World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2018, English
Softcover, 286 pages, 17 x 23 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$56.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Ernst van Alphen, ‘Failed Images’ attempts to understand the divergence between photography and the reality it portrays, analysing the various ways the photograph transforms that which exists before the camera. Because the photographic medium enables very different practices, which in turn results in many kinds of images, it must also be examined from a perspective outside of the dominant approach to the medium, generally called the “snapshot”. This book therefore explores the photographic image by focusing on practices which refuse this conventional approach, namely staged, blurred, under- and overexposed, and archival photography.
2015, English
Softcover, 56 pages, 20 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Cherry and Martin / Los Angeles
$260.00 - Out of stock
Hal Fischer's Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Homosexual Men (1977) is one of the most important publications associated with California conceptual photography in the 1970s. This long out-of-print and collectible edition from Cherry and Martin perfectly reproduces the look and feel of the original volume, which reconfigured into a book format the 24 text-embedded images of Fischer's 1977 photographic series Gay Semiotics. The photographs in Gay Semiotics present the codes of sexual orientation and identification Fischer saw in San Francisco's Castro and Haight Ashbury districts, ranging from such sexual signifiers as handkerchiefs and keys to depictions of the gay fashion "types" of that era--from "basic-gay" to "hippie" and "jock." Gay Semiotics also features Fischer's critical essay, which is marked by the same wry, anthropological tone found in the image/text configurations. Fischer's book circulated widely, finding a worldwide audience in both the gay and conceptual art communities. Fischer's insistence on the visual equivalence of word and image is a hallmark of the loose photography and language group that included Fischer, Lutz Bacher, Lew Thomas and others working in the San Francisco Bay Area. First published as an artist's book in 1978 by NFS Press, at a time when gay people had been forced to both evaluate and defend their lifestyles, Gay Semiotics earned substantial critical and public recognition. Thirty-seven years later, the book remains a proactive statement from a voice within the gay community from a moment in history just before the devastation wrought by AIDS.
Hal Fischer (born 1950) grew up in Highland Park, Illinois. He arrived in San Francisco in 1975 to pursue an MA in photography at San Francisco State. Through his work as an art reviewer and photographer, he soon became embedded in the Bay Area's artistic and intellectual scene. He continues to live and work in San Francisco.
Out of Print. As New copy.
2021, English
Hardcover, 512 pages, 17 x 24.5 cm
Published by
Lars Müller / Zürich
$100.00 - Out of stock
In the 1890s, the Berlin artist, sculptor and teacher Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) started to photograph plants, seeds and other illustrative material from nature for the purpose of teaching his students about the patterns and designs found in natural forms. His close-ups of the smallest plant parts, magnified up to 30 times their natural size, startle us as they dramatically highlight the geometrical and sculptural properties of plants. Published in 1928, his first collection of photographs, Urformen der Kunst (later translated into English as Art Forms in Nature) became an international bestseller and remains one of the most significant photobooks of the 20th century.
Karl Blossfeldt: Variations is the first monograph to examine the reception of Blossfeldt’s work. Drawing on unpublished materials, it analyzes the photographs’ replication in teaching materials, pattern books, art books and in the pages of the illustrated press. The six sections of the book trace the paths that Blossfeldt’s legendary plant motifs took in their incarnations as specimens, illustrations, patterns, analogues, models and abstractions from 1890 to 1945. Thematic contemporary appraisals illustrating the rediscovery of Blossfeldt's motifs in design and architecture over the past 20 years complement this new perspective on the beloved German photographer.
Ulrike Meyer Stump is a lecturer in the Knowledge Visualisation program in the Department of Design at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland. She holds an MA in Museology from the Ecole du Louvre in Paris and a PhD in Art History from Princeton University. Her work as a writer, editor, and curator focuses on the photographs of Karl Blossfeldt, contemporary photography, and the history of the photo book.
2020, English
Softcover with flaps, 120 pages, 12.5 x 19. 5cm
Published by
MACK / London
$22.00 - Out of stock
"The tension implicit in any photograph is the tension between an inert, black-and-white, two-dimensional object, and an event that actually existed in the phenomenal world. A successful photograph mediates, though never completely resolves that tension.”
