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
Art
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
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.
Softcover, 200 pages, 21 x 13.6 cm
Ed. of 650 copies,
Published by
Taka Ishii Gallery / Tokyo
$83.00 - Out of stock
This catalogue, published in an edition of 650 copies on the occasion of the exhibition "Martin Kippenberger" at Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, January 10-February 7, 2015,
is a great piece of documentation of the exhibition. Through 192 photographs spanning 200 pages, this book takes in each and every work and installation view in great detail.
This solo exhibition of works by German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953–1997) , made possible in collaboration with the Estate of Martin Kippenberger and Galerie Gisela Capitain, was the artist’s first major solo exhibition in Japan. Kippenberger was one of the most influential artists to come out of postwar Germany and he played a pivotal role in establishing the postmodernism aesthetic between the late 1970s and 1990s. He was an artist, actor, dancer, heavy drinker, novelist, musician, and traveller. His unique and wild lifestyle was matched by his prolific and varied output, which spanned multiple media including paintings, sculptures, collages, posters, photographs, performances, installations, multiples, and books. The core of the Taka Ishii exhibition was a large-scale installation, which was originally produced in the 1990s and comprises 38 multiples, six posters, one painting, and three hotel drawings.
Text by Minoru Shimizu (English and Japanese), plus a list of all works in the exhibition.
1992, Japanese / Italian
Softcover, 168 pages, 22.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Mitsukoshi Museum of Art / Japan
Yomiuri Shimbun / Tokyo
$85.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful Japanese catalogue produced in 1992 to accompany the travelling Japanese exhibition "Lucio Fontana - La Penetrazione dello Spazio", curated by Toshiaki Minemura.
This generous full-colour book, designed and printed in Japan, presents the work of Italian artist Lucio Fontana across canvas, ceramic, drawing, and relief, dating throughout the 1930 up until the late 1960s, concentrating on his famous Concetto Spaziale works. Includes texts by Enrico Crispolti, Toshiaki Minemura and an artist biography and catalogue of works exhibited.
1977, French
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 212 pages, 21.5 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Georges Pompidou Musee National d'Art Moderne / Paris
$130.00 - Out of stock
Published by Georges Pompidou Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1977, this fantastic book, "L'Oeuvre de Marcel Duchamp, Tome II", presents Marcel Duchamp's catalogue raisonne; 212 pages chronologically documenting his rich history of works in detail, heavily illustrated throughout in colour and black and white, with French texts and a full bibliography. It also goes beyond that, looking to aspects of his work including Photography, Esotericism, Perspective... The second of a four-part book set detailing the life and work of French-American artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), published on the occasion of a 1977 exhibition. This particular volume (Tome II) is the Duchamp catalogue raisonne, and became a very valuable resource book on the artist in the late 1970s.
First edition of this scarce French book.
1988, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 70 pages, 21 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$160.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful and very rarely seen hardcover Japanese publication on the work of the great Pierre Klossowski. Features an extensive selection of his paintings and drawings reproduced in full-colour and black and white, alongside texts, biography and photographic portraits of Klossowski. Published by Atelier Peyotl and printed in Tokyo in 1988 on the occasion of a major exhibition at The Seed Hall, Seibu Shibuya . First printing in original illustrated dust jacket w. obi-strip.
Pierre Klossowski (August 9, 1905, Paris – August 12, 2001, Paris) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus.
As a writer, Pierre Klossowski wrote full length volumes on the Marquis de Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche, a number of essays on literary and philosophical figures, and five novels. Roberte Ce Soir (Roberte in the Evening) provoked controversy due to its graphic depiction of sexuality.[1] He translated several important texts (by Virgil, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Hölderlin, Franz Kafka, Nietzsche, and Walter Benjamin) into French, worked on films and was also an artist, illustrating many of the scenes from his novels. Klossowski participated in most issues of George Bataille's review, Acéphale, in the late 1930s.
His 1969 book, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, greatly influenced French philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard.
