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:
THU—SAT 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 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. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or 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.
$.00 - Out of stock
The eternal clean out! New items weekly.
https://worldfoodbooks.com/category/sale
1975, Japanese
Softcover, 274 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$70.00 $60.00 - In stock -
SM Kitan December 1975 issue, featuring cover artwork by legendary erotic fantasy artist Ran Akiyoshi (1922–1982). A cult classic of vintage Japanese BDSM and Kinbaku (Japanese bondage), SM Kitan was a leading SM magazine published by the great Sun Publishing house, and was formerly known as S&M Abuhunter (changing its name to SM Kitan from August 1975). Heavy with wonderful artwork galleries in colour and bw, glossy bondage photo-features, illustrated fetish fiction, manga, fold-outs, and much more. Ran Akiyoshi (1922–1982) illustrated many of the iconic covers, with regular contributors including Sotaro Aki, Tadao Chigusa, Namio Harukawa, Yoko Ozuma, Reiko Kita, Akiyoshi Akiyoshi, Hakuzan Shiraishi, Shoji Oki, Namio Harukawa, Akira Kasuga, and Gekko Hayashi (Gojin Ishihara).
Very Good copy. Light wear/age.
2023, English / German
Softcover (staple-bound), 56 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Published by
Neue Galerie Gladbeck / Gladbeck
$35.00 $25.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Michaela Eichwald — Free path to happiness, August 25, 2023 – October 29, 2023, Neue Galerie Gladbeck. Bilingual english and German, with a photo series and notes by the artist, illustrations of the works and installations, accompanied by a text by Luisa Schlotterbeck. This publication was created in collaboration with Michaela Eichwald, Luisa Schlotterbeck and Visible. In memory of Kathrin Roussel. Supported by Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York City, Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Dépendance, Brussels. With kind support from Sparkasse Gladbeck.
1995, English
Offset Lithographic poster (87 x 67 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Unknown
$350.00 $300.00 - In stock -
Lovely rare 1995 colour offset lithographic poster of Sigmar Polke's "Modern Art (Moderne Kunst)" from 1968, printed on heavy stock in 1995. Unknown publisher, likely a German museum edition. A striking reproduction of this iconic Polke painting.
Dimensions : 87 x 67 cm
Fine condition, immaculately preserved, ready to frame.
Sigmar Polke (1941–2010)
Characterized by wit and endless inventiveness, German artist Sigmar Polke created an oeuvre that is wildly diverse in its exploration of mediums and materials. Inspired by his fascination with science and alchemy, Polke innovated techniques in painting and photography by manipulating chemical processes. Life in post-war Germany led the artist to establish Capitalist Realism, an ironic exploration of consumerism using the imagery of popular culture and advertising, evident in his 1976 collage on paper Supermarkets aus dem Zyklus, Wir Kleinbürger (translated as “Supermarkets from the Cycle, We Petty Bourgeoisie”), featuring iconic Superman figures shopping in a brand-laden supermarket.
