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.
1977, English
Softcover, 56 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NFS Press / San Francisco
$600.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce first 1977 edition of Hal Fischer's Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Homosexual Men (1977), one of the most important publications associated with California conceptual photography in the 1970s. 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. He was soon featured in the important group exhibition Photography and Language. 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.
First edition, Good copy with general light wear and tanning to page/cover edges.
2013, English
Hardcover, 288 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$58.00 - Out of stock
Since the late 1980s, Jean-Luc Moulène (b. 1955) has developed a body of work informed by a critical investigation of artistic authorship, addressing such issues as autonomy, immanence, and anarchic politics. Although he is best known for his enigmatic and seductive large-format photographs, Moulene has maintained a parallel exploration of materials and objects-manufactured and found, industrial and organic, intimate and imposing-that he has collectively titled Opus. This book, the first critical study of Moulene's work, brings together leading scholars to examine the artist's diverse aesthetic strategies and interests in the relationships between social and political arenas and systems and orders, including geometry, mathematics, social sciences, and human behavior. Featured essays also examine Moulene's theoretical and playful inquiries into the plasticity of materials and the ways we see and understand both still and moving images.
2017, English
Hardcover, 258 pages, 20 x 25.5 cm
Published by
Park Books / Zürich
$75.00 - Out of stock
For more than thirty years, photographer Simon Phipps has carried out a project to document the brutalist buildings of Great Britain, amassing an extraordinary collection of photographs and historic documents that make clear the enormous contribution of architects to the transformation of the country in the postwar period. Finding Brutalism brings together 150 of these photographs. The buildings pictured date from the 1950s to the 1980s, and are striking for how they juxtapose buildings and architectural fragments, evoking the distinct atmosphere of brutalism. Rounding out the book is an essay that situates brutalism within the context of British architecture and recognizes Phipps's own contribution to its reception.
Great Britain underwent a massive rebuilding effort in the aftermath of World War II, with a wealth of new construction that reached virtually all parts of the country and ranged from public and private housing to schools and universities, churches, museums, galleries, commercial buildings, and even entire new towns. Architects took the opportunity to experiment with innovative layouts and new materials and techniques, resulting in radical new forms and buildings of outstanding quality, which we now associate with brutalism.
Published to accompany a recent exhibition at the Museum im Bellpark near Lucerne, Switzerland, Finding Brutalism is a remarkable achievement of preservation that will appeal to anyone interested in the history of architecture, and the illustrated and detailed catalogue of featured buildings makes it a perfect travel book as well.
Edited by Hilar Stadler and Andreas Hertach. Photographs by Simon Phipps. With contributions by Catherine Ince and Owen Hatherley, and a conversation with Kate Macintosh by Stephen Parnell
1990, Engish
Softcover (w. printed vellum dust jacket), 96 pages, 28 x 28 cm
Ed. of 2500 copies,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Grey Art Gallery & Study Center / New York
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition 1990 Peter Hujar monographic catalogue published to accompany the exhibition at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University in Greenwich Village from January 17 to February 24, 1990, curated by Thomas Sokolowski. Profusely illustrated throughout with Hujar's photographic works, accompanied by an essay by Stephen Koch and extensive interviews with Hujar by Fran Lebowitz and Vince Aletti. Includes biographical sketch, exhibition history and checklist with exhibited 130 works, wrapped in printed vellum dust jacket.
Peter Hujar (1934–1987) is best known for his powerful and piercing portraits of personalities, famous and behind the scenes, animals, and wrecked cars. Ranging from glamorous studio portraits to the dark
still portraits from the catacombs of Palermo, Italy, shot in 1963, when he was there with his lover at the time, the artist Paul Thek. Hujar’s work is known for the texture and poignancy with which he explores decay, sexuality, death, and the life we share in common. As Nan Goldin writes, “Looking at his photographs of nude men, even of a naked baby boy, is the closest I ever came to experience what it is to inhabit male flesh. His photographs of animals have that same rare empathy, they are like highly personal portraits.” Hujar’s celebrity was, is, and always will be associated with a downtown bohemia that flourished in New York between the late nineteen-sixties and the onset of the aids plague. Tall and handsome, volatile, epically promiscuous, and chronically broke, he had a starry constellation of close friends, including Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag and lover/friend David Wojnarowicz. That period left no image more memorable and subtly profound than Hujar’s of the transgender performer and Warhol’s Factory regular Candy Darling, made in 1973, in the hospital bed where she was dying of lymphoma. One of the major American photographers of the late twentieth century, Hujar's work has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Fotomuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland, PS1 New York, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Fundación Mapfre Barcelona, Fotomuseum The Hague, The Morgan Library & Museum, and Berkeley Art Museum, amongst others.