1992, English / German
Softcover, 24 pages, 20 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Galerie Gisela Capitain / Köln
$180.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful and very scarce early Michael Krebber catalogue, published on the occasion of his solo exhibition at Galerie Gisela Capitain in Cologne, October - November, 1992.
Containing no text (beyond the title page), this catalogue reproduces a series of Krebber's drawings from this period in colour and black and white.
Michael Krebber (born 1954, lives and works in Cologne) is currently considered to be one of the most emblematic personalities of the international contemporary art scene. Having had a major influence on the art scene in Cologne during the 80’s and 90’s and ever since, Michael Krebber has a conceptual approach to painting that he explores beyond all pictorial conventions. His practice is marked by ambivalence, subversion, intransigence, and a feigned body language. Krebber is a dandy painter.
Although he appears to be a discreet character, both perplexed and ambivalent about the very nature of his practice, he nevertheless remains an influential first-class smuggler into the world of art on both the theoretical and economic levels. The dialogue that he maintains with his students at the Staatliche Hochschule in Frankfurt, sets him up as a “literary character,” the implementer of his very own process, which has fascinated the emerging generation.
2014, English
Hardcover, 432 Pages, 198 x 269 cm
Published by
Formist / Sydney
Sarah Cottier / Sydney
$65.00 $40.00 - Out of stock
The history of Sarah Cottier Gallery’s first twenty years in a comprehensive reference volume.
An example of one of Australia’s most influential contemporary art galleries.
Twenty years, two hundred exhibitions, four venues, nearly one hundred artists. Ever since its arrival in 1994, Sarah Cottier Gallery has been one of Australia’s most courageous contemporary art galleries. The artists represented in this time, including John Armleder, Sydney Ball, Marco Fusinato, Matthys Gerber, John Nixon, Mike Parr, Koji Ryui and Gemma Smith, represent some of the hottest talent in contemporary art.
20/200 celebrates the first twenty years of the gallery and its artists in a pictorial format that illustrates the breadth of the twenty year experience. The book includes images of every one of the gallery’s two hundred exhibitions and includes the work of almost one hundred artists. The volume is hardcover bound with a timeless rounded spine and features a holographic foil on the the front cover. The individual works and specific highlights inevitably surrender to the vast, hypnotic rhythm of the volume’s breadth – as in the fairy tale conundrum of the dancing princesses, each is more beautiful than the last.
Includes the work of A.D.S. Donaldson, Martin Creed, Kerrie Poliness, Melinda Harper, Julian Dashper, John Armleder, Sydney Ball, Mikala Dwyer, Hany Armanious, Marco Fusinato, Matthys Gerber, John Nixon, Mike Parr, Koji Ryui, Mikala Dwyer, Hany Armanious, Matt Hinkley, Huseyin Sami, Robert Pulie, Julia Gorman, Simon Denny, Anne-Marie May, Gemma Smith, John Spiteri, Katherina Grosse, Mary Teague, Olivier Mosset, and many more!
Texts by Nicholas Chambers, Jason Marcou, Julie Fragar, Anna Waldmann, Amanda Rowell, Alan Cholodenko, Mark Titmarsh and Christopher Hanrahan.
1992, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 84 pages, 14.5 x 20.5 cm
Ed. of 500, 1st edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
Kerb Your Dog / Sydney
$100.00 - Out of stock
Kerb Your Dog was an artist-edited anthology of pages by contemporary Australian and International artists, published in Sydney, Australia. Edited by John Nixon and John Young and published in an edition of 500 copies, this volume from 1992 - "TEXTBOOK" - features pages by John Barbour, Eugene Carchesio, Tony Clark, Peter Cripps, Aleks Danko, John Dunkley-Smith, Clinton Garofano, Ross Harley, Tim Johnson, Lyndal Jones, Maria Kozic, Rosemary Laing, Shelley Lasica, Lindy Lee, Geoff Lowe, Robert Macpherson, John Nixon, Rose Nolan, Susan Norrie, David O'Halloran, Robert Owen, Mike Parr, Jacky Redgate, Carole Roberts, Vivienne Shark Lewitt, Peter Tyndall, Ken Unsworth, Geoffrey Weary, Wood / Marsh Architecture Pty. Ltd., John Young, and an essay by Janet Shanks. An invaluable collection of artist's texts from Australia in this very scarce document.
