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.
1993, English
Softcover, 632 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
University of California Press / Berkley
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1994 edition.
Long considered "the noblest of the senses," vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. These critics of vision, especially prominent in twentieth-century France, have challenged its allegedly superior capacity to provide access to the world. They have also criticized its supposed complicity with political and social oppression through the promulgation of spectacle and surveillance.
Martin Jay turns to this discourse surrounding vision and explores its often contradictory implications in the work of such influential figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Jay begins with a discussion of the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, then considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity. From consideration of French Impressionism to analysis of Georges Bataille and the Surrealists, Roland Barthes's writings on photography, and the film theory of Christian Metz, Jay provides lucid and fair-minded accounts of thinkers and ideas widely known for their difficulty.
His book examines the myriad links between the interrogation of vision and the pervasive antihumanist, antimodernist, and counter-enlightenment tenor of much recent French thought. Refusing, however, to defend the dominant visual order, he calls instead for a plurality of "scopic regimes." Certain to generate controversy and discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences, Downcast Eyes will consolidate Jay's reputation as one of today's premier cultural and intellectual historians.
Martin Jay is Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Force Fields (1992), Marxism and Totality (California, 1984), Adorno (1984), and The Dialectical Imagination (1973).
Good copy due to contact laminating, otherwise VG.
1996, English
Softcover, 274 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$25.00 - In stock -
First 1996 edition, second print. In this illuminating book, a prominent art historian explores the links between avant-garde art and modern mass culture, showing that the connections between the two have always been strong, and even necessary to both. The author recounts vivid episodes involving Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Christopher Williams, and many others, arriving at fresh and original insights into modern art and its place in late twentieth-century culture.
Thomas E. Crow is an American art historian and art critic who is best known for his influential writing on the role of art in modern society and culture. Since 2007, Crow has served as the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.
Very Good copy, light wear.
1989, English
Hardcover (w. both dust jackets), 236 pages, 25 x 31.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Schirmer & Mosel / Munich
$240.00 - In stock -
First 1989 hardcover edition of what is still one of the finest books on the work of American fashion photographer Bruce Weber (b. 1946). Edited and designed by John Cheim, this collection of 140 photographs is testimony to the breadth of Weber's photographic talent, from his male nudes charged with nostalgia and classicalism; his humanist portraits of artists, actors and athletes; his glorious homages to his beloved golden retrievers; his lyrical tributes to eroticism or his arcadian vision of the American landscape, it is all here, all beautifully reproduced. Working for Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Comme des Garçons, Gianni Versace, Ralph Lauren, and Abercrombie & Fitch, Weber pioneered a nostalgic, aspirational style that redefined the industry. He is widely considered to have introduced a new level of artistry to commercial photography.
First hardcover edition in dust jacket, wrapped within printed translucent dust jacket.
Very Good copy with tanning/minor chips to translucent jacket spine and edges, light spotting to block edges, general age.
1985, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 28 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ryuko Tsushin / Japan
$160.00 - Out of stock
First 1985 edition of "London after the Dream" by Japanese photographer Herbie Yamaguchi (b. 1950, Tokyo). A wonderful, lesser-known Japanese photo book of Yamaguchi's images of London in a time of great turmoil, under the control of Thatcher, the 'Iron Lady'. Yamaguchi, who came from the experimental performance arts scene in Tokyo, immersed himself in the punk rock scene in London. Being penniless and without a studio, Yamaguchi shot the people around him, from his flatmate Boy George to Joe Strummer to The Slits, the hair-dressers to the squat kids, intimately capturing an radical musical moment in the city against the backdrop of class tension. London after the Dream collects the best of these photographs, chaptered through Yamaguchi's images of the city's youth, his young adult peers (including a spread featuring Johnny Rotten vis-à-vis Lady Diana), and Britain's older generation. The changing of the guard.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1999, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 18.5 x 18.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Charta / Milan
$100.00 - Out of stock
The great Propo artist's book by Paul McCarthy, published by Charta in 1999. Comprised entirely of photos of everyday objects, soiled, dirtied and ruined, shot against colourful backdrops that contrast with the mysterious nature of the decontextualized objects. Children's toys, condiment bottles, latex masks, dolls ... these objects are in fact props from McCarthy's legendary performances, and their visual inventory here reads like a book of modernity's detritus. A photo book document of residual sculptural objects of performance. One of his best books, like no other!