Very Good copy with Very Good dust jacket. Binding becoming brittle with time.
1985, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 20.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Currey O'Neil / Melbourne
$80.00 - Out of stock
First edition of award winning Australian photographer Rennie Ellis' cult classic photo-book, "Life's A Ball", published in Melbourne in 1985, shortly after his "Life's a Beach" and "Life's a Beer". A book entirely dedicated to the ecstatic and delirious world of (mostly) Melbourne parties in the 1980s. "You will probably see more flesh than you can stand in this paean of pulchritude, this fanfare of fun, this roll call of rort, this ... ah well, this collection from an apparently inexhaustible supply of eye-popping pictures". As always, a joyous time-capsule of Australian society and culture.
No other photographer has documented Australian society in such depth and with such insight into the human condition as Rennie Ellis. Active from the 1970s until his death in 2003, Rennie Ellis' non-judgmental approach was his 'access-to-all-areas' pass. Ellis used his camera as a key to open the doors to the social arenas of the rich and famous and to enter the underbelly of the nightclubs, bearing witness to the indulgences and excesses. In today's post-Henson era, these captured moments offer an intimate access to an Australia tantalisingly, but sadly, now almost out of reach.
Good copy with some spotting to title pages, light wear to covers.
1987, English
Softcover, unpaginated folio (black & white ill.), 27.9 x 36.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Fashion Institute of Technology / New York
$160.00 - Out of stock
Extremely rare over-sized 1987 publication to accompany the exhibition, "Three Women: Madeleine Vionnet, Claire McCardell, and Rei Kawakubo" at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York (February 24 through April 18, 1987). This elegant, oversized folio features full-page black and white photography and texts by Harold Koda, Richard Martin, and Laura Sinderbran to profile the careers of fashion designers Madeleine Vionnet, Claire McCardell, and Rei Kawakubo.
Madeleine Vionnet (1876 – 1975) was a French fashion designer. Called the "Queen of the bias cut" and "the architect among dressmakers", Vionnet is best known today for her elegant Grecian-style dresses and for introducing the bias cut to the fashion world.
Claire McCardell (1905–1958) was an American fashion designer in the arena of ready-to-wear clothing in the 20th century. From the 1930s to the 1950s, she was known for designing functional, affordable, and stylish women’s sportswear within the constraints of mass-production, and is today acknowledged as the creator of the "American Look", a democratic and casual approach to fashion that rejected the formality of French couture.
Rei Kawakubo (1942 -) is a Japanese fashion designer, and founder of Comme des Garçons, one of Japan's most iconic fashion labels. Not formally trained in fashion, but rather fine arts and literature, Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons is well known for its anti-fashion, austere, sometimes deconstructed garments. During the 1980s, her garments were primarily in black, dark grey or white; the materials were often draped around the body and featured frayed, unfinished edges along with holes and a general asymmetrical shape. Challenging the established notions of beauty she created an uproar at her debut Paris fashion show where journalists labeled her clothes 'Hiroshima chic' amongst other things.
Good-Very Good - light creasing.
2019, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 20 x 27 cm
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$18.00 - Out of stock
Catalog accompanying the second part of a diptych exhibition in S.M.A.K., Ghent, curated by Martin Germann and Tanja Boon. Contains an introduction by the exhibition’s curators together with additional essays and texts on the artists participating.
The first chapter, Other Pictures, questioned the special potential of the still image. In Signal or Noise the gaze is turned inwards and explores the camera as a metaphor for human existence. Photography is to a large extent produced by machines. The reading of an image thus also requires knowledge of the technological development of the discipline, especially because photography has gradually anchored itself in the social sphere. The more images and their environment merge, the more signal and noise become interchangeable. Readable, manipulated and hidden information are increasingly difficult to distinguish from one another, yet are of equal importance in our visual culture. The myth of photographic transparency seems to be irreversibly lost in a mass of pixels, bits and algorithms.