In 1972, as his career was beginning to take off, Lewis Baltz conducted a revealing interview, his first considered statement about photography. Never published, the interview has recently resurfaced, and is printed here for the first time. In an increasingly sardonic exchange Baltz describes the character of his practice, articulates his position within and against the world of photography, and comments on his intellectual heritage and professional ambition. A penetrating exploration of the character of his medium, Baltz’s artistry and mercurial presence are strikingly laid bare.
Baltz’s interview is fully annotated with an introductory essay by Duncan Forbes.
DISCOURSE is a series of small books in which a cultural theorist, curator or artist explores a theme, an artwork or an idea in an extended illustrated text.
2020, English
Hardcover, 286 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$69.00 - Out of stock
Australian artist Destiny Deacon, a Kuku and Erub/Mer (North-East Cape York and Torres Strait) woman, is known for having coined the term ‘blak’, in a reclaiming and recasting of a word with myriad connotations of colonialism and prejudice. Her work sits in the uncomfortable but compelling space between comedy and tragedy. Working across photography, video, printmaking, mixed media and installation, Deacon interrogates the way in which Aboriginal people have been, and continue to be, misrepresented within popular culture.
This publication, edited by Myles Russell-Cook, Curator, Indigenous Art at the NGV and curator of the exhibition DESTINY, is the largest in-depth study of Deacon’s practice ever to appear in book form. Through all-blak scholarship and images of Deacon’s work spanning more than thirty years, we gain a strong sense of Deacon as artist and person, and of her enduring fascination with the human condition.
2013, English
Softcover (w. copper book darts), 64 pages, 13 x 20 cm
Ed. of 400,
Published by
The Physics Room Trust / Auckland
$20.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Sesame Seeds is a published work by New Zealand artist John Ward Knox featuring a series of new photographs and text pieces, accompanied by a fictional passage by writer Thomasin Sleigh. Existing independently of an exhibition this research publication quietly explores threads in Knox's practice at its own pace.
Edition of 400 copies.
2017, English / German
Softcover, 144 pages, 21 x 29.5 cm
Published by
Portikus / Frankfurt
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$69.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Fabian Schöneich
Texts by Helke Bayrle, Kirsty Bell, Daniel Birnbaum, Sunah Choi, Nikola Dietrich, Nikolaus Hirsch, Brigitte Kölle, Kasper König, Angelika Nollert, Melanie Ohnemus, Sophie von Olfers, Philippe Pirotte, Fabian Schöneich, Jochen Volz
In 1992, Helke Bayrle began videotaping the installation of each exhibition at the Portikus exhibition space. These videos form a remarkable and intimate archive of the storied Frankfurt contemporary art institution and the exceptional artists and personnel that have worked within it. Coinciding with the launch of a website containing all of Bayrle’s Portikus videos, this publication pays tribute to the artist’s extraordinary work, through a comprehensive timeline, video stills, and statements by past and current directors and curators. Art critic and historian Kirsty Bell writes about the history of Portikus and the meaning of Bayrle’s work. Also included in the book is a conversation with the artist and Sunah Choi, who, since 2001, has edited the videos that comprise Bayrle’s truly unique undertaking.
Copublished with Portikus, Frankfurt am Main
Design by Ronnie Fueglister
2011, English/German
Softcover, 240 pages, 24 x 30 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$79.00 $30.00 - Out of stock
With texts by Sabeth Buchmann, Anselm Franke, Ariane Müller, Branden Joseph, Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Ian White, Axel John Wieder
Poor Man's Expression examines the relationship between film, video, technology, and art, with a particular focus on the reciprocal influences between conceptual art and experimental film. The publication is based on the eponymous exhibition in Berlin in 2006, but represents an independent compendium of texts and images beyond the show. Works, lectures and performances by international artists, created for the exhibition and expanded for the publication, are set alongside historical experimental films from the archive of the Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek in Berlin. The authors and artists respond to the questions that arise as to the semantics of critical and experimental conceptual art, medial representation, and the expansion of a concept of technology towards social functions and psychology; they explore problems of medial control, intellectual property, and a changing concept of the public.