1991, English
Softcover (stapled), 16 pages (colour ill.), 22.5 x 16
1st edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
Pataphysics Books / Melbourne
$45.00 - Out of stock
Published on the occasion of Roslyn Oxley’s participation in Art Cologne 1991
John Nixon is an Australian artist born in 1949, his Experimental Painting Workshop EPW – founded in 1990 – is not a physical workshop but an intellectual as well as a practical visual investigation into non-representational painting.
1989, English
Softcover (handpainted), 26 pages (b/w ill.), 21 x 14.8 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
City Gallery / Melbourne
$50.00 - In stock -
Catalogue for the exhibtion Cosmos at City Gallery, Melbourne. Curated by John Nixon, featuring Micky Allan, Dini Campbell Tjampitjinpa, Eugene Carchesio, Peter Cripps, Dale Frank, Melinda Harper, Tim Johnson, John Nixon, Rose Nolan, Robert Owen, Stieg Piersson, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarra, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Jimmy Wululu, John Young.
1988, English/French
Softcover (stapled), 16 pages (b/w ill.), 26.5 x 21 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
Villa Arson / Nice
$55.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue for the 1988 exhibition La Crox et le Monochrome at Villa Arson, Nice
John Nixon is an Australian artist born in 1949, his Experimental Painting Workshop EPW – founded in 1990 – is not a physical workshop but an intellectual as well as a practical visual investigation into non-representational painting.
1988, English
Softcover (stapled), 16 pages (colour + b/w ill.), 21 x 14.8 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
Esbjerg Kunstmuseum / Esbjerg
$45.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue for the 1988 exhibition EPW:ORANGE at Esbjerg Kunstmuseum
John Nixon is an Australian artist born in 1949, his Experimental Painting Workshop EPW – founded in 1990 – is not a physical workshop but an intellectual as well as a practical visual investigation into non-representational painting.
2013, Swedish / English
Softcover, 104 pages (colour ill.), 20 x 27 cm
Published by
Malmö Konsthall / Malmö
$75.00 - Out of stock
Berlin-based Thea Djordjadze is best known for her sculpture and installations with references to the modernist language. She works with materials like plaster, wood, ceramic and papier mâché to produce almost intuitive assemblages where unformed, premature pieces collide with or rest upon precise architectural or domestic constructions. These hybrid compositions deliberately display the traces of their creation. Besides numerous and detailed installation views from her solo exhibition at Malmö Konsthall, this catalogue documents Djordjadze’s methods and perspectives through several critical texts by Gabriel Lester, Andrew Maerkle, Chris Kraus and others.
2016, English
Hardcover, 368 pages, 23 x 30 cm
Published by
Anton Kern / New York
Karma / New York
$88.00 $35.00 - Out of stock
Chosen Ones is a comprehensive monograph on the work of German painter Bendix Harms (born 1967), spanning over 15 years of work. A repertoire of motifs recurs throughout the nearly 400-page volume: birds, trees, airplanes, cars and the artist's profile, all rendered in loose, exuberant strokes of gray and muddy orange. Drawing on elusive autobiographical references, the paintings – whether of grotesque figures or more surrealistic scenes – are often humourous and suggestively narrative, compelling in their apparent disregard for and liberation from concept.
1958, English
Softcover (stapled), 24 pages, 19 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
MoMA / New York
$15.00 - Out of stock
Art Bulletin (XXV, No. 4, 1957)/catalogue supplement published to accompany an exhibition in 1957 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, to showcase their recent Painting and Sculpture collection acquisitions. Features work by Fernand Léger, Odilon Redon, Egon Schiele, Robert Motherwell, Robert Delaunay, Arshile Gorky, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Paul Klee, George Grosz, Giorgio de Chirico, David Smith, Gustav Limpt, Otto Dix, and many others, illustrated in black and whit throughout.