Born in Salt Lake City in 1945, Paul McCarthy has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area since 1970. Originally formally trained as a painter, McCarthy's main interest lies in everyday activities and the mess created by them. Much of his work in the late 1960s, such as Mountain Bowling (1969) and Hold an Apple in Your Armpit (1970), are similar to the work of Happenings founder Allan Kaprow, with whom McCarthy had a professional relationship. From 1982 to 2002 he taught performance, video, installation, and performance art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. McCarthy currently works mainly in video and sculpture. His work has been widely exhibited throughout Europe and the U.S. including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Very Good copy with only light wear.
2021, English
Hardcover, 320 pages, 23 x 16 cm
Published by
Blum & Poe / Los Angeles
$75.00 - Out of stock
Released on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Penny Slinger's iconic artists’ book 50% The Visible Woman, this 2021 edition presents Slinger’s series of surrealist photomontage works and poetry unabridged for the first time, following the hand-constructed snakeskin-bound book from 1969, and the out-of-print abridged edition from 1971. With a new conversation transcribed between Slinger and fellow artist and friend Linder.
1985, Italian
Softcover (stiff card boards), 80 pages, 31 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Visualbooks / Milan
$200.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of the first, only edition of "Passioni Di Irina", one of the most sought after and best known books of French photographer Irina Ionesco. Published in 1985 in Milan as part of Visualbooks "Grandi Libri di Erotica", this large-format glossy book collects a beautiful selection of Ionesco's works in full-colour reproductions, uncensored. Published in a limited edition and very collectible.
Irina Ionesco (1935—2022) is a French photographer famous for her unique style of dramatically lit, baroque, erotic female portraits, influenced by the Decadent movement and the dream-like psycho-erotic imagery of Surrealism. At a young age she was sent to Romania where she was raised by her family who were circus performers. From the ages of 15 to 22 she performed as a contortionist. She traveled and painted for several years before discovering photography and gained wide attention when she exhibited her work at the Nikon Gallery in Paris in 1974, leading to her work being published in magazines, books, and exhibited at galleries across the globe. Working primarily as a fashion photographer, Ionesco stirred controversy with her nude portraits—much like Garry Gross would later cause with his sexualized photographs of a young Brooke Shields. Ionesco’s work often features women in elaborate dress, bejewelled, gloved, and in other finery, but also adorning themselves with symbolic pieces such as chokers and other fetishistic props, posing provocatively, partially disrobed as objects of sexual possession. Irina Ionesco is most famous for her photographs using her young daughter, Eva, as her model and muse, a decision that remains controversial to this day.
Very Good copy.
1995, Japanese
Softcover, 116 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Take Shobo / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
"Mr. Araki and the Six Women"
Scarce copy of this lesser known Araki title — Nobuyoshi Araki's "Obscene Photo Magazine" La-Chat Vol. 2 from 1995, packed cover-to-cover with glossy nude photography in colour and b/w. A gorgeous photo journal of 6 women with Araki's hand-written diary entries throughout.
Very Good copy with light wear.
1994, Japanese
Softcover, 44 pages, 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Photo-Planete / Japan
$150.00 - In stock -
First edition of Nobuyoshi Araki's Obscenities, published in 1994. Here Araki, a master of Japanese fetish photography, has continued to challenge sexual taboos with radical techniques. Instead of presenting his acutely revealing images of sexuality, for which he had come to face charges, Araki has chosen an expressive thumbing of the nose to Japanese censorship techniques by scratching away the "obscenities" of the negatives—and not only the obvious ones. Just as with the explicit erotic images collected here, photographs of banal everyday objects, flowers and cityscapes also become charged with delirious sexual potency at the hands of the censor. The images become oddly more arousing, as they are revealed and embellished further through the marks of Araki's hand, as well as the desire of his eye. The result is a very special book, and Araki's statement on the idea of “obscenity”.
"Photography reveals. To reveal is obscene. Photography conceals. To conceal is obscene. Taking photographs is obscene. To be photographed is obscene. Showing photographs is obscene. To look at photographs is obscene. Not showing photographs is obscene. To not be able to look at photographs is obscene. Obscene things do not exist. Obscene acts exist. Obscene photographs are acts. Obscene photographs are relations. Photographs are obscenities. Obscenities are beautiful."—Araki Nobuyoshi (book introduction)
Very Good copy.