Artists : Tony Cokes, Forensic Architecture, Lynn Hershman Leeson, David Horvitz, Aaron Flint Jamison, Louise Lawler, Sharon Lockhart, Hana Miletić, Jean-Luc Moulène, Sondra Perry, Marina Pinsky, Seth Price, R. H. Quaytman and Thomas Ruff
Design: Roger Willems.
1993, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 88 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Pataphysics Books / Melbourne
$33.00 - Out of stock
Out of print 1993 issue of the great Pataphysics magazine from Melbourne.
Question: It has been suggested that autobiography, as with letters, establishes the moments of arrival as being critical. What are you currently working on?
Responses from John Cage, Sylvčre Lotringer, Brigitte Engler, Gerald Murnane, Achille Bonito Oliva, Carl Andre, Bernard Heidsieck, Tory Dent, Gregory Botts, Laurance Wiedler, Alex Katz, Harry Zohn, Chris Kraus, Paul Violi, Laura Mullen, John Giorno, Juan Davila, Larry Clark (B&W photographs), Bob Black, Judith Elliston, Sarah Morris, Richard Kostelanetz, John Nixon, Leon Golub, Pete Spence, Javant Biarujia, Daniel Shapiro, Ania Walwicz, Stephen Bram, Charles North, Graeme Hare, David Shapiro, Brian Aldiss.
Published by Leo Edelstein and Yanni Florence in Melbourne, 1993, and long out of print. Fine copies.
1977, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 20 x 13.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Delta / US
$25.00 - Out of stock
Delta edition of Susan Sontag's On Photography - a seminal and groundbreaking work on the subject of photography.
Susan Sontag's groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this art form. Photographs are everywhere, and the 'insatiability of the photographing eye' has profoundly altered our relationship with the world. Photographs have the power to shock, idealize or seduce, they create a sense of nostalgia and act as a memorial, and they can be used as evidence against us or to identify us. In these six incisive essays, Sontag examines the ways in which we use these omnipresent images to manufacture a sense of reality and authority in our lives.
'Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites' - The Times
'A brilliant analysis of the profound changes photographic images have made in our way of looking at the world, and at ourselves' - Washington Post
'The most original and illuminating study of the subject' - New Yorker
One of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.
Very Good copy of the Delta edition (1977).
1985, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 44 pages, 27 x 33 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$35.00 - Out of stock
Tension 6 (Jan / Feb 1985) features "Gilded Lillies : Photographs of Fashion '84" - a spread of Australian fashion runways shot by Ashley Evans and Andrea Paton, John Lydon / Public Image, Lisa Lyon (interviewed by Faye Maxwell with illustrations by Katsu and photography by Robert Mapplethorpe), David Sylvian, Vivienne Shark Lewitt, poet Gerard Malanga, "On Location In Love" by Ted Colless, reviews of Videodrome and Metropolis by Adrian Martin, architectural drawings, and much more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1985, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 32 pages, 27 x 33 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$30.00 - Out of stock
Tension 7 (May 1985) features Brian Eno, Reg Mombassa, Eiko Ishioka, Nick Cave, Brian De Palma, David Puttnam, Peter York, Bashir Baraki's portraits of Peter Booth and Robert Rooney, and more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1987, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 50 pages, 27 x 33 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$30.00 - Out of stock
Tension 11 (Images - Ideas - Style : Jan / Feb 1987) features Brett Whiteley (interview by Phillip Adams), Stieg Persson (interview by Ashley Crawford), Jean-Marc Lepechoux (interview by Ashley Crawford), Peter Greenaway (interview by Ashley Crawford), Derek Jarman (interview by Melanie Brellis), "Godard, Mieville" (by Adrian Martin), Elfi Mikesch & Monika Trent (interview by Amree Hewitt), Neil Jordon, gallerists Mary Boone & Michael Werner (by Paul Taylor), RAW : Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly (interview by Kerri Phillips), Run DMC / Def Jam Records (by Peter Grace), and much more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1987, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 23.5 x 33.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$30.00 - Out of stock