1986, English / French
Softcover, 74 pages, 15 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
ARC / Paris
$85.00 - Out of stock
Rare catalogue on the work of American artist Richard Tuttle, published by ARC, Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris in 1986. Features his drawing, painting and sculptural work, with texts in French and English.
2015, English
Softcover (w. insert booklet and fold-out cover), 88 pages, 19.3 x 26.3 cm
Published by
Bergen Kunsthall / Norway
Walther König / Köln
$50.00 - Out of stock
Making Silver is a beautiful new book conceived by Richard Tuttle and published by Bergen Kunsthall, published in 2015.
Featuring new texts and comprehensive installation photos from his exhibition Slide (2012), it documents the sculptural works Richard Tuttle made on site in Bergen, as well as including full colour reproductions of 121 drawings.
These 'notebook drawings' cover the artist's entire artistic output of a single year (2010).
The unique concept for the book includes an inserted 'book within a book' pop-out details, and an extensive fold out cover.
Published retrospectively after the exhibition Richard Tuttle: Slides at Bergen Kunsthall, 3 November – 16 December 2012.
2016, English / German
Softcover, 540 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$70.00 - Out of stock
Having represented Beuys, Richter and Polke, German gallery owner , art publisher, art collector and curator René Block (born 1942) ranks among the central figures of the 1960s avant-garde. This publication collects writings by and interviews with Block, scanned from their original publications and organized chronologically, as well as an illustrated published history, artist portraits (taken by Block), performance ephemera, bibliography, and more. An enormous book that, via Block, encompasses the work of so many important movements and figures of 1960s - 1990s art.
Although primarily a German language publication, many of the original articles are in English. Regardless of language, the valuable historical listings translate.
2015, English
Hardcover, 28 pages, 24 x 18.5 cm
Ed. of 1,500,
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$50.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
‘The mattresses become not just litter in the landscape but more like scary animals.’ — Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha has been casting his eye across the landscapes of the American west for over 50 years, taking in everything from gas stations to swimming pools to sublime mountain ranges.
The artist noticed the mattresses cast aside on the streets of LA and began photographing them systematically before translating the images into pictures on paper-like museum board.
The consistent neutral background emphasises the typological nature and the heightened formality of the series, transforming the boxes of springs and padding into geometric abstractions.
Designed in close collaboration with Ruscha, this lavish cardboard-paged artist’s book is published retrospectively of the exhibition at Sprüth Magers, Berlin, 3 November 2015 – 16 January 2016.
Printed in an edition of 1,500 copies.
2016, English
Softcover (leporello-fold illustrated card wraps), 16 pages, 21 x 29.5 cm
Published by
Self-Published / Melbourne
$5.00 - In stock -
Catalogue of Janenne Eaton's solo exhibition FENCES B/ORDERS WALLS, exhibited at TCB, Melbourne, in March 2016. The catalogue is designed by Simon McGlinn with an accompanying text by Georgina Criddle.
All proceeds go to RISE (Refugees Survivors and Ex-detainees).
link: http://riserefugee.org/
1984, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 342 pages, 270 x 280 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
U.M.I. Research Press / Michigan
$150.00 - Out of stock
First, hardcover edition of "LOOKING CRITICALLY: 21 YEARS OF ARTFORUM MAGAZINE", the heavy 342 page volume anthology of the first 21 years of the world's most important modern and art journal. An incredibly valuable collection of art theory.