as a point of departure we have assumed that there was once a close relationship between forms that now exist rather separately, namely the realms of visual art, experimental film, literature, poetry, music – and very much the development of technology, too. what is it supposed to mean that 16mm projectors now occupy their luxurious final performance sites at art societies and galleries, while iphone youtube (without open source codecs, to be sure) is the current way to watch a hollis frampton interview.
the other way around, isn’t the gentle entry of the genre of "experimental film" into the realm of "media art" of the 1980s and 1990s itself a transformation analog to general social and medial development brought about by the development of individualization and consumer society? in poor man's expression we have sought, through an advanced setting ("affirmative" neon light surfaces, and the exhibition's "paradoxical" bipartite spatial principle) to address the surrounding "corporate public" architecture of the sony center as well as the film archive deep underground and the dark cinema space of the "avant-garde cinema."
Artists: Stephanie Taylor, Sebestyén Kodolányi, Sebastian Lütgert, Henrik Olesen, Mathias Poledna, Sean Snyder, Daria Martin, Kirsten Pieroth, Martin Ebner, Florian Zeyfang
Images: Anthony Balch, Len Lye, Carolee Schneeman, Bruce Conner, Harry Smith, Joyce Wieland, George Landow, Marie Menken, Ken Jacobs, Rober Breer, Emile Cohl, a.o.
In collaboration with Arsenal Institute for Film and Video art
1967, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 134 pages, 21.5 x 28.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Collins / London
$55.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of David Beal and Donald Horne's 1967 Australian photo book classic, Southern Exposure. Over 100 photographs by photographer David Beal accompany the words of Donald Horne, author of the excoriating 1964 book The Lucky Country, shedding a critical gaze upon the varied, often conflicting facets of Australian life in the mid-late 1960s. Released in a period of great social and political change, Southern Exposure sought to go beyond the touristic ‘gift book’ format of Australiana photography books, to address the new Australian identity that was emerging in the post war period. "Southern Exposure is the most original picture book on Australia yet to be published. It marks a departure from the stereotyped, quasi-official, ‘coffee table’ productions which portray in verbal and visual clichés an idealised picture of Australia. […] ‘We are trying to get down in pictures and words the Australia we see.'"
A must have for any Australian photo book enthusiast.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket with wear (chipping to top of dust jacket back and front top corner, small tears repaired by previous owner) Internally a lovely copy.
2017, English
Paperback, 288 pages, 22 x 21 cm
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$75.00 - Out of stock
This catalogue accompanies a major group show at CCA Wattis in San Francisco, curated by Anthony Huberman. It reflects on ways the “machine” determines how we live and what we believe in. A machine is also a mechanism, not just a physical object but also an abstract ideology. The artworks point to the forms and instruments that make up our technological infrastructure, as well as to the values they are designed to enforce. Contesting a world that rewards efficiency, speed, and productivity, the participating artists test existing systems with inefficient machines, impossible tools, wasted time, and elaborate protocols that misalign outputs and inputs.
Artists: Zarouhie Abdalian, Terry Atkinson, Lutz Bacher, Eva Barto, Neïl Beloufa, Patricia L. Boyd, Jay DeFeo, Trisha Donnelly, Harun Farocki, Richard Hamilton, Aaron Flint Jamison, Jacob Kassay, Garry Neill Kennedy, Louise Lawler, Park McArthur, Jean-Luc Moulène, Pope.L, Charlotte Posenenske, Cameron Rowland, Danh Vo
Designed by Julie Peeters and Scott Ponik this catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes an essay by the curator as well as sections created by each artist. It is co-published with Roma Publications (Amsterdam).
2005, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 Pages, 14 x 20 cm
Ed. of 200,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Nieves / Zurich
$100.00 $50.00 - Out of stock
Rare photocopy zine published by Ari Marcopoulos and Nieves in 2005 in a limited edition of 200 copies.