1973, English
20 posters in illustrated folio, 25.7 x 36.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edition Nobel / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
Rare 1973 erotic photo poster edition, collecting full-colour and b/w photographic works by 7 photographers in the form of 20 glossy posters presented in an illustrated portfolio, published only in Japan for the Japanese market. Photographers include Siwer Ohlsson, Guido Mangold, Peter Raba, Daniel Barreau, Will McBride, Jean-Louis Michel, Karin Szekessy.
First, only edition. Complete with all posters still bound together in folio with publisher's hand-written Japanese translations from the English bios, mimeographed and inserted. General handling wear to folio due to size and thin nature, small closed tear/pinching to folio spine.
1993, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 23 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
Never to be missed, the first 1993 over-sized hardcover edition of Araki's unbeatable Erotos photo book, our favourite of his books. In this work, controversial and legendary Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki makes a radical departure from his usual portraits and cityscapes. A exquisitely printed collection of arrestingly primal close-ups of parts of the body as well as various objects—pipes, fruit, wet sidewalks, flowers, snails—Erotos delves deep into the erotic subconscious. Reproduced in gorgeous glossy duotone full-page bleed, bound in heavy gloss red, foiled hardcovers. A stunning book! Highly recommended.
Nobuyoshi Araki is a prolific Japanese photographer who has produced thousands of photographs over the course of his career. He became famous for “Un Voyage Sentimental” (1971), a series of photos depicting both banal and deeply intimate scenes of his wife and lifelong muse, essayist Aoki Yoko (whom the artist credits for making him a photographer), during their honeymoon. To date the 75 year old has produced 450 photo books and counting. With a repertoire that knows no boundaries, Araki's diaristic style of photography has captured the world around him (his cat Chiro, the people and landscapes of Japan and his travels, flowers, family), though it is Araki’s intensely sexual imagery that has elicited particular controversy and fascination throughout his career. Similarly to Helmut Newton, Araki has often addressed subversive themes — such as bondage in the Japanese style Kinbaku — in his provocative depictions of female nudes. He typically works in black-and-white photography, and his hallmark style is deliberately casual. “Rather than shooting something that looks like a professional photograph, I want my work to feel intimate, like someone in the subject’s inner circle shot them,” he says. Pushing against the world of commercialised photography, he is celebrated for his history of self-publishing and distributing his work, beginning with his Xerox Photo Albums of 1970. Amongst many others, Araki has collaborated with American photographer Nan Goldin and Icelandic musician Björk.
Very Good copy in Very Good dust jacket with small amount of wear and tear.
1977, German
Softcover, 128 pages, 33 x 24 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Belser Verlag / Stuttgart
$68.00 - Out of stock
Softcover edition of this wonderful over-sized publication on the unique collaboration between German artist Paul Wunderlich and photographer Karin Székessy, one of Germany's most important female photographers, who were married to each other. Published in Switzerland in 1977, this volumes collects an abundance of these iconic 'transpositions,' evocative, experimental nude photographs by Szekessy juxtaposed with Wunderlich's versions, or replies, in the form of paintings and prints. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, the result is a fascinating dialogue of unconventional nude form. German literary critic Fritz J. Raddatz's illustrated introduction gives contextual and art historical references and background, accompanied by a full listing of works and exhibition history.
Good—VG copy with only light cover/edge wear.
1988, English / Japanese
Softcover, oversized, loose-leaf pages, 42 x 29.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Comme des Garçons / Tokyo
$440.00 - Out of stock
First 1988 edition, first printing of the inaugural issue of the cult, privately distributed Comme des Garçons publication. The incredible first issue of Comme des Garçons' 'Six' magazine (1988) features the work of Hungarian photographer André Kertész, Comme des Garçons by photographer Peter Lindbergh, photography by Sachiko Kuru, features on artist Jean Cocteau, architect Eileen Gray, artist Michel Sauer, and an interview with fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto, plus additional photography by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Arthur Elgort, Tony Mendoza, Sachiko Kuru, Shinji Mori, Serge Lido and Gisele Freund. Beautiful first-edition printing of this over-sized magazine vision of Rei Kawakubo, including die-cut features throughout and de-bossed cover title.