Edited by Amy Baker Sandback, designed by Roger Gorman and Mary Beath and published in 1984 by U.M.I. Research Press, this dense volume, bound in hardcover to the dimensions of a copy of ARTFORUM, begins with an Ed Kienholz review at the Ferus Gallery from ARTFORUM's June 1962 inaugural issue, and ends with Barbara Kruger reviewing the film "TRON" for the November 1982 issue. An amazing compendium of articles and reviews from the magazine's important first 21 years, featuring contributions by the likes of John Cage, Robert Morris, Kate Steinitz, Henry T. Hopkins, Don Factor, Robert Pincus-Witten, Dennis Adrian, John Coplans, Hilton Kramer, Harold Rosenberg, Henry Geldzahler, John Cage, Walter Hopps, Ed Ruscha, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rosenblum, Dan Flavin, Boris Groys, Sam Wagstaff, Billy Kluver, Lucy R. Lippard, Robert Rosenblum, Roger Shattuck, Ad Reinhardt, Mel Bochner, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Rose, Manny Farber, Michael Fried, Robert Morris, Philip Leider, Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Lawrence Alloway, Barbara Kruger, Jane Livingston, Lizzie Borden, Kenneth Baker, Laurie Anderson, Agnes Martin, Cindy Nemser, Sidney Tillim, Annette Michelson, Rosalind Krauss, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Roberta Smith, Peter Plagens, Peter Schjeldahl, J. Hoberman, Hal Foster, Richard Flood, Carter Ratcliff, Stuart Morgan, Max Kozloff, Donald Kuspit, Dan Graham, Walter De Maria, Komar & Melamid, Edit De Ak, Lawrence Weiner, Kathy Acker, Robert Mapplethorpe, Anselm Kiefer, Thomas McEvilley, Louise Bourgeois, Ingrid Sischy, and too many more to list. Artists featured include: Josef Albers, Richard Tuttle, Jo Baer, Carl Andre, Ant Farm, Hans Arp, Max Bill, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Lee Bontecou, Constantin Brancusi, Bertholt Brecht, Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Diane Arbus, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Lynda Beglis, Larry Bell, Terry Fox, James Byers, Rober Barry, Marcel Breuer, AA Bronson, Luis Buñel, Daniel Buren, Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Anthony Caro, Marcel Broodthaers, John Chamberlain, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Merce Cunningham, Sonia Delauney, Walter de Maria, Bruce Connor, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Walker Evans, Dan Flavin, Marcel Duchamp, Albrecht Dürer, Lucio Fontana, Hollis Frampton, Alberto Giacometti, Eva Hesse, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, John Cage, Nancy Graves, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Nancy Grossman, Walter Gropius, Hans Haacke, Hairy Who, David Hockney, Douglas Huebler, Jorg Immendorff, Donald Judd, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Keinholz, Paul Klee, Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Barbara Kruger, Jannis Kounellis, Markus Lüpertz, El Lissitzky, Rene Magritte, Robert Mapplethorpe, John McCracken, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Ree Morton, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzio, A. R. Penck, Irving Penn, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Larry Poons, Ken Price, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Roman Polanski, Jackson Pollock, Steve Reich, Gerrit Rietveld, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Dorothae Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Lucas Samaras, Kurt Schwitters, Oscar Schlemmer, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, David Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Robert Venturi, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Saul Steinberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Taut, Jean Tinguely, Anne Truitt, Paul Wunderlich, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Bourgeois, Alfred Hitchcock, and so many more.
Very uncommon hardcover edition, with dust jacket.
1971, English
Hardcover, 128 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Lansdowne Australian Art Library / Melbourne
$28.00 - Out of stock
First edition, published in 1971 by Lansdowne Australian Art Library, Melbourne, as part of the Australian Painting Studio Series under the editorship of John Henshaw.
Illustrated throughout with colour reproductions of the works of modern Australian painters selected by Australian artist James Gleeson, from post-impressionism, abstraction and op-art to the hard-edge minimal and colour-field painting, inc. Ian Fairweather, Sydney Ball, Fred Williams, John Perceval, Albert Tucker, Sydney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, John Passmore, Alun Leach-Jones, John Olsen, Brett Whiteley, Rodney Milgate, Colin Lanceley, Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotowski, Col Jordan, Dick Watkins, Michael Johnson, Tony McGillick, Henry Salkauskas, Eva Kubbos, Judy Cassab, Roger Kemp, Margo Lewers, Ralph Balson, Jeffrey Smart, Donald Friend, Ray Crooke, Michael Kmit, Jon Molvig, Sali Herman, Charles Blackman, Robert Dickerson, Eric Wilson,Godrey Miller, Russell Drysdale, William Dobell, William Dobell, Grace Crossington Smith, Grace Crowley, Rah Fizelle, Roy de Maistre, Margaret Preston, Roland Wakelin, and more.