Ari Marcopoulos (born 1957) is an Amsterdam-born photographer and filmmaker, living and working in New York and California. As a photographer, film artist and adventurist, Marcopoulos, who began his career in New York City assisting Andy Warhol, transplants himself into the intimate lives of people living on the edge. Artists, snowboarders, musicians and skateboarders have been both muses and commercial subject-matter throughout his quarter century career as a photographer. His stunning landscapes and playful portraiture offer a dramatic take on every day life, and a glimpse into all things awesome.
Good copy with some wear.
2005, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 Pages, 14 x 20 cm
Ed. of 100,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Nieves / Zurich
$80.00 - Out of stock
Very rare photocopied zine published by Ed Templeton and Nieves in 2005 in an edition of 100 hand-numbered copies.
Ed Templeton was born in Orange County, a sprawling suburb of Los Angeles. He became interested in skateboarding when he was in junior high school and devoted all his time to it. Templeton’s interest in fine art began as a teen with shopping mall books about canonical painters such as Picasso, Dali, but it was his later discovery of Egon Schiele that would have a profound effect on him. Templeton eventually became a professional skateboarder, which allowed him opportunities to tour Europe. While there, he spent every free moment absorbing its galleries and art museums. Soon after, he realized his first exhibition, a skateboard art show in Chicago. Templeton is owner and creative director for his company, Toy Machine Bloodsucking Skateboard Company. He has also executed design work for Spin, as well as Grand Royal, Geffen and Factory Records. Templeton considers his painting and photography pursuits separate from his skateboarding and design work, which is more graphic based. He has exhibited his work worldwide including exhibitions at Alleged Gallery, New York, Roberts and Tilton, Los Angeles, Modern Art, London, and Aki-X Gallery, Tokyo. Solo museum exhibitions include Museum Het Domein, Netherlands (2000), and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2002). Templeton currently lives and works in Huntington Beach, California.
Good copy with marking and wear to covers/spine.
1974, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 168 pages, 29.6 x 19.9 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions du Chene / Paris
$400.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first 1974 hardcover edition of Repérages, the wonderful photographic study by acclaimed French film director, Alain Renais. Repérages is a volume of Renais' photographs, taken between 1948 and 1971, of locations in London, Scotland, Paris, Nevers, Lyon, New York and Hiroshima. Some of the photographs relate to a long-cherished but unfulfilled idea for a film based on the Harry Dickson stories by Jean Ray. A very special, seldom seen photo collection for anyone interested in the work of Resnais. Introductory text by Jorge Semprun.
Very Good copy in VG dj.
2017, English / Portuguese
Softcover, 220 pages, 18 x 25 cm
Published by
Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art / Porto
$62.00 - Out of stock
American artist Gordon Matta-Clark is perhaps best known for the site-specific artworks he made in the 1970s. His body of work includes performance and recycling pieces, space and texture works, and his “building cuts”. Matta-Clark used a number of media to document his work, such as film, video, and photography, much of which appears in this catalogue, itself published on the occasion of an eponymous exhibition at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, and Culturgest, Lisbon. The attractively designed book includes numerous of the artist’s own sketches and plans for various works, plus letters and other material that together form an in-depth portrait.
2018, English / Portuguese
Hardcover, 400 pages, 32 x 25 cm
Published by
Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art / Porto
$130.00 - Out of stock
This luxurious comprehensive catalogue, lavishly illustrated, brings together works from throughout the artist’s career, from early collages and Polaroids, to the images of flowers, nudes, sexuality and portraits that made him one of the most notable photographers of the last century.
Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) took his first photographs using a Polaroid camera. His first Polaroids were self-portraits and the first of a series of portraits of his close friend, the singer-artist-poet Patti Smith. These early photographic works were generally shown in groups or elaborately presented in shaped and painted frames that were as significant to the finished piece as the photograph itself. Then he acquired a large format press camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. These included artists, composers, socialites, pornographic film stars and members of the S & M underground. Some of these photographs were shocking for their content but exquisite in their technical mastery. During the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe’s photographs began a shift toward a phase of refinement of subject and an emphasis on classical formal beauty. During this period he concentrated on statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and formal portraits of artists and celebrities.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, from September 20, 2018, to January 6, 2019.
Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) took his first photographs using a Polaroid camera. His first Polaroids were self-portraits and the first of a series of portraits of his close friend, the singer-artist-poet Patti Smith. These early photographic works were generally shown in groups or elaborately presented in shaped and painted frames that were as significant to the finished piece as the photograph itself. Then he acquired a large format press camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. These included artists, composers, socialites, pornographic film stars and members of the S & M underground. Some of these photographs were shocking for their content but exquisite in their technical mastery. During the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe's photographs began a shift toward a phase of refinement of subject and an emphasis on classical formal beauty. During this period he concentrated on statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and formal portraits of artists and celebrities.
2005, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 504 pages, 26 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Scalo Publishers / Zürich
Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney
$450.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the major 500-plus page, highly collectible mid-career survey book on Australian photographer Bill Henson, "Mnemosyne", published by Scalo in Zürich on the occasion of the artist’s retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney in 2005, which toured to the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, that same year. This comprehensive hardcover volume lavishly reproduces all of Henson's major bodies of work to date, alongside essays by Judy Annear, Jennie Boddington, Edmund Capon, Dennis Cooper, Peter Craven, Isobel Crombie, John Forbes, Michael Heyward, Alwynne Mackie, David Malouf, Bernice Murphy, Peter Schjeldahl, and an interview with Bill Henson by Sebastian Smee.
"Sometimes, but very rarely these days, one can announce a real discovery in contemporary photography — a book that will emphatically place its author on the international map on the same level as such giants of photography as Robert Frank and Nan Goldin. After the international success of Lux et Nox Scalo is proud and excited to announce the definitive mid-life retrospective book on Australian artist Bill Henson. The book combines all groups of work that Henson has created up to the present: from his early Ballet pictures (1974), to his body and nude portraits (1977–1986), from his photographs of street-crowds (1979–1982) to his Baroque Triptychs (1983–84), from his fantastic combinations of pictures taken in the Australian Suburbs and Egypt (1985/86) to his Los Angeles and New York nightscapes (1987–88), from his famous cut-out collages shown at the centenary Venice Biennale in 1995, to the portraits of adolescents and his magical color compositions for the Paris Opera (1990/91), and, most recently, a haunting selection of his images of children adrift in the wilderness of night (1997-2004), many of these appearing for the first time. Bill Henson is a continent in photography to be discovered. This book will be one of Scalo’s major contributions to the understanding of contemporary photography. Published on the occasion of the artist’s retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, opening January 2005 and touring to the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne in April." — publisher's blurb
Very Good copy with minor edge and dust jacket wear from light handing/storage.
1983, Japanese
Hardcover (clothbound w. dustjacket), 152 pages, 20.5 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Orion Press / Tokyo
$160.00 - Out of stock
Rare, exquisitely designed and produced book dedicated entirely to the photography of the German artist Hans Bellmer (13 March 1902 – 23 February 1975), best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. "Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz, then part of the German Empire (now Katowice, Poland). Up until 1926, he'd been working as a draftsman for his own advertising company. He initiated his doll project to oppose the fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the new German state. Represented by mutated forms and unconventional poses, his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany. Bellmer was influenced in his choice of art form by reading the published letters of Oskar Kokoschka (Der Fetisch, 1925)."
Produced in French by Editions Filipacchi, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Musee National D'art Moderne in Paris in 1983, this very scarce Japanese printing (produced and printed in Japan that same year) features a different cover, with translations to the Japanese language of the introductory essay and texts. Densely illustrated with amazing and beautifully printed colour and black and white photography of Bellmer's dolls, many studies of the female nude, and photography of objects and sculptural assemblages, this book is a wonderful volume capturing an important Surrealist visionary of our time through his stunning photography.
Very good copy in dust-jacket, age tanning to edges/cover,
wear/small chipping to jacket corners.
2013, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 84 pages, 26 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
D.A.P. / New York
$400.00 $100.00 - In stock -
First edition of California Surfing and Climbing in the Fifties, published in 2013, immediately out of print and now highly sought after in this first edition. (This title was reprinted later in the now common edition, due to demand).