Between 1988 and 1991, Comme des Garçons explored the theme of the sixth sense via eight special biannual oversized, unstapled magazines titled 'Six'. These magazines were launched to coincide with Comme des Garçons fashion collections and were privately printed and distributed by Comme. The magazine visually represented the brand in a way that no other fashion company had before. Rei Kawakubo invited Tsuguya Inoue to art direct and Atsuko Kozasu to edit the issues, whilst contributions came from a diverse array of leading designers and artists. Issues of Comme des Garçons 'Six' have become very sought after collectors items.
Very Good / Near Fine copy.
2017, English
Softcover, 124 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Dancing Foxes Press / Brooklyn
Queens Museum / Queens
$50.00 $30.00 - In stock -
Integrating video, photography, sculpture, writing, and performance into one expansive body of work, Los Angeles–based artist Patty Chang examines the complex way stories develop through geography, history, cultural mythology, fiction, and personal experience. Accompanying her project A Wandering Lake that was in part inspired by turn-of-the-century colonial explorer Sven Hedin’s book Wandering Lake (1938)—which tells the story of a migrating body of water in the Chinese desert—this artist’s book, combining Chang’s writings and travel photographs with historic and theoretical text excerpts as well as photographs of her sculptures and watercolors, is a personal, associative, narrative meditation on mourning, caregiving, and landscape.
Copublished with the Queens Museum in 2017
Edited by Karen Kelly and Barbara Schroeder
With an afterword by Hitomi Iwasaki
Design by Leftloft
This is a guide to mourning; but Chang widens the scope to include political conflict and environmental degradation, and argues that, despite the losses we’ve incurred, we are still collaborators in the making of our worlds.”—Erin Schwartz, The New York Review of Books
1975, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
YWCA Australia / Melbourne
$290.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce first and only edition of one of the great Australian photo-books of the 1970s. Woman 1975 was published as "a permanent record of the exhibition of photographs entitled Woman, which was the contribution made towards International Women's year, 1975, by the Young Women's Christian Association of Australia." A gorgeous and moving overview of womanhood in Australia in the 1970s through the images of countless Australian photographers of the period, including Carol Jerrems, Rennie Ellis, John Williams, Fiona Hall, Melanie Le Guay, Ingeborg Tyssen, Jacqueline Mitelman, Les Gray, Grace Lock, Reg Morrison, Phillip Quirk, Peter Tyndall, Howard Birnstihl, Juergen Hasenkopf, Richard Crawley and many more.
Very Good copy.
1978, Japanese
Softcover, 204 pages, 21 x 29.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hanashi-no-Tokushu / Tokyo
$650.00 - In stock -
Exceptionally rare (signed!) 1978 first edition photobook by Michiko Matsumoto, one of post war Japan's leading photographers. As a young female photographer growing up in a period of turmoil, Matsumoto conveys the wonders of women to the viewer from the perspective of a woman. Women Come Alive is her rarest and greatest example of this. This wonderful book collects "seven years with women...", Matsumoto's front-line photographic records of the women's liberation movement in Japan in the 1970s and her "Sisters Across Borders" (New York, Paris, Los Angeles, London...), as well as portraits of female artists, activists and friends Yoko Ono, Maki Asakawa, Eiko Ishioka, Michiko Gorman, Mamako Yoneyama, Teruko Yoshitake, Tokiko Kato, Harumi Yamaguchi, Chinatsu Nakayama and others. A true time-capsule, this book visits the workshops, bookshops, marches, women's centres, lesbian bars, exhibitions, editorial offices, dances and studios of a pivotal time of great change. An incredible book of feminist protest and celebration. Virtually an impossible book to find, even without a signature from the artist! Highly recommended!!
Very Good copy in very good dust jacket. Signed in black ink and dated 1978.6.7 on title page.
