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
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Australian Art
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'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
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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
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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.
1978, French / Japanese
Softcover, 58 pages (w. Japanese translation booklet insert), 34.5 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Façade / Paris
$290.00 - In stock -
Issue no. 6 of the incredibly rare and iconic Façade, the French underground magazine published in Paris between 1976—1983. Founded in 1976 by Alain Benoist and Hervé Pinard, Façade was the french answer to Andy Warhol's Interview, heavily centered around Parisian club, fashion and art scene and published without any date or periodicity until 1983. Launched at an Issey Miyake show where models handed out the magazine from the catwalk, the cult magazine witness through its pages a long-lost, short-lived period in Paris featuring the so-called "jeunes gens modernes" of the 1970's, like punk icons Edwige Belmore and Alain Pacadis. With pop celebrity covers and vibrant fashion shoots styled by the likes of a young Pierre et Gilles (who met through working on this very magazine), features in collaboration with the likes of Serge Gainsbourg, and in each issue a unique "false" advertisement created by Karl Lagerfeld, it's no wonder Façade's reputation spread quickly to New York, Tokyo and beyond, making it one of the most desired magazines of the new wave. With texts in French, these rare issues come complete with the inserted Japanese translation booklets. Includes cover stars Salvador Dalí (front) and Eva Ionesco (back), with interviews and astrological charts for both, Amanda Lear, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Giorgio Moroder, General Idea, Yves Adrien, Le Palace, Christo, Maud Molyneux, Anja Lopez, Suicide Fashion shot by Laurence Sackman (featuring Eva Ionesco, Sayoko Yamaguchi, and others), Nightclubbing, Malcolm McLaren… with collaborations from Pierre Commoy, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Thierry Ardisson, Alain Pacadis, Maud Molyneux… and much more.
Very Good copy of one of the best issues! Beautifully preserved.
1978, French / Japanese
Softcover, 58 pages (w. Japanese translation booklet insert), 34.5 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Façade / Paris
$240.00 - In stock -
Issue no. 7 of the incredibly rare and iconic Façade, the French underground magazine published in Paris between 1976—1983. Founded in 1976 by Alain Benoist and Hervé Pinard, Façade was the french answer to Andy Warhol's Interview, heavily centered around Parisian club, fashion and art scene and published without any date or periodicity until 1983. Launched at an Issey Miyake show where models handed out the magazine from the catwalk, the cult magazine witness through its pages a long-lost, short-lived period in Paris featuring the so-called "jeunes gens modernes" of the 1970's, like punk icons Edwige Belmore and Alain Pacadis. With pop celebrity covers and vibrant fashion shoots styled by the likes of a young Pierre et Gilles (who met through working on this very magazine), features in collaboration with the likes of Serge Gainsbourg, and in each issue a unique "false" advertisement created by Karl Lagerfeld, it's no wonder Façade's reputation spread quickly to New York, Tokyo and beyond, making it one of the most desired magazines of the new wave. With texts in French, these rare issues come complete with the inserted Japanese translation booklets. Includes cover stars Jack Nicholson as 007 (front) and musician Djemila (back), with interviews and astrological charts for both, industrial designer Roger Tallon, Karl Lagerfeld, industrial designer Philippe Starck, publishing extraordinaire Daniel Filipacchi, Sonia Rykiel, Paco Rabanne, Thierry Mugler, a perverse fashion portfolio, Kenzo, Brion Gysin, Sid Vicious, Pierre et Gilles, Nightclubbing, Dining, Fashion, Music, tremendous ads and much more.
Very Good copy of one of the best issues! Beautifully preserved with only light marking/tan/age.