Introduction by author, lengthy biographies on each artist featured throughout the book, works in public collections, acknowledgements, and select bibliography.
1987, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 18 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney
Artspace / Sydney
$65.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce Australian catalogue published on the occasion of the great exhibition "Sighting References: Ciphers, Systems and Codes in Recent Australian Visual Art" held in 1987 as a collaborative venture between Artspace Sydney and the Art Gallery of NSW and curated by Gary Sangster. This exhibition presents 'a range of sites of art production and reception', addressing the exhibition as a discursive and creative conjunction of (written and visual) information. Features the work of Juan Davila, Julie Brown-Rrap, Maria Kozic, Tim Johnson, Richard Dunn, Peter Tyndall, alongside essays by Elizabeth Grosz, Michael Carter, Ross Gibson, Meaghan Morris.
1980, English
Softcover, 54 pages, 21 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Regional Development Program / Victoria
$50.00 - Out of stock
Scarce catalogue published to accompany the two-person exhibition "Exhibition 7 : In The Labyrinth : drawings by Peter Booth and Mike Brown", a traveling exhibition across regional galleries in 1980-1981. Catalogue is split in two with 20 illustrations of works by each Australian artist, in black and white and colour. Includes an introduction and biography for each artist.
Peter Booth (born 2 November 1940 in Sheffield, England) is an Australian figurative and a surrealist painter, and one of the key late-20th-century Australian artists. His work is characterised by an intense emotional power of often dark narratives, and esoteric symbolism.
Mike Brown (1938-1997) was a significant late 20th century contemporary Australian artist. One of the founders of the Annandale Imitation Realists of the early 1960s, now recognised as a key event in the development of anti-formalist art in Australia. Brown was a unique leader of alternative avant guard art in Australia, railing against elite art cliques. In 1965 Brown became the only Australian artist ever to be prosecuted for obscenity and scandals would continue even after his death in 1997. During his lifetime, Brown produced a multiplicity of work including naïve landscapes, pattern based abstraction, pop and text paintings, found object assemblages, graffiti, performance.
1977, English
Softcover, 111 pages, 25 x 30 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Australian Gallery Directors Council / Canberra
$38.00 - Out of stock
Major Australian touring exhibition exploring realism and illusion in art (across new realist painting, pop, photography, conceptualism, minimalism, abstraction, ceramics, even architecture) with a catalogue of 71 works by 44 international artists and groups. Introduction and notes on the artists by John Stringer; statements by Audrey Flack, Stephen Posen and Josef Raffael; biographical notes on the artists, including exhibitions and collections; statement on realism by Raymond Williams. Exhibition organized by the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, and shown at seven locations throughout Australia.
Artists: Ian Burn, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Joseph Kosuth, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Marilyn Levine, Dale Hickey, Jenny Watson, Jan Dibbets, Chuck Close, SITE, Michael Snow, Tom Wesselman, Claudio Bravo, Malcolm Morley, Michael Snow, Robert Bechtle, Tom Blackwell, Christian Boltanski, Santiago Cardenas, John Clem Clarke, William Delafield Cook, Robert Cottingham, Don Eddy, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Ralph Goings, Jan Groover, Duane Hanson, Peter Kennedy, Ron Kleeman, Richard Larter, Victor Lance Henderson, Terry Schoonhoven, Richard McLean, Jud Nelson, John Okulick, Philip Pearlstein,, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Liliana Porter, Stephen Posen, Joseph Raffael, Ben Schonzeit, Paul Sharits, Sonia Landy Sheridan, and more.