1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 28 pages, 36.5 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Nisshindo Optical Shop / Nagoya
$140.00 - In stock -
Extremely rare calendar issue from acclaimed Japanese photographer and representative of the Provoke movement, Hitomi Watanabe. Issued privately by a small eyeglasses shop in Nagoya, Nisshindo Optical Shop, this 1977 "LOOK" Calendar presents the rarely seen personal 1970s work of Watanabe. Watanabe began her career photographing in the Tokyo neighbourhood of Shinjuku, home to Japan’s 1960s counter culture. She came to prominence during the Zenkyoto student movement in the late 1960s, occupied the University of Tokyo campus in 1968-69 and participated in the 10.21 International Anti-War Day protests and 1970 Anpo protests against the renewal of the Japan-US Mutual Security Treaty. Her candid photographs of the everyday lives of the protesters, the state violence, and the aftermath of rioting from her insider’s vantage on this tumultuous moment afforded her work an undeniable, enduring power. Her famed "Kaihoku '68 / Liberated Area '68" a testament to this. When the Japan-US Mutual security treaty was renewed in 1970, Watanabe, heartbroken that they had not been able to prevent it, began her long travels through Asia, particularly India and Nepal, from which these beautiful, atmospheric colour photographs are taken. Reproduced in large format across the 12 months of 1977.
Very Good copy with some light wear and light cover tanning. Has been previously hung.
1971, Japanese
Hardcover (w. slip-case) 192 pages, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shinsensha / Tokyo
$450.00 - In stock -
Gorgeous first (boxed) hardcover edition of Tadao Mitome's "protest-book masterpiece" published in 1971, documenting the Sanrizuka resistance to the building of Tokyo's Narita Airport. Photographs follow the thousands of protestors into battle against riot police and record their construction of fortresses and underground tunnels.
“A superb document about the medieval fighting that took place over a period of some five years around Narita airport. Fuelled by the spirit of protest in the late 60s this constituted the first of many often violent anti-airport protests in the region.”
“Sanrizuka documents the intense civil unrest between residents of Sanrizuka, an agricultural area located on the east side of Narita airport, and government authorities, in the run up to the construction and later expansion of the airport. Under a 1966 plan, the airport would have been completed in 1971, but due to the ongoing resettlement disputes, not all of the land for the airport was available by then. Finally, in 1971, the Japanese government began forcibly expropriating land. 291 protesters were arrested and more than 1,000 police, villagers and student militants were injured in a series of riots.“
Editing and art direction by the legendary activist designer Kiyoshi Awazu (1929–2009) with stunning deep gravure printing. Included in “The Japanese Photobook, 1912–1990” by Kaneko Ryuichi and Manfred Heiting and "The Photobook: A History, Volume III" by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, p. 57.
Very Good copy with some age/wear/light scratching to box.
2023, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 28 x 21 cm
Published by
Void / Reykjavík—Athens
$89.00 - Out of stock
The Amazon Rainforest—often referred to as 'Lungs of our Planet'—has long been idealised as a dense, green expanse and a pristine sanctuary inhabited by isolated tribes. Terra Vermelha, the culmination of 10-years’ work by photographer Tommaso Protti, presents a raw and unfiltered, alternative portrait of the region. Depicting fields ablaze, the dark river as a conduit for cocaine trafficking and urban areas plagued by violence—the images in the book depict a dystopia, dispelling such romanticised notions.
“As I sat in my hotel room in Marabá, a city in the Amazon state of Parà, Jornal Nacional – Brazil’s flagship news program – transmitted images of the country’s newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro: “The indigenous in their reservations are like animals in a zoo,” he said. It was November 2018. […] It seemed like a threat, an omen of bad times ahead. I felt that the slow-motion social and environmental breakdown I had seen in the previous years in the Amazon was about to get worse.”
“Deforestation, unregulated development, pollution. All of these scenarios are driven by the same forces; poverty, weak institutions, corruption and savage self-interest. More than in other places, in the Amazon region it becomes clear that land is worth more than human life. And on the path towards the destruction of the planet, the first and closest step for mankind is still its own annihilation… The violence consuming the Brazilian Amazon affects us all and sometimes we are even the unknowing perpetrators of it.”
Tommaso Protti (Italy, 1986) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Tommaso Protti has documented the intersecting social and environmental crises plaguing the Amazonian states of Brazil, where the photographer has been based for almost a decade. He started his career as a photographer in 2011 after graduating in Political Science and International Relations. Since then, he has devoted himself on creating his own long-term projects focusing on themes such as crime, the environment, and rural conflict. His work has been featured in global publications and exhibited worldwide.