1980, French / Japanese
Softcover, 40 pages (w. Japanese translation booklet insert), 34.5 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Façade / Paris
$200.00 - In stock -
Issue no. 8 of the incredibly rare and iconic Façade, the French underground magazine published in Paris between 1976—1983. Founded in 1976 by Alain Benoist and Hervé Pinard, Façade was the french answer to Andy Warhol's Interview, heavily centered around Parisian club, fashion and art scene and published without any date or periodicity until 1983. Launched at an Issey Miyake show where models handed out the magazine from the catwalk, the cult magazine witness through its pages a long-lost, short-lived period in Paris featuring the so-called "jeunes gens modernes" of the 1970's, like punk icons Edwige Belmore and Alain Pacadis. With pop celebrity covers and vibrant fashion shoots styled by the likes of a young Pierre et Gilles (who met through working on this very magazine), features in collaboration with the likes of Serge Gainsbourg, and in each issue a unique "false" advertisement created by Karl Lagerfeld, it's no wonder Façade's reputation spread quickly to New York, Tokyo and beyond, making it one of the most desired magazines of the new wave. With texts in French, these rare issues come complete with the inserted Japanese translation booklets. Includes cover stars Sophia Loren (front) and Brian Ferry (back), with interviews and astrological charts for both, James White and The Blacks, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Kansai Yamamoto, Karl Lagerfeld, "Assistant Fashion" (shoots by the assistants of fashion fashion photographers), Helmut Newton, nightclubbing, dining, records, terrific ads, and much more...
Very Good with light foxing, wear the covers.
1980, French / Japanese
Softcover, 58 pages (w. Japanese translation booklet insert), 34.5 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Façade / Paris
$160.00 - In stock -
Issue no. 7 of the incredibly rare and iconic Façade, the French underground magazine published in Paris between 1976—1983. Founded in 1976 by Alain Benoist and Hervé Pinard, Façade was the french answer to Andy Warhol's Interview, heavily centered around Parisian club, fashion and art scene and published without any date or periodicity until 1983. Launched at an Issey Miyake show where models handed out the magazine from the catwalk, the cult magazine witness through its pages a long-lost, short-lived period in Paris featuring the so-called "jeunes gens modernes" of the 1970's, like punk icons Edwige Belmore and Alain Pacadis. With pop celebrity covers and vibrant fashion shoots styled by the likes of a young Pierre et Gilles (who met through working on this very magazine), features in collaboration with the likes of Serge Gainsbourg, and in each issue a unique "false" advertisement created by Karl Lagerfeld, it's no wonder Façade's reputation spread quickly to New York, Tokyo and beyond, making it one of the most desired magazines of the new wave. With texts in French, these rare issues come complete with the inserted Japanese translation booklets. Includes cover stars Catherine Deneuve (front) and James Brown (back), with interviews and astrological charts for both, Sports Fashion (featuring Françoise Hardy), Funky fashion, The Village People, Karl Lagerfeld, more James Brown, clubbing, dining, jet-setting, dance music and much more.
Very Good with some light wear/marks to covers, light tanning.
1981, French / Japanese
Softcover, 58 pages (w. Japanese translation booklet insert), 34.5 x 29 cm
1st US Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Façade / Paris
$160.00 - In stock -
Issue no. 10 of the incredibly rare and iconic Façade, the French underground magazine published in Paris between 1976—1983. Founded in 1976 by Alain Benoist and Hervé Pinard, Façade was the french answer to Andy Warhol's Interview, heavily centered around Parisian club, fashion and art scene and published without any date or periodicity until 1983. Launched at an Issey Miyake show where models handed out the magazine from the catwalk, the cult magazine witness through its pages a long-lost, short-lived period in Paris featuring the so-called "jeunes gens modernes" of the 1970's, like punk icons Edwige Belmore and Alain Pacadis. With pop celebrity covers and vibrant fashion shoots styled by the likes of a young Pierre et Gilles (who met through working on this very magazine), features in collaboration with the likes of Serge Gainsbourg, and in each issue a unique "false" advertisement created by Karl Lagerfeld, it's no wonder Façade's reputation spread quickly to New York, Tokyo and beyond, making it one of the most desired magazines of the new wave. With texts in French, these rare issues come complete with the inserted Japanese translation booklets. Includes Gina Lollobrigida interview and astrology, so too Jacno, Karl Lagerfeld, Howard Hughes, Sonia Rykiel, Defunkt (Mudd Club), Paul-Loup Sulitzer, Catherine Breillat, Djémila, dining, dancing, music, the scene… with collaborations from Dominique Gangloff, Dominique Lauga, Philippe Morillon, Serge Krüger, Jean-Edern Hallier, Alain Pacadis… and much more.