1979, German
Softcover, 419 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunsthaus Zürich / Zürich
Bentelli Verlag / Bern
$90.00 $60.00 - In stock -
Wonderful over-sized catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Malerei und Photographie im Dialog / Painting and Photography in Dialogue, Kunsthaus Zürich, May 13 to July 24, 1977. Profusely illustrated, this heavy volume documents this historical survey of the relationship between photography and painting from 1840 to the present (late 1970s); with a full catalogue of works, artists' biographies, bibliography. Edited by Erika Billeter with texts throughout by art historian Josef A. Schmoll. Includes the work of Edvard Munch, Urs Lüthi, Wols, Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Eadweard Muybridge, Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Oskar Schlemmer, Francis Bacon, Hilla and Bernd Becher, Les Levine, Constant Puyo, Clarence Hudson White, Jan Groover, Jochen Gerz, Duane Michels, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Ruth Francken, Theo Von Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, Ferdinand Hodler, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Käsebier, Edward Steichen, Alighiero Boetti, Klaus Rinke, Giuseppe Penone, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Klee, Gerhard Richter, Monika Baumgartl, Yves Klein, Wolf Vostell, Heinrich Kühn, Georges Mathieu, Peter Roehr, Sarkis, Jiro Takamatsu, Michael Heizer, Umberto Boccioni, Hans Bellmer, William Wegman, Raoul Ubac, Margrit Jäggli, André Kertész, Jiri Kolar, Kasimir Malevich, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Dennis Oppenheim, Christian Boltanski, Dan Graham, Jan Dibbets, Jürgen Klauke, Bruce Nauman, Jean Tinguely, Vettor Pisani, Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, Allen Kaprow, Arnulf Rainer, Mieczyslaw Berman, Jim Dine, George Brecht, Man Ray, Paul Wunderlich, Karin Székessy, Tom Wesselmann, Chuck Close, Eugène Delacroix, Duane Hanson, Heinrich Zille, Félix Vallotton, Carl Durheim, Gilbert and George, Joseph Beuys, Thomas Eakins, Robert Rauschenberg, Édouard Vuillard, Carlo Carrà, Alphonse Mucha, Les Krims, Albert Steiner, Giorgio de Chirico, Keiji Uematsu, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Heinrich Zille, Franco Fontana, Richard Long, Ben Shahn, Edmund Kesting, László Moholy-Nagy, Anton Stankowski, Paul Nash, Rene Magritte, Paul T. Frankl, John Heartfield, El Lissitzky, Georges Hugnet, Gordon Matta-Clark....
Very Good copy, crease to top cover corner.
2021, English / Japanese
Softcover, 64 pages, 26 x 37 cm
Published by
A.D.A Edita / Tokyo
$78.00 $50.00 - In stock -
One of the finest architecture series ever published, the world renowned GA (Global Architecture) series, presented by the highly esteemed publishing house that also published the GA Document, GA Houses, and GI (Global Interior) architectural publications.
Each over-sized photographic folio issue of the special GA Residential Masterpieces series highlights a renowned international architect and takes a detailed look into their creations for residence.
Absolutely stunning and vivid large-format architectural photography of the selected building’s interiors, exteriors and architectural details, along with texts (in English and Japanese) and floor-plans/elevation drawings make up the profiles on each featured architectural project. The visual generosity of these handsomely designed and beautifully printed over-sized publications make them a treasure for any architecture or interior design enthusiast or collector.
An icon of the modern movement and De Stijl, the Rietveld Schröder House in the Netherlands was designed by Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964) and completed in 1924. In 2000 the house was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Built together with his client, it was Rietveld’s first architectural manifestation, and would prove to be the key work for his entire oeuvre. The relationship between interior and exterior, for instance, would continue to play a major role in the form and situation of his houses. Another fascination of Rietveld’s was the open floor plan. Photographer Yoshio Futagawa pays tribute to a pioneering monument of experimental residential design.
Printed in Japan.
2020, English
Hardcover, 368 pages, 17.8 x 24.8 cm
Published by
Siglio Press / Los Angeles
$95.00 $50.00 - 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.
2022, English
Softcover, 158 pages, 23 x 32 cm
Published by
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Denmark
The Danish Architectural Press / Denmark
$110.00 $50.00 - In stock -
English architect and writer Sir Peter Cook, renowned for his free-thinking spirit translated into architectural lines and shapes, is perhaps most well-known as the co-founder of the avant-garde architectural group Archigram in the 1960s. This beautiful volume presents a large selection of his works on paper as part of the exhibition series “Louisiana On Paper” at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Cook believes that visions of the future – whatever it might offer – are most clearly expressed and can best be discussed in drawings. In his work we encounter kaleidoscopic colours and spiralling shapes, voluntary architectural mutations, and twisting and turning buildings transforming into escapist dreamscapes.