“This is the Brazilian Amazon today, where indigenous communities are fighting for survival in the face of rampant deforestation. What follows is a dense, disorientating and elliptical reportage that riddles through a conflict-stricken hinterland, unravelling – in the dead of night – stories about savage land-grabs, forest fires and brutal gang murders. […] Needless to say, few publishers could have taken us into the Amazon’s heart of chaos as nightmarishly as Void have.”—Alessandro Merola, 1000 Words
1978, German
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 220 pages, 20 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Schirmer & Mosel / Munich
Ludwig Museum / Cologne
Schirmer Mosel
$80.00 - In stock -
First 1978 edition of this gorgeous German book dedicated entirely to the magnificent photographic work of Wols. Lavishly illustrated throughout in b/w with a comprehensive collection of over 100 pages of his accomplished photography of still life object assemblages, portraits, the streets of Paris, interiors, and more, including an additional 120 pages of heavily illustrated in-depth biographical text on the artist, featuring many of his paintings, drawings, photographs and private photo-documents.
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 1913, Berlin – 1 September 1951, Paris), a German painter, photographer, engraver, and graphic designer. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, Wols was close to Surrealism, and is considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement, and of Informal art in Europe. He moved to France when he fled the Hitlerian regime, with a recommendation from the artist-teacher Moholy-Nagy. Illegal immigrant, he was considered as a deserter and a stateless person, arrested many times by the French police. In 1936, Wols received, with Léger and Rivière's help, a limited resident permit, working as a photographer — his unusual fashion and interiors photographs were sold as postcards and printed in many international fashion magazines. Immediately after the beginning of the Second World War, Wols was enprisoned with many Germans in different French internment camps, where Wols realized many surrealist drawings and watercolours that he is now well-known for. He spent most of the war trying to emigrate to the United States, an unsuccessful and costly enterprise that may have driven him to alcoholism. After the hype from the war had died down, he had his first exhibition of watercolors in December 1945 at the Galerie René Drouin, Paris, where despite the lack of commercial success he made an impression. His paintings represented a rejection of figuration and abstraction, and a projection into a metaphysical plane. In the years following the war, Schulze concentrated on painting and etching. His health declined severely towards the end of the 1940s; in 1951 he died of food poisoning at the Hotel Montalembert in Paris, after releasing himself from hospital against medical advice. After his death his works were shown at the Kassel documenta (1955), documenta II (1959) and documenta III (1964).
Very Good with some cover wear/rubbing.
2023, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 12.5 x 19.5 cm
Published by
Is-Land / Aubervilliers
$35.00 - In stock -
For thirty years, Heinz Peter Knes has developed a large body of work, focusing on photographic-documentary practice that seeks to engage image with society. Reflecting on the multiple “correspondences”, influences and interactions at the heart of his artistic work, we travel with him through the five chapters of this book, crossing paths with Josef Winkler, Hervé Guibert, Pasolini, Moyra Davey, Julie Ault, Jean-Luc Moulène, Danh Vo, Artaud and many others. Creating a new language, a sort of echo, as sensitive experience, which in a way dematerialize our perceptions, but enable “to gather” them.
1972, German / English / French
Vinyl ring-binder (screen printed w. design by E. Ruscha), 650 pages +, 32 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
documenta / Kassel
$500.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of the only edition of the most elaborately designed, and lowest circulated Documenta catalogue, conceived by curator Harald Szeemann to accompany the fifth edition of Documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany.