Very Good with light wear/marking to cover. Light tanning.
2020, English
Softcover, 316 pages, 18 x 23 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Primary Information / New York
Light Industry / New York
$140.00 - In stock -
For years an out-of-print rarity, and now this edition also out-of-print, Michael Snow’s classic artist book Cover to Cover published in limited facsimile edition in 2020 by Light Industry and Primary Information. Never bound by discipline, Snow has remarked that his sculptures were made by a musician, his films by a painter. Flipping through Cover to Cover, which is composed entirely of photographs in narrative sequence, one might describe it as a book made by a filmmaker. Snow himself has called the piece “a quasi-movie,” structured around a precise recto-verso montage.
Each page features a distinct moment, seen from one perspective on the front, and from a diametrically opposed angle on the back, occasionally pivoting, for instance, between interior and exterior spaces. This organizing principle is complicated by the fact that a given image might be a depiction of the physical environment surrounding the camera or, at other times, a photograph of a photograph. Midway through, the scene is inverted such that the volume must be turned upside-down to be looked at right-side up. The result is an elegant, disorienting study in simultaneity that allows the viewer to enter the work from either end.
Cover to Cover was originally released by the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1975. It was part of a now-legendary series of publications, overseen by Kasper König and later Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, that included titles by Michael Asher, Dara Birnbaum, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, Martha Rosler, and Yvonne Rainer, among others. Snow departed from the format of many of the press’ projects, however, producing not a collection of writings, but rather a book that constitutes an artwork in itself.
Michael Snow (b. 1928) is a Canadian artist whose multidisciplinary oeuvre includes painting, sculpture, video, film, sound, photography, drawing, writing, and music. His art explores the nature of perception, consciousness, language, and temporality and has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Hara Museum of Art (Tokyo), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Palais des Beaux Arts (Brussels). Snow’s key works include experimental films such as Wavelength (1967), Back and Forth (1969), and La Région Centrale (1971), as well as the large-scale public sculptures Flightstop (1979) and The Audience (1988-89). He is the recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2011), the Guggenheim Fellowship (1972), the Order of Canada (1982), and the Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres, France (1995, 2011).
Out-of-print, As New with some very light storage wear.
1978, Japanese / English
Softcover, oversized folio w. obi-strip, 216 pages, 36.5 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heibonsha Limited Publishers / Tokyo
$150.00 - Out of stock
Hands-down one of the greatest Issey Miyake books ever published - the classic "East Meets West" of 1978.
First edition of the iconic first book/folio dedicated to the work of Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake. Published by Heibonsha Limited Publishers of Tokyo in 1978, the book features beautiful photoshoots by the likes of Guy Bourdin, Richard Avedon, Kishin Shinoyama, Harry Peccinotti and David Bailey throughout, documenting Miyake's creations of the 1970s.
Broken into three sections ("Man and his Cloth", "The Form of Cloth" and "Witness of Time") the book texts include a preface by Diana Vreeland and essays by Mutsuo Takahashi, Arata Isozaki, and Eiko Ishioka.
Texts are in Japanese and English.
1973, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 18 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Sun Books / Melbourne
$80.00 - Out of stock
First printing from 1973 of this photo-book dedicated entirely to the streets of the suburb of Carlton, Melbourne, by Australian photographer Les Gray (1920 - 2013). With an introduction by poet Garrie Hutchison (b. 1949) titled "Canning Street, Carlton, August 1973", this handsome little landscape album of snapshots captures the people, terraces, and shopfronts of early 1970s Drummond, Rathdowne, Cardigan, Faraday, Lygon, Gratton, Station, Canning, and Elgin streets. Published by Sun Books.
Good copy. Ex-libris copy with only stamps to title page and inside back cover, otherwise no markings. Corner, edge wear.