Tension 12 (Australian and International Arts : December 1987) features Geoff Lowe (interview by Ashley Crawford), Jim Jarmusch (interview by Kerry Doole), Lindy Lee (by Ted Colless), Wim Wenders (by Melanie Brellis), "Images from Japan" (by Ashley Crawford), Nick Cave (interview by Melanie Brellis), 4AD Records (interview by Bruce Elder), Trisha Brown (interview by Shelley Lasica), Syd Mead (interview by Chad Taylor), "Dennis Hopper: Out of the Sixties" by Robin Barden, "Television: A New Aesthetic", Paul Morley's ASK reviewed by McKenzie Wark, and much more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1988, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 44 pages, 23.5 x 33.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$30.00 - Out of stock
Tension 13 (Australian and International Arts : June 1988) features John Nixon (by Sue Cramer), Maria Kozic (by Adrian Martin), Jenny Watson (by Rose Lang), Robert Mapplethorpe (by Paul Taylor), Julian Schnabel (by Paul Taylor), "Masterpieces of Medical Photography", "Curatorial Strategies", exhibition reviews, and much more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1988, English
Softcover, 44 pages, 23 x 33 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
$30.00 - Out of stock
Tension 14 (September 1988) features Barbara Kruger by Adrian Martin, Sophie Calle & Jean Baudrillard by Adrian Martin, William Claxton - Jazz Photography by Terence Hogan, A Short Ride In A Fast Machine / Catalogue Essay by Chris McAuliffe, Bill Henson / Quickening With The Eye by Ashley Crawford, Dale Frank / A Storm In A Teacup? by Jennifer McCamley, Sylvere Lotringer / The Diaghilev Of Deconstruction by Andrew Olds, David Salle / Discord, Wit & Drama by Paul Taylor, PM, Phone Home / Post Modern Film by Adrian Martin, Scott Redford / Avant Garde Or Mud Guard? by Ashley Crawford, plus more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1989, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 56 pages, 23.5 x 33.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$25.00 - Out of stock
TENSION 16 (Australian and International Arts : May 1989) features articles on Robert Hunter, Lyndal Jones, Malcolm McLaren, Robert Pearce, Andy Warhol, "AIDS, ARTS & SOCIETY", "Trash & Junk Culture" by Adrian Martin w. Philip Brophy, Maria Kozic, Andrew and Ian Haig, "The Liberated Page", "Nightwatch" by Ted Colless, Tim Burns, Angus Jones, Bette Mifsud, and more.
Good copy but cover torn.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1989, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 72 pages, 23.5 x 33.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$30.00 - Out of stock
TENSION 17 (Australian and International Arts : August 1989) features articles on Mike Brown, Peter Halley, Cindy Sherman, Jon Cattapan, Jan Nelson, Paul Boston, Adam Rish, Carole Roberts, Luke Roberts, Carlo Mollino, "The Art of Photography", "Video", Horst, "The Designers' Designers" by Emma Dent Coed (on the art directors, designers, and visual marketing behind fashion designers such as Yohji Yamamoto, Dries Van Noten, John Galliano, Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons, etc. inc. Peter Saville, Nick Knight, etc.), and "Aboriginal Art Now : A Survey of Artists and Issues", inc. the work of Gordon Bennett, Jarinyanu David Downs, Rover Thomas, Trevor Nickolls, Tim Johnson, a review by Lin Onus, and more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1989, English
Softcover (staple bound), 72 pages, 23.3 x 33.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$30.00 - Out of stock
Tension 18 includes features on Peter Tyndall by Ashley Crawford, Howard Arkley by Richard Brown, Recent Australian Painting by Charles Green, Robert McPherson by Ingrid Perez, Neil Emmerson by Chris McAuliffe, Colin McCahon by Tony Green, Imants Tillers by Jenny Harper, Ken Orchard by Nicholas Baume, Robert Jesson by Ashley Crawford, reviews on Jenny Watson/Lindy Lee/Maria Kozic, John Dunkley-Smith, Brent Harris, Herb Ritts, and so much more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1990, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 88 pages, 23.5 x 33.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$30.00 - Out of stock
TENSION 19 (SPECIAL EDITION : FROM LEANTIME TO DREAMTIME - A CHRONICLE OF AUSTRALIAN ART 1980-1989) packs a concise year-by-year look-back at the exhibitions, artists, galleries, concerts, performances, publications, clubs, politics, influences that shaped Australian Art in the 1980s, compiled "in one week". Features contributions from writers Catherine Lumby, Charles Green, Chris McAuliffe, and Francis Pound (looking at NZ Art) and features the work of far too many artists to mention.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1990, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 72 pages, 23.5 x 33.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