Visually stunning slice of American cultural history told in (mostly) black and white photography, California Surfing and Climbing in the Fifties takes place against the backdrop of postwar America: Truman and Eisenhower, the Korean War, the Cold War and the Red Scare; Elvis Presley, Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando et al. It traces the popularization of surfing along the California coast, as traditional, heavy balsawood boards were replaced with lightweight polyurethane foam, fiberglass, and resin; at the same time, ambitious climbers were developing equipment that would go on to set new technique and safety standards, using their own homemade gear to descend Tahquitz Rock in the south, Yosemite Valley to the north. This volume is packed with images of legendary surfers (Joe Quigg, Tom Zahn, Dale Velzy and Renny Yater) and famous climbers (Warren Harding, Royal Robbins and Wayne Merry among others), their groundbreaking adventures, photographed by legends like Bob Swift, Alan Steck, Jerry Gallwas, and Frank Hoover.
Soaked in surf, sun and adrenaline, the photographs in California Surfing and Climbing in the Fifties depict the birth of an era and an exhilarating moment in Californian history, whilst incidentally becoming a highly desired style reference.
Text by Yvon Chouinard, Steve Pezman, Steve Roper.
Fine. New copy but with some light shelf wear to the thick, publisher-issued frosted transparent jacket.
2019, English
Softcover, 110 pages, 23 x 28 cm
Published by
Anthology Editions / Brooklyn
$69.00 - Out of stock
In 1968, Magnum photographer Dennis Stock took a five-week road trip along the California highways, documenting the height of the counterculture hippie scene. These black and white photos were compiled to create California Trip, originally published in 1970, and became an emblem of the free love movement that continued to inspire throughout the decades. In print for the first time since its 1970 publication, California Trip is a faithful reproduction of Stock’s timeless work.
Dennis Stock was a celebrated American photographer, noted for his photo essays. His portfolio had a massive range and included many timeless pieces of work such as the free love movement of California, jazz, nature, and portrait work of icons such as James Dean and Billie Holiday. His photography has been exhibited all over the world, and his photos are part of many major museum collections. He won first prize in both Life’s Young Photographers Contest in 1951 and the International Photo Competition in Poland in 1962. Stock passed away in 2010.
1998, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 79 pages, 22 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Korinsha Press / Japan
$140.00 - Out of stock
First Japanese edition of this wonderful hardcover, clothbound volume that collects the printed material of Comme des Garçons between 1982 and 1997. Archiving their most iconic posters, "Six", advertisements for magazines, a poster for the opening of the flagship store in Tokyo Aoyama, invitation cards for fashion shows, and greeting cards. Includes the work of Peter Lindbergh, Cindy Sherman, Enzo Cucchi, Gilbert & George, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Kishin Shinoyama, Paolo Roversi, Claude Cahun, André Kertesz, Weegee, James Lee Byars, Louise Nevelson, Lilo Hess, Georg Fischer, Jesus Rafael Soto, Gerhard Richter, and so many more.
Text by Art Historian France Grand (in Japanese).
Art directed by Tsuguya Inoue, known for his iconic work as art director at Comme des Garçons, Suntory, Parco and many others.
Design by Kentaro Kobayashi.
Printed and bound in Italy.
Very Good copy with dust jacket. Light tanning to spine. Signature to front end paper we cannot decipher ("... Tokyo '98").
2018, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 25 x 18 cm
Published by
Hehe / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
Published with an exhibition at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, this profoundly poignant collection of photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki focuses on a single theme from his vast oeuvre: his wife Yoko. As Araki himself has said, “It’s thanks to Yoko that I became a photographer”. From their first encounter in 1968 until her premature death from ovarian cancer in 1990, Yoko was his most important subject and muse. The book explores Araki’s relationship with the woman he most treasured, beginning with his record of their honeymoon, and continuing with numerous photos in which she is the subject, as well as many others from after her passing that give a strong sense of her presence.
2018, English
Softcover,168 pages, 25.4 x 25.4 cm
Out of print title / as new
Published by
Karma / New York
$80.00 - In stock -
Now out-of-print second edition of Women with Cameras (Anonymous), a new artist's book by Anne Collier (born 1970), with a text by Hilton Als (winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism), that consists of a sequence of 80 images of found amateur photographs that each depict a female subject in the act of holding a camera or taking a photograph.