1979, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bill McAuley / Carlton
$45.00 - In stock -
Rare signed copy of the first photo book of Australian photographer Bill McAuley (1920—2011), Faces and Places: A Pictorial Essay of the Seventies. McAuley began his career in newspapers and magazines in 1969 as a cadet photographer at The Age in Melbourne. For the next forty years he worked in Melbourne, Sydney, London and Canberra. "A press photographer is a visual historian, his role is to record history. Even if it ugly and violent, it is still a valid example of society at that point in time"—Bill McAuley. "Thus this book preserves a small piece of history and hopefully, given the sensitivity of the work it contains, those who turn its pages in the future will not judge us too unkindly"—Don Sharpe (from the introduction) Includes portraits of horticulturalist and artist Neil Douglas, Gough Whitlam, Queenie Paul, Barry Humphries, Frank Zappa, and many more characters captured (most notably the Australian cultural landscape c. 1970's) alongside quotes, notes, and lyrics. Dedicated to "late nights at King's Cross, Marlboro cigarettes, pool tables, crazy artists and tradesmen, beautiful bush, beautiful children."
Very Good copy, signed "Bill McAuley" to opening page in blue (biro) ink.
1982, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Amazing Aquarian Dream Factory / Sydney
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1982 edition of erotic photobook Touch Love, with photography by Sigurd Olivier and prose by Jeanette Gorrie on the tenderness of human touch and sexuality. Published by The Amazing Aquarian Dream Factory in Sydney.
Very Good copy with some light foxing to first page, light cover wear.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 25.4 x 19 cm
Published by
Princeton University Press / New York
$89.00 - Out of stock
How California's counterculture of the 1960s to 1980s profoundly shaped—and was shaped by—West Coast artists.
The 1960s exert a special fascination in modern art. But most accounts miss the defining impact of the period's youth culture, largely incubated in California, on artists who came of age in that decade. As their prime exemplar, Bruce Conner, reminisced, "I did everything that everybody did in 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury. . . . I would take peyote and walk out in the streets." And he vividly channeled those experiences into his art, while making his mark on every facet of the psychedelic movement—from the mountains of Mexico with Timothy Leary to the rock ballrooms of San Francisco to the gilded excesses of the New Hollywood. In The Artist in the Counterculture, Thomas Crow tells the story of California art from the 1960s to the 1980s—some of the strongest being made anywhere at the time—and why it cannot be understood apart from the new possibilities of thinking and feeling unleashed by the rebels of the counterculture.
Crow reevaluates Conner and other key figures—from Catholic activist Corita Kent to Black Panther Emory Douglas to ecological witness Bonnie Ora Sherk—as part of a generational cohort galvanized by resistance to war, racial oppression, and environmental degradation. Younger practitioners of performance and installation carried the mindset of rebellion into the 1970s and 1980s, as previously excluded artists of color moved to the forefront in Los Angeles. Mike Kelley, their contemporary, remained unwaveringly true to the late countercultural flowering he had witnessed at the dawn of his career.
The result is a major new account of the counterculture's enduring influence on modern art.
2022, English
limited-edition 3-part zine, 29 x 38 cm
Published by
Red3licte / UK
$65.00 - In stock -
Red3licte is a creative collective whose first project, Collage Couture for a Good Cause, turns existing garments into new ones to benefit Hope for the Young, a London based charity which provides financial support, mentoring and advocacy to young refugees arriving in the UK.
Accompanying a 150-piece fashion collection made from upcycled pieces, is this limited-edition 3-part zine. Featuring contributions from Paloma Elsesser, Sharna Osbourne, Matty Bovan, Thistle Brown, Raine Trainor, Nell Kalonji and Emma Wyman, it is an optimistic look at fashion recontextualising previously loved items through a surreal and fun lens. A soup, a swirl and a true salade of ideas.
All of the purchase price of ReD3licte’s magazine and clothing will go to Hope for the Young.