$30.00 - Out of stock
TENSION 20 ("Avant-Garde Art In The USSR" - Australian and International Arts : March 1990) features texts by Elizabeth Newman and Imants Tillers, articles on Julian Schnabel, Cyberspace, Peter Greenaway, Frida Kahlo, "Peewee meets Robocop : Films of the '80s" by Adrian Martin, "Towards a Post-Pop Language : Books of the '80s" by McKenzie Wark, and a huge cover feature "Avant-Garde Art In The USSR", with essays by Meryl Ryan, Ashley Crawford, Viktor Misiano, Dmitry Prigov, and Elena Pivovarova. Plus, news, letters, reviews (Kosuth, Nixon, etc.) and much more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
2018, English
Softcover, 188 pages, 20 x 26 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
Kunsthalle Wien / Vienna
$45.00 - Out of stock
Guy Mees’s (1935–2003) photographs, videos, and above all his fragile works on paper are characterized by a formal rigor combined with sensitivity and delicacy. The uniqueness of his oeuvre lies precisely in its avoidance of conventional aesthetics and discursive classifications. A leading figure of the Belgian avant-garde, Mees left behind an outstanding body of work that transgresses geometric abstraction, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and applied art.
The Weather is Quiet, Cool, and Soft is published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (February 1–April 8, 2018), and at Mu.ZEE, Ostend (November 25, 2018–March 10, 2019). Borrowed from a note the artist jotted down on one of his works on paper, the title pays homage to the atmospheric impermanence of Mees’s works, as well as his infra-ordinary, relativistic, and poetic approach. With emblematic works and unpublished archival materials from the artist’s creative phases spanning the 1960s to 2000s, the publication emphasizes the idiosyncrasy and significance of Mees’s practice and personality. These are complemented by two new essays by Lilou Vidal and François Piron; a translation of a text by Fernand Spillemaeckers from the 1970s; and an interview conducted with Mees’s friend and accomplice Wim Meuwissen, his long-standing gallerist Micheline Szwajcer, and Dirk Snauwaert, who produced the first retrospective and a definitive monograph dedicated to Mees’s work.
Edited by Lilou Vidal
Texts by François Piron, Fernand Spillemaeckers, Lilou Vidal, Wim Meuwissen, Dirk Snauwaert, Micheline Szwajcer
Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien
Design by Joris Kritis
2018, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 16.5 x 24 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$59.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
The words on the cover of Aslan Gaisumov’s first monograph are names of places no longer inhabited. The tens of thousands of people who used to live in the mountainous Galain-Chaz district of southern Chechnya were deported by the Soviet authorities in the winter of 1944, wrongly accused of having collaborated with Nazi Germany. One of these words, Kayçu-Yuxe or Keicheyuhea, names the birthplace of Zayanu Khasueva, the artist’s maternal grandmother. It is also the title of his film from 2017, in which Khasueva returns to the site of her ancestral village for the first time in seventy-three years.
The monograph features Gaisumov’s recent work (including photographs of the previous settlements of the Galain-Chaz district that have not been shown elsewhere) and contains new essays by the researchers Aleida Assmann, Georgi Derluguian and Madina Tlostanova and the curator Anders Kreuger.
Published with support from the Han Nefkens Foundation, Barcelona; Kohta, Helsinki; Galerie Zink, Waldkirchen; and Emalin, London
Design by Louis Lüthi
2019, English
Softcover (plastic jacket), 116 pages, 19.5 x 21.8 cm
Published by
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin
$59.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
The publication Deliquescing accompanies Steve Bishop’s 2018–19 solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. Both the exhibition and publication reflect a body of research that focuses on the fragility of memory and the potential for its preservation, defying the gradual breakdown of matter through the effects of time.