Dating from the 1970s to the early 2000s, these artifacts of the pre-digital age were collected by Collier over a number of years from flea markets, thrift stores and online market places. Each of these photographs has, at some point in the recent past, been discarded by its original owner. The concept of "abandonment," of photographic images and the personal histories that they represent, is central to Women with Cameras (Anonymous), which amplifies photography's relationship with memory, melancholia and loss. The sequence of the images in Collier's book follows the format of her 35mm slide projection work Women with Cameras (Anonymous) (2016), that was recently shown to great acclaim in Tokyo, Japan, and Basel, Switzerland.
Printed in two editions with different covers by Karma (both 1,500 copies), both are out-of-print. This is the second edition. Sealed As New copy.
2020, English / French
Softcover, 168 pages, 17 x 23.9 cm
Published by
Dancing Fox Press
National Gallery of Canada / Ontario
$54.00 - Out of stock
Over the past 40 years, Canadian artist Moyra Davey (born 1958) has perfected a unique synthesis of photography, film and text to critically engage with the past, present and future of the world around her. Based on Davey’s eponymous 2019 film, I Confess unites three main sources in a chronicle of late 20th-century Quebec, shaped by themes of race, poverty, language and nationalism. Using American writer James Baldwin’s 1962 novel Another Country as its point of departure, Davey’s film also focuses on the life and work of Québécois revolutionary Pierre Vallières and Ottawa-based political philosopher Dalie Giroux.
Published to accompany the exhibition Moyra Davey: The Faithful at the National Gallery of Canada, this deeply personal and highly political book seeks to examine an unresolved chapter of Québécois history from a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective that draws attention to contemporary issues of separatism, while reflecting the artist's understanding of photography and text as unique corollaries. This publication features writings by the artist, Dalie Giroux and National Gallery of Canada’s Associate Curator Andrea Kunard, and a poster insert.
2020, English
Hardcover, 432 pages, 25 x 30 cm
Published by
Hirmer / Münich
$100.00 - Out of stock
Comprehensive hardcover catalogue published to accompany the first major presentation of women surrealist artists at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk. This groundbreaking exhibition shows that women played a more important and numerous role in Surrealism than in any other artistic avant-garde movement. Mostly connected through their association with Surrealist co-founder André Breton, Surrealism nurtured a prolific group of women artists who actively took part in the seminal exhibitions and publications of the day and expanded the formulations of the movement, taking on different roles in search for a (new) model of female and artistic identity. This expansive exhibition and catalogue revisits their diverse Imaginaries and underlines the consistency of their social and even political positions, spanning networks from Europe/UK to the US and Mexico.
“On the whole, the [Surrealist] movement in many ways strikes as decidedly ‘feminine’, since it rejected all traditionally masculine, patriarchal, and imperialist structures,” notes curator Dr. Ingrid Pfeiffer. This scholarly exhibition reveals how the movement was shaped by many more female artists than art historians have hitherto recognized.
Profusely illustrated throughout with essays by Patricia Allmer, Tere Arcq, Kirsten Degel, Heike Eipeldauer, Annabelle Görgen-Lammers, Rebecca Herlemann, Karoline Hille, Silvano Levy, Alyce Mahon, Christiane Meyer-Thoss, Laura Neve, Ingrid Pfeiffer, and Gabriel Weisz Carrington as well as biographies of the individual artists.
Artists featured : Eileen Agar, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Rachel Baes, Louise Bourgeois, Emmy Bridgwater, Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun, Maya Deren, Germaine Dulac, Nusch Éluard, Leonor Fini, Graverol, Valentine Hugo, Frida Kahlo, Rita Kernn-Larsen, Greta Knutson, Jacqueline Lamba, Sheila Legge, Dora Maar, Emila Medková, Lee Miller, Suzanne Muzard, Meret Oppenheim, Valentine Penrose, Alice Rahon, Edith Rimmington, Kay Sage, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jeannette Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning, Elsa Thoresen, Bridget Tichenor, Toyen, Remedios Varo, Unica Zürn