1990, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 128 pages, 24 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Magazine House / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1990, To Winter — Tokyo: A City Heading For Death is a beautiful, sentimental book of photographs taken in 1989 by Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki — a "homage to all living and perishing things taken while staring at the shadow of death approaching Mrs. Yōko". Yōko Araki was Nobuyoshi's wife who was hospitalised during the period these photos were taken in 1989 and died of ovarian cancer in January 1990. Araki captures the deep emotions and unconsciousness of the ever-changing city of Tokyo, through its public and most private lives. Also, at this time, buildings are being built in rapid succession and the landscape of Tokyo known to Araki, who grew up in the downtown area, was being lost. "This is a sentimental photo book that shows the death of my wife and the death of the city." From the afterword by Japanese author Toshiharu Itō, "To Winter and its sensuous undulations remind us that we all must join the procession of the dead, that we all are on the train heading for death. The flow of the photographs makes us recall the life of the dead in the landscape of the living. The father raged, the mother laughed, the wife wept.... Here, there, everywhere the dead are coming down. All kinds of thoughts pass through the mind in a frenzied dance. Those moments of life burst into the memory like stars. And all of us, every one, become shadows. Where else but photographs could tell us this? To Winter is perhaps a reminder of this very fact."
Text in English and Japanese.
Very Good copy.
1970—1980,
Offset poster (82 x 48 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie Alexandre Iolas / Paris
$220.00 - Out of stock
Gorgeous vintage Man Ray (1890—1976) exhibition poster from the 1970s of the artist at the legendary Galerie Alexandre Iolas, Paris, where the American artist spent much of his life as a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements. Issued by the gallery in a beautiful offset print on lovely wove paper featuring Man Ray's "Pêchage"Peaches"), 1969, painted wooden box, artificial peaches and cotton.
A stunning collector's item, ready to frame.
Dimensions : 82 x 48 cm
Very Good condition, well preserved.
1999, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 11 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
Purple Books / Paris
Association Belle Haleine / Paris
$250.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful first printing of this long out-of-print artist book by Mark Borthwick, published in 1999 by Association Belle Haleine and Purple Books in Paris. An intimate, pocket-sized volume that collects together a gorgeous selection of Mark Borthwick's personal and fashion photographs. Mark Borthwick is a British photographer, film-maker and musician now living in Brooklyn, New York. He is among the generation of photographers who in the ’90s broke through the conventions of fashion photography, his distinct style being very light, intuitive and personal. He worked regularly shooting for Purple magazine, Vogue, and collaborated closely with Maison Martin Margiela in the 1990's. This book is in As New condition. Now very collectable.
1985, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), unpaginated, 30 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tsurumakisha / Japan
$200.00 - In stock -
"Increase your pleasure without knowing it! "Libido" is proof that you live a healthy life. For beautiful women!" "Sexual performance that invites pure libido" (from cover)
Exceptionally rare and obscure "Mystery" Japanese photo-collage book by one Osamu Yokota, vividly illustrated cover to cover with full-bleed nude photographic poses combining meditation, yoga, kama sutra set into psychedelic graphic collage, published in 1985! Like a Japanese mix of Penny Slinger's Mountain Ecstasy and John Champ's Yoga For Men, this instructional book is without words (only a short instruction list on the inside of the dust jacket), inviting the viewer to relax to ambient music, pick a page at random and breathe into the poses illustrated by the female instructors to find the cosmic force of "Qi" within. "A mysterious book that increases the power of the pyramid by 250%" (?) Playful hippy studio photography cut to Yokoo-esque cosmic graphic forces — one of a kind!
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket preserved under mylar wrap.
2007, English
Hardcover (w/ 2 cd), 452 pages, 23 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain / Paris
Éditions Xavier Barral / Paris
$350.00 - In stock -
The first major collection of artwork by the acclaimed movie director David Lynch. Rare English-language first hardcover edition of this long out-of-print, comprehensive book, complete with double-CD accompaniment — an interview with David Lynch in which the artist provides a veritable commentary on his works.
Spanning a period of forty years, David Lynch's widely respected films and television series include Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive. However, his prolific visual art production, which began even before his films, has rarely been seen.