1970, English / German / French / Spanish
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 128 pages, 24.5 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Arthur Niggli / Niederteufen
$90.00 $50.00 - In stock -
Second 1970 hardcover edition of Swiss designer and photographer, Armin Haab's (1919—1991) Lettera 3, the third in his wonderful series of lettering books for Swiss publisher Arthur Niggli. Cover design by typographer Walter Haettenschweiler, typesetting and layout by Armin Haab and Walter Haettenschweiler. Gorgeously designed selection of five varieties of typeface : 19th century ornamental, Egyptian, English-Italian, Art Nouveau, new sans-serif creations and the latest trends in type face design from the period (end of the 1960s). Text in English, German, French and Spanish; printed in Switzerland.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket. Light wear to dj with faint former owner stamp to front, interior sharp and well-preserved.
1983, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 26 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Overlook Press / New York
$70.00 $40.00 - Out of stock
First 1983 edition of this classic first collected works of legendary graphic designer and illustrator, Milton Glaser (1929—2020), published by The Overlook Press, New York. Co-founder of Push Pin Studios, Glaser's absolutely iconic graphic work is synonymous with a bold, radical aesthetic shift through in the 1960's through the innovation of the counterculture's influence on the broader graphic landscape in America. Milton drew heavily from music, literature, and early 20th century artists to create his own signature style that consisted of playful, psychedelic graphics with controlled blasts of colours along with silhouettes and bold geometric outlines. Pop, psychedelic, jazz, esoteric and Anti-war sensibilities propelled Glaser's masterful modernism internationally and this book is the first to collect Glaser's most important work to date. 340 illustrations spanning posters, magazine covers, illustrations, logos, typography, packaging design, record sleeves, most of them accompanied by Glaser's own commentary. Includes an interview and complete list of works, with foreword by French illustrator Jean Michel Folon.
Very Good copy.
2017, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 27 x 19.5 cm
Ed. of 500 copies,
Published by
Re:collection / Melbourne
$40.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Paperback Pioneers
Sun Books (1965–81)
Sun Books was an Australian paperback publisher formed in 1965 by Geoffrey Dutton, Brian Stonier and Max Harris. The three men had worked together at Penguin Australia, leaving to establish a platform for local literary talent. Brian Sadgrove, who would become a leading figure in Australian graphic design, was commissioned to create Sun Books’ distinctive identity and many of the publisher’s covers during the 1960s and 1970s. This book includes an introduction by Warren Taylor and essay by Dominic Hofstede, detailing the imprint’s colourful history. Also featured are more than 80 covers designed by Sadgrove and other significant practitioners including Ken Cato, Robert Rosetzky and Guy Mirabella.
Design: Dominic Hofstede
Published in an edition of 500 copies
2020, English
Softcover (in sealed wax sleeve), 80 pages, 16 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$100.00 $60.00 - In stock -
‘Tokyo Papers’ comprises a collection of 41 monoprints created by Dutch graphic designer and typographer Karel Martens between 2019 and 2020. In 2018, Martens received a package from artist-curator Pierre Leguillon that contained filled-in Japanese forms which he had found at a street market in Tokyo. Martens was intrigued by the collection of thin paper with a rectangular black-blue layer of carbon on the back. In 2019 he started to print on these back sides, but because the overprinting on the carbon layer caused unwanted damage, he switched to printing them on the front sides as well. “The closing image is related to Tokyo in a different way,” he explains.
As New, sealed in wax sleeve copy. Out-of-print title.
2016, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 24.8cm × 18.5cm
Ed. of 3000,
Published by
Unit Editions / London
$75.00 $30.00 - In stock -
In this book you will find the covers of design magazines, journals and periodicals of all kinds, spanning: graphic design, typography, architecture, interiors, print, theory and history. But above all, they are brilliant specimens of innovative visual design.