The lion’s mane mushroom is sought after for its medicinal properties, known for protecting and repairing the mind and memory. Within KW, the artist reconstructed the exact conditions needed to cultivate the mushroom. Its medicinal properties were abstracted and repeated in the space of the gallery—the mushroom held in perfect stasis so that it wouldn’t lapse into the entropic process known as deliquescing. Bishop’s video work Deliquescing is paired with this regulated climate of cultivation: slow-panning HD shots study an abandoned Canadian mining town, maintained in a Sisyphean fashion by an unseen caretaker, homes still heated, bucolic front yards suspended from entropy, empty storefronts frozen, any sign of decay routinely swept away. This extreme stillness is randomly interrupted by the dashing of an animal, the only “aliveness” that remains.
This publication continues Bishop’s research into the lion’s mane mushroom and the abandoned town in Canada, including video stills capturing this hauntingly beautiful place as well as photo documentation of the installations at KW. An interview of the artist with KW curator Anna Gritz is featured alongside essays by Gary Zhexi Zhang on a computer program that functions as an archive of “lists of lists”; Orit Gat on her exchanges with Bishop about the phobia of time, jazz standards, and the emotional weight of kitsch; and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing on the foreign-borne diseases that plague native tree cultures.
Edited by Anna Gritz, Steve Bishop
Contributions by Steve Bishop, Orit Gat, Anna Gritz, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Gary Zhexi Zhang
Copublished between Sternberg Press and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Design by A Practice for Everyday Life
1977, German
Heavy card slipcase (4 vols.), 323 pages; 357 pages; 378 pages; 40 pages; 21 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Paul Dierich / Kassel
$100.00 - Out of stock
Complete 3 volume boxset exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with Documenta 6, the sixth edition of documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition. It was held between 24 June and 2 October 1977 in Kassel, Germany, and the artistic director was Manfred Schneckenburger. The title of the exhibition was: Internationale Ausstellung – international exhibition.
Box contains volume 1: painting - sculpture - performance (320 pages) / volume 2: photography - film - video (357 pages) / volume 3: drawings - utopian design - books (376 pages + show) / special edition of exhibition information booklet (40 pages + show); essays by Lothar Romain, Bazon Brock, Karl Oskar Blase, Klaus Honnef, Evelyn Weiss, Manfred Schneckenburger, Arnold Bode, Wieland Schmied, and Lothar Lang.
Artists featured throughout include Francis Bacon, Jennifer Bartlett, Georg Baselitz, Gerd Baukhage, Enzo Cacciola, Louis Cane, Chuck Close, Ulrich Erben, Winfred Gaul, Raimund Girke, Kuno Gonschior, Camille Graeser, Gotthard Graubner, Nancy Graves, Alan Green, Richard Hamilton, Heijo Hangen, Bernhard Heisig, Michael Heizer, Edgar Hofschen, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Attila Kovács, László Lakner, Roy Lichtenstein, Markus Lüpertz, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Gerhard Merz, Rune Mields, Carmengloria Morales, Malcolm Morley, Claudio Olivieri, Roman Opalka, Palermo, A.R. Penck, Lucio Pozzi, Hans-Peter Reuter, Gerhard Richter, Claude Rutault, Willi Sitte, Frank Stella, Werner Tübke, Bernar Venet, Andy Warhol, Reindert Wepko van de Wint, Gianfranco Zappetini, Jerry Zeniuk, Bernhard and Hilla Becher, Bernhard Johannes Blume, Christian Boltanski, Bettina Brand, Heinz Breloh, James Collins, Zdenek Felix, Reinhold Hohl, Gabrielle Honnef-Harling, Erich Kuby, Werner Lippert, Bernd Lohse, Felix H. Mann, Hilmar Pabel, Georg Reinhardt, Liselotte Strelow, Ann Wilde, Jürgen Wilde, Peter Ackermann, Michael von Biel, Fernando Botero, Miguel Condé, Renato Guttoso, Horst Janssen, Giacomo Manzù, Pablo Picasso, Wolfgang Schmitz, Rudolf Schoofs, André Thomkins, Bodo Baumgarten, Blythe Bohnen, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Rupprecht Geiger, Hetum Gruber, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, Nino Malfatti, Bob Ryman, Jan Schoonhoven, Lee U-Fan, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick.
Texts in German.
Also includes an exhibition guide booklet in the same format as the 3 main catalogue volumes.
Good copy throughout with general tanning and age wear to box and books, some knocking and tape-mended cracking to the box binding corners and edging.