Subtitled "100 Days of Inquiry into Reality -- Today's Imagery," curated by the team of Harald Szeemann, Jean-Christophe Ammann and Arnold Bode, Documenta 5 followed a lineage of comprehensive shows documenting conceptually and minimally charged artworks curated by Szeemann including Live in Your Head (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969), and Happenings and Fluxus (Kunstverein, Köln), 1970. The largest, most expensive and most diverse of any exhibition anywhere, Documenta 5 was criticized in 1972 as being “bizarre…vulgar…sadistic” by art critic and essayist Hilton Kramer and “monstrous… overtly deranged” by art historian and art critic Barbara Rose, yet it still resonates today as one of the most important exhibitions in history. Featuring the works of over 170 artists and an equally expansive variety of materials and subjects drawn from popular cultural materials, architecture, science fiction, kitsch objects, film, advertising, children's art, etc. in addition to the more anticipated international survey of new painting and sculpture - Documenta 5 valiantly attempted to bridge the gap between art, culture, science and the broader society. This massive tome is housed in the iconic orange vinyl-covered, two-ring binder screen printed with the famous ant design by Edward Ruscha. The binder holds a tabbed index of illustrated artist's pages and associated texts and material, largely in German, but also many in English. All registers are present apart from the usual missing 19-25 which were not directly integrated into the catalogue and had to be ordered by the visitor separately to become their own contribution. This very complete copy also includes the additional 80 page, hole-punched Documenta 5 guide book, with floor plans, complete listing of exhibited artworks, list of exhibitions, bibliography, and many gallery, museum and other related advertisements. More than a catalogue, this publication is a piece of art history in itself.
Includes artists: Vito Acconci, Vincenzo Agnetti, Peter Alexander, John de Andrea, Giovanni Anselmo, Arbeitszeit, Archigram, Chuck Arnoldi, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Ashkin, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Georg Baselitz, Lothar Baumgarten, Robert Bechtle, Gottfried Bechtold, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Karl Oskar Blase, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Christian Boltanski, Claudio Bravo, George Brecht, K.P. Brehmer, Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brouwn, Günter Brus, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Castelli, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chuck Close, Tony Conrad, Ron Cooper, Bill Copley, Joseph Cornell, Robert Cottingham, Paul Cotton, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, David Deutsch, Jan Dibbets, Herbert Distel, Gino de Dominicis, Marcel Duchamp, John Dugger, Don Eddy, Franz Eggenschwiler, Ger van Elk, Richard Estes, Luciano Fabro, John C. Fernie, Robert Filliou, Jud Fine, Joel Fisher, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Hamish Fulton, Franz Gertsch, Gilbert & George, Ralph Goings, Hubert Gojowczyk, Dan Graham, Walter Grasskamp, Nancy Graves, Hans Haacke, Duane Hanson, Guy Harloff, Michael Harvey, Haus-Rucker-Co, Auguste Herbin, Eva Hesse, Rebecca Horn, Jean Olivier Hucleux, Douglas Huebler, Jörg Immendorff, Will Insley, Rolf Iseli, Ken Jacobs, Neil Jenney, Alfred Jensen, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Max G. Kaminski, Howard Kanovitz, Edward Kienholz, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhofer, Jannis Kounellis, Tom Kovachevich, Piotr Kowalski, David Lamelas, Barry Le Va, Jean LeGac, Alfred Leslie, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Ingeborg Luscher, Inge Mahn, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Etienne Martin, Richard McLean, David Medalla, Fernando Melani, Jim Melchert, Mario Merz, Gustav Metzger, Bernd Minnich, Malcolm Morley, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, Hermann Nitsch, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Blinky Palermo, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, A.R. Penck, Giuseppe Penone, Vettor Pisani, Sigmar Polke, Stephen Posen, Markus Raetz, Arnulf Rainer, Gerhard Richter, Klaus Rinke, Dorothea Rockburne, Peter Roehr, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ulrich Ruckriem, Robert Ryman, John Salt, Salvo, Lucas Samaras, Paul Sarkisian, Jean-Frederic Schnyder, Ben Schonzeit, Werner Schroeter, HA Schult, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Fritz Schwegler, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Allan Shields, Katharina Sieverding, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Klaus Staeck, Paul Staiger, Jorge Stever, Robert Strubin, Paul Thek, Wayne Thiebaud, Andre Thomkins, David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Ben Vautier, W + B Hein, Franz Erhard Walther, Robert Watts, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, John Wesley, H.C. Westermann, William Wiley, Rolf Winnewisser, Tom Wudl, Klaus Wyborny, La Monte Young, Peter Young, Gilberto Zorio.