The covers found in Impact 1.0 are designed and art directed by an array of international designers, including: Otl Aicher, Herbert Bayer, Robert Brownjohn, Alexey Brodovitch, Will Burtin, Ivan Chermayeff, Alan Fletcher, AG Fronzoni, Anthony Froshaug, Ken Garland, Karl Gerstner, Franco Grignani, FHK Henrion, Yusaku Kamekura, E Mcknight Kauffer, Bruno Munari, Erik Nitsche, Paul Rand, Emil Ruder, Hans Schleger, Helmut Schmid, Herbert Spencer, Ikko Tanaka, Pino Tovaglia, Massimo Vignelli, Tadanori Yokoo and many others.
Featuring interviews with designers, art directors, editors and publishers of design magazines: Ken Garland, Rose Gridneff (UCA), Richard Hollis, Jeremy Leslie (magCulture), R Roger Remington (Vignelli Centre) Paul Shaw, Teal Triggs (RCA), Carlo Vinti (Progetto grafico) and Mason Wells (Bibliothéque).
2024, Spanish
Hardcover, 160 pages, 28 x 24 cm
Published by
RM / Barcelona
$60.00 $30.00 - Out of stock
First Spanish edition of this major book dealing with the life and work of Remedios Varo, one of the most interesting and mysterious surrealist painters of the 20th century. It is the first monograph dedicated to the artist that is spread worldwide and includes an introductory study by Masayo Nonaka, curator of the exhibition Mujeres surrealistas en Mexico and author of numerous books on Mexican surrealism. Masayo's studio offers a unique look at the pictorial universe of Remedios and is accompanied with magnificent reproductions of his most important paintings. The ensemble of works included in this book, was part of the exhibition In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States (In Wonderland: The Surreal Adventures of Female Artists in Mexico and the United States) Presented in 2012 in the United States and Canada.
100 images!
2020, English / Italian
Softcover (w. booklet), 300 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Danilo Montanari Editore / Ravenna
$80.00 $40.00 - In stock -
The volume examines the most interesting and innovative photographic books that appeared in Italy in the decade in which "modern" photography developed in our country. A boundary publishing industry, which oscillates between autonomous visual research (starting from the rediscovered experimentalism in the futurist field) and a 'functional' use of photographic illustration, in the two parallel and often crossed fields of advertising and propaganda.
The large Italian companies (Olivetti, Fiat, Snia Viscosa, Montecatini, etc.) recognized in those years the importance of linking their image to innovative graphic projects, in which photography plays a much more effective role than drawing; at the same time the fascist regime, having concluded its first phase of expansion and consolidation, discovers the power of photography and avant-garde techniques, especially photomontage, in the context of those promotional and self-celebrating practices which it increasingly needs to drive and maintain consent.
The book collects and illustrates about one hundred works, which emerge from an almost forgotten (if not removed), but conspicuous and often high-level editorial production, many of which due to the work of leading artists of the period, including Antonio Boggeri, Erberto Carboni, Franco Grignani, Bruno Munari, Giuseppe Pagano, Luigi Veronesi: tracing, we can say, the brief and intense history of graphic and photographic modernism in Italy.
Giorgio Grillo lives and works in Florence. He has dealt with Italian literature of the twentieth century, including the critical edition of Dino Campana's Canti Orfici. For some time he has been collecting photographs and photographic books, with particular attention to the photography of the origins and the historical avant-gardes of the last century.