In 2007, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presented The Air is on Fire, an expansive retrospective exhibition portraying the multiple facets of David Lynch’s art. It was the first time that the artist exhibited such an extensive number of paintings, photographs, drawings, experimental films, and sound creations.
This lavishly illustrated, deluxe volume unveils David Lynch’s little known yet highly prolific artistic production — a reference work that covers the artist’s different fields of creation: painting, photography, drawing, and motion pictures. His visual creations are aesthetic echoes of his films that offer a new look at his work and the opportunity to plunge deeper into his personal world. Includes many texts and an interview with Lynch. The book is accompanied by the seldom present 2 x audio commentary cds.
Very Good—Near Fine copy. Only some storage buckling and a tiny bit of light wear to the lower front cover, otherwise As New and complete. This is the original printing from the museum, in the English version, scarcer still.
2022, English
Softcover, 368 pages, 12 x 16 cm
Published by
A+m Bookstore / Viaindustriae
$75.00 - In stock -
This book is not a proper catalogue raisonné, but rather an invitation to browse the library of an amateur. It allows us to consider an important aspect of Richard Prince’s work, addressing books as well as the notion of a collection and its incompleteness, revealed here by the “ghosts” of missing books. It encompasses his library and his production of artists’ books over the past four decades, the direct result of an avid book designer and collector who is also widely recognised for his painterly and photographic practice. His zeal for bound works is expressed in many instances where he photographs tomes from his own collection, transforming the publication into an infinite library.
1988, English
Softcover, 118 pages, 33 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Victorian Centre for Photography / Melbourne
$60.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of The Thousand Mile Stare, a photographic exhibition curated by Joyce Agee at The Victorian Centre for Photography, Melbourne, in 1988, presented at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art before touring through Australia in 1989. The exhibition surveys a diverse range of 54 Australian photographers from the previous twenty-five years – traditional photographic genres as well as experimental, commercial and activist uses of the camera – and is intended as a catalyst for debate. According to its curator, Joyce Agee, it aimed to highlight how the "geographic distinctiveness" of Australia brings to its photographic gaze a prophetic, radically distanced quality. Profusely illustrated alongside essays by Joyce Agee, Geoff Strong, Linda Hicks-Williams and others. Geoff Strong’s essay ‘The Melbourne Movement – Fashion and Faction in the Seventies’ outlines the clash of individuals, groups and institutions engaged in photography as a documentary or more self-consciously, artistic medium. Features the work of Carol Jerrems, Sue Ford, Bill Hensen, Fiona Hall, and many more.
Good copy with some tanning and edge wear.
1972, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 48 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Payton / NSW
$65.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of this fantastic, seldom seen issue of Camera Graphics Australia (no. 5), published in May/June 1972, published by Payton, McMahons Point, NSW, featuring the work of Australian photographers Sue Ford, Paul Cox, Greg Weight, Roger Warwick Scott, Rob Walls, Lissa Coote, Stan Ciccone (inc. front cover), illustrated review of Toowoomba '72 International Salon, illustrated review on American documentary photojournalist Leonard Freed's Germany... As well as the featured photographic portfolios, the magazine includes essays, news, reviews for photo books, exhibitions, products, photography/camera related advertising, and more.
Good copy with edge wear to textured card covers, some shallow insect marking to front.
1974, English
Softcover, 142 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Outback Press / Fitzroy
$650.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Carol Jerrems first, only photobook, "A Book About Australian Women", published by the Outback Press in Fitzroy in 1974. This now very collectable Australian photobook classic by Jerrems collects 131 portraits of Australian women dating from 1968 to 1974; 'womens liberationists, Aboriginal spokeswomen, activists, revolutionaries, teachers, students, drop-outs'. Preoccupied by subcultures or marginal groups, she intimately captures pockets of life previously ignored. A dynamic series of images that display Jerrems’ compositional flair, evident in the decorative synergy between foreground and background. The photographs are accompained by text by Virginia Fraser.
Very Good copy with light tanning and edge/spine wear. A wonderful copy of this rare book.
