). She lives and works in New York.
This book is published on the occasion of J. Parker Valentine’s exhibition “Topo” at Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany, February 14–June 29, 2014.
Design by Kloepfer-Ramsey-Kwon
2020, English
Softcover, 241 pages, 25 x 17.5 cm
Published by
Monash Art Projects / Victoria
$25.00 - In stock -
These are the reviews from 2018, the second year of Melbourne's Memo Review. Memo Review is Melbourne's only weekly art criticism, publishing reviews of "a broad variety of art exhibitions at public art museums, commercial galleries and smaller artist-run spaces in Melbourne, offering new critical perspectives from an up-and-coming younger generation of Australian art scholars, writers and artists."
As readers engage with this second year of reviews, they might see a group of art writers coming to grips with the particular limitations and opportunities of the weekly review format and even the particularities of its online delivery. Some will track the successive mentions of the same artist or gallery space, seeing what different writers make of them. Others will follow the progress of individual writers, finding and developing their own style and argument.
Contributions by Amelia Winata, Anna Parlane, Audrey Schmidt, Benison Kilby, Chelsea Hopper, David Wlazlo, Eva Birch, Francis Plagne, Giles Fielke, Helen Hughes, Hester Lyon, Jane Eckett, Kate Warren, Nicholas Tammens, Paris Lettau, Philip Brophy, Rex Butler, Shelley Mcspedden, Sophie Knezic, Tiarney Miekus, Tim Alves, Victoria Perin.