1984, Japanese
Softcover, 330 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Million Publishing / Tokyo
$65.00 $40.00 - Out of stock
September 1984 issue SM Spirits, the ‘obscenity graphic monthly’ cult kinbaku magazine from S&M Sniper publisher Million Publishing, published between 1984—1993. Heavy with glossy sadomasochistic bondage photo stories, manga, SM art galleries, illustrated fetish stories and articles, SM Spirits featured the regular contributions of kinbaku masters such as Oniroku Dan, Ran Kousei, Arisue Go, Tadao Chigusa, Suehiro Maruo, Shin Tendouji, Junichi Tate, Shima Shikou, Akira Ishigaki, Keiichi Nakahara, Kinichi Tanaka, Hiroshi Urado, Eikichi Osada, Chimuo Nureki, Haruki Yukimura, and cover artwork by the amazing Takashi Niida. From the late ‘80s, each monthly issue explored a title theme, such as: Women in masochism, Suicide, New pleasures in SM, Anarchy Readers, My Lolita Angel, The Kinbaku, Eros Feminine, Pornography, Secret Amusement, Comic Spirits (featuring artist Suehiro Maruo), to name a few.
Very Good copy.
2010, English
Softcover (w. plastic jacket), 82 pages, 30 x 21.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
White Cube / London
$185.00 $100.00 - In stock -
Handsome, now rare book on the work of artist Welsh conceptual artist, sculptor and film-maker Cerith Wyn Evans, published by White Cube in 2010 on the occasion of the solo exhibition ''Everyone's gone to the movies, now we're alone at last..." (13 April – 21 May 2010, White Cube, Mason's Yard), only to quickly disappear from the face of the planet.
Certainly one of the scarcest recent publications on the artist.
Taking its title from a song by Steely Dan, 'Everyone's Gone To The Movies' (1975), Wyn Evans created two major installations that transformed the White Cube gallery spaces, engaging the viewer through the interaction of light, sound and reflection.
Text by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, including an interview with the artist.
This copy is brand new.
1983, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 48 pages, 21 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Art Space Bibudju / Japan
Edition Mibuduki / Japan
$140.00 $100.00 - In stock -
Rare Japanese book of the illustrated works by the great Czech transgender surrealist Toyen (1902—1980), issued in Japan in 1983, limited to 1000 copies, each hand-numbered. Wrapped in gold foil covers with bottle green obi-strip, this lovely publication reproduces Toyen's illustrations for the books Débris Des Rêves and Le puits dans la tour by Toyen and radical Croatian author Radovan Ivšić's Le Puits Dans La Tour & Débris Des Rêves, and her illustrations for La Forêt Sacrilège by French poet and artist Jean-Pierre Duprey, accompanied by essays by Japanese author Kunio Iwaya and André Breton, from the original French translated to Japanese. Also includes a chronology of Toyen. Texts in Japanese.
Good copy with tanning and some wear to foiled covers/obi.
1992, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Haga Bookstore / Japan
$80.00 $55.00 - In stock -
The wonderful Japanese photo-book / "Cine Album" that documents Jean-Luc Godard's film works through to 1983, from "Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick" (1957 w. Eric Rohmer) to "Lettre à Freddy Buache" (1982), each film chapter profusely illustrated with lush colour and b/w photographs summarising the scenes of the film, and including behind the scenes images, photofiles on all Godard's "stars", everyone is here — Anna, Isabelle, Jean-Paul, Brigitte, Chantal, Jean-Pierre, Anne, Hanna, Mick, Eddie, Marina, Nathalie, Macha... Absolutely exploding with hundreds of images crammed into over 200 pages. Published by the great Haga Bookstore imprint.
Fine copy in dust jacket.
?, French / Japanese
Hardcover, 48 pages (all heavy board), 18.5 x 10.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
? / Japan
$90.00 $65.00 - In stock -
First and only edition of the Japanese Jean-Luc Godard "MADE IN U.S.A." film book. This photo souvenir book is printed on thick board pages and made up of full-colour stills from Godard's 1966 classic "MADE IN U.S.A.", starring Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre Léaud, László Szabó, Yves Afonso, and Marianne Faithfull. Includes text/dialogue fragments throughout in French; profiles on the actors, Godard, cinematographer Raoul Coutard, producer Georges de Beauregard; lyrics to Marianne Faithfull's featured "As Tears Go By"; comic strip; and other texts in Japanese and French.
A very special collectable Godard book.
"With its giddily complex noir plot and color-drenched widescreen images, Made in U.S.A was a final burst of exuberance from Jean-Luc Godard’s early sixties barrage of delirious movie-movies. Yet this chaotic crime thriller and acidly funny critique of consumerism—starring Anna Karina as the most brightly dressed private investigator in film history, searching for a former lover who might have been assassinated—also points toward the more political cinema that would come to define Godard. Featuring characters with names such as Richard Nixon, Robert McNamara, David Goodis, and Doris Mizoguchi, and appearances by a slapstick Jean-Pierre Léaud and a sweetly singing Marianne Faithfull, this piece of pop art is like a Looney Tunes rendition of The Big Sleep gone New Wave."
Very Good copy with some faint foxing/dustiness to pages.
2012, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 32 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
$55.00 $20.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of this out-of-print study on Australian drawing by Janet McKenzie, with contributions by Irene Barberis and Christopher Heathcote, published by Macmillan Art Publishing in 2012. McKenzie introduces works by 78 selected artists from across the country. They include prominent figures such as Peter Booth, Allan Mitelman, John Olsen, Mirka Mora, Mike Parr, Kevin Lincoln, Jenny Watson, Jan Senbergs and Wendy Stavrianos, among many others. Heavily illustrated throughout in colour.
Fine, As New.
2024, English
Hardcover, 180 pages, 24.2 x 17.2 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
Whitney Museum of American Art / New York
$65.00 $40.00 - In stock -
An in-depth look at a public art project by David Hammons with an overview of the enigmatic artist’s career
Published to commemorate David Hammons’s (b. 1943) public art project Day’s End, located in New York City, this book documents the sculpture and offers broader context into Hammons’s enigmatic work. In 2014, Hammons sent the Whitney Museum of American Art a sketch for a monument to Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978), paying homage to Matta-Clark’s legendary Day’s End (1975)—an industrial, cathedral-like space of altered architecture—once located near today’s Whitney in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Completed in 2021, Hammons’s work, also titled Day’s End, was realized by the Whitney in collaboration with Hudson River Park, and is on permanent view. One of the most important artists working in the United States, Hammons makes art across mediums, often outside traditional venues. In addition to photographic documentation, the book includes essays on the origins of Day’s End, Hammons’s career scope, and a contribution by poet Ben Okri.
2000, English
Softcover, 250 pages, 17.15 x 24.13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Granary Books / New York
$90.00 $40.00 - In stock -
First edition of this out-of-print volume of Alison Knowles collage journal spanning 30 years.
Once upon a time [composer] Jim Tenney and I went walking in the woods. We came to a clearing and there under a tree was an arrangement of toy locomotives in the middle of nowhere. Pausing, we mused, where were they going, where had they been?
Attempting to write just such an imaginative history of her own life, and its comings and goings, New York artist Alison Knowles has compiled Footnotes—a collection of collage pages made from small, red travel books collected over 30 years, then pasted up and redrawn, in no definite or logical order. The settings of these collages range from Germany to Japan (but always coming back to New York), with a loosely woven context provided by jotted-down ideas and overheard conversations between her friends. These delicate pencil drawings convey a sense of time lost and regained, displacement and reorientation, of the scattered nature of our interior lives.
Alison Knowles (b. 1933) is an American visual artist and a founding member of the Fluxus movement, internationally known for her installations, performances, soundworks, and publications.
Very Good copy with light tanning to edges of book block.
2022, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 24 x 29 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$85.00 $40.00 - Out of stock
Published to accompany a major solo exhibition by Francis Alÿs (born 1959) at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne in 2021, this monograph presents an overview of the Belgian-born artist’s work in video, painting and drawing, with special emphasis on a central theme of his practice, the act of walking.
At the intersection of art, architecture and social practice, his artworks explore urban