2021, English
Hardcover, 172 pages, 23.5 x 23.5 cm
Ed. of 500,
Published by
M.33 / Melbourne
$70.00 - Out of stock
Published in an edition of 500 and quickly out-of-print, Small Business is a companion volume to David Wadelton’s long out-of-print classic Suburban Baroque — with the focus this time on work rather than domestic spaces.
Designed once again by Yanni Florence and with an accompanying essay by Professor Natalie King OAM, Small Business looks at the small but enduring family-run businesses that are fading away, often tucked away on suburban streets. David Wadelton has gathered a considerable photographic archive of these interiors from all over Melbourne and regional Victoria over the last ten years with a couple of side excursions to iconic interstate locations.
Many of the businesses have traded for decades, and continue to do so even as multi-storey developments and multi-nationals overshadow or consume them. One third of the shops featured in the book have already closed since they were photographed. Many of the interiors depicted are family businesses started by post-war migrants who came to Australia to start a new life and in so doing enriched and transformed our culture. The layouts featured are often pragmatic and utilitarian, arranged decades ago – often without regard for conventional design trends – and left that way. Some were on trend in their day but now look like museum settings. Still others fall on a wide spectrum from spartan, all the way to a tangled disorder that makes sense only to the proprietor. Whatever form taken they are a time-capsule of a generation who toiled in their shop for decades.
This collection is an ode to the overlooked, the obsolete – to those who march to a different drum.
Published in an edition of 500. Out-of-print.
2022, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Ed. of 50,
Published by
Light of Day Books / Melbourne
$10.00 - Out of stock
Empty Shops, 2013-2018 is a 16 page zine of 16 black and white photographs by David Wadelton, the sixth in a series of six artist zines published by Light of Day Books, Melbourne, 2022, in an edition of 50 copies.
David Wadelton’s work is at once a form of archaeological recording and a love letter to Melbourne. His photographs of our city are part celebration, part salvage operation. They are in this, a vital contribution to our civic record and our artistic endeavour.
Wadelton’s work stands proudly in a long line of photographers who have recorded urban architecture with enormous dedication and purpose: historical figures such as Charles Marville and Eugène Atget, Walker Evans and Bern and Hiller Becher. However, Wadelton is perhaps not as clinical and classical in his describing of the built world as these forebears each of whom, more or less, aspired to be a Vitruvius of the vernacular. Wadelton takes all of these measures on board and adds a hint of a more playful meta-photographic element via his longstanding appreciation of the marvellously inventive Lee Friedlander and the equally intrepid Stephen Shore, and the so daft as to be cool and conceptual recording of Melbourne’s own, Robert Rooney. Tellingly, Wadelton’s seemingly neutral records are recognisable, personal signature records that are accessible to all.
Wadelton’s photographs are brimming with information and life. The photographs are not pointing out a world of lowbrow leftovers but instead, celebrate a peculiarly suburban milieu recorded in its fast-fading glory. Full of detail and content rich, his work is deeply generous.
— Patrick Pound 2022
2022, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Ed. of 50,
Published by
Light of Day Books / Melbourne
$10.00 - Out of stock
Brunswick Street, 1981 is a 16 page zine of 16 black and white photographs by Craig McGee, the fifth in a series of six artist zines published by Light of Day Books, Melbourne, 2022, in an edition of 50 copies.
These images of Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne were taken by Craig McGee in the early 1980s when that street had a very different feel to what it has today. McGee called the series The Silent Shops. McGee notes: “There never seemed to be anybody around. Shop doors were often half open and the view inside was often dark and uninviting. They were mostly used by small businesses associated with the rag trade - back when Melbourne had manufacturing industries. The shops were very dilapidated but held the charm of when Fitzroy was a busy working-class suburb”.
For over 40 years McGee has been taking photographs of places that are generally considered unsightly, the outer suburban wastelands, shopping malls, caryards, dirty industry, and the people who live amongst these backdrops. He studied photography at Prahran College, graduating in1981. His work has been exhibited at; Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; Adelaide Centre for Photography, Adelaide; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACCA, Melbourne; and is in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and NGV, Melbourne.