Catalogue also includes Bob Projansky and Seth Siegelaub's "The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement." This "Agreement form has been drafted by Bob Projansky, a New York lawyer, after my [Siegelaub] extensive discussions and correspondence with over 500 artists, dealers, lawyers, collectors, museum people, critics and other concerned people involved in the day-to-day workings of the international art world. The Agreement has been designed to remedy some generally acknowledged inequities in the art world, particularly artists' lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it. The Agreement for has been written with special awareness of the current ordinary practices and economic realitites of the art world, particularly its private, cash and informal nature, with careful regard for the interests and motives of all concerned. It is expected to be the standard form for the transfer and sale of all contemporary art, and has been made as fair, simple and useful as possible. It can be used either as presented here or slightly altered to fit your specific situation. If the following information does not answer all your questions consult your attorney." -- from Agreement's cover. Copies of the contract are individually included in English, Germany, and French editions.
Very Good, complete (as issued) copy. Very minor wear.
2020, English
Hardcover, 368 pages, 17.8 x 24.8 cm
Published by
Siglio Press / Los Angeles
$82.00 - In stock -
In July 1971, Bernadette Mayer embarked on an experiment: For one month she exposed a roll of 35mm film and kept a daily journal. The result was a conceptual work that investigates the nature of memory, its surfaces, textures and material. Memory is both monumental in scope (over 1100 photographs, two hundred pages of text and six hours of audio recording) and a groundbreaking work by a poet who is widely regarded as one of the most innovative writers of her generation. Presaging Mayer’s durational and constraint-based diaristic works of poetry, it also evinces her extraordinary—and unheralded—contribution to conceptual art.
Mayer has called Memory “an emotional science project,” but it is far from confessional. Rather, this boldly experimental record follows the poet’s eye as she traverses early morning into night, as quotidian minutiae metamorphose into the lyrical, as her stream of consciousness becomes incantatory. The space of memory in Mayer’s work is hyper-precise but also evanescent and expansive. In both text and image, Mayer constructs the mercurial, fleeting consciousness of the present moment from which memory is—as she says—“always there, to be entered, like the world of dreams or an ongoing TV show.”
This publication brings together the full sequence of images and text for the first time in book form, making space for a work that has been legendary but mostly invisible. Originally exhibited in 1972 by pioneering gallerist Holly Solomon, it was not shown again in its entirety until 2016. The text was published without the photographs in 1975 and has been long out of print.
ABOUT BERNADETTE MAYER
Bernadette Mayer (b. 1945, Brooklyn, NY) is the author of over thirty books including the acclaimed Midwinter Day (1982), a book-length poem written during a single day in Lenox, Massachusetts, as well as the The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994), and most recently Works and Days (2016) which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Associated with the New York School as well as the Language poets, Mayer has also been an influential teacher and editor. In the art world, she is best known for her collaboration with Vito Acconci as editors of the influential mimeographed magazine 0 TO 9.
2023, English
Softcover, 284 pages, 23.5 x 15.7 cm
Published by
Routledge / London
$90.00 - In stock -
This is a timely update of a seminal text which re-interprets key films of the horror genre, including Carrie, The Exorcist, The Brood and Psycho.
In the first edition, Creed draws on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to challenge the popular view that women in horror are almost always victims, and argues that patriarchal ideology constructs women as monstrous in relation to her sexuality and reproductive body to justify her subjugation. Although a projection of male fears and paranoid fantasies, the monstrous-feminine is nonetheless a terrifying figure. Creed’s argument contests Freudian and Lacanian theories of sexual difference to offer a provocative rereading of classical and contemporary horror.
This updated edition includes a new section examining contemporary feminist horror films in relation to nonhuman theory. Creed proposes a new concept of radical abjection to reinterpret the monstrous-feminine as a figure who embraces abjection by reclaiming her body and re-defining her otherness as nonhuman – while questioning patriarchy, anthropocentrism, misogyny and the meaning of the human. Films discussed include Ginger Snaps, Teeth, Atlantics, The Girl with All the Gifts, Border and Titane.
Barbara Creed’s classic remains as relevant as ever and this edition will be of interest to academics and students of feminist theory, nonhuman theory, critical animal studies, race, and queer theory.
Barbara Creed is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of seven books, including Darwin’s Screens: Evolutionary Aesthetics, Time and Sexual Display in the Cinema (2009); and Stray: Human- Animal Ethics in the Anthropocene (2017). She is the director of the Human Rights and Animal Ethics Research Network (HRAE). She has been on the boards of Writers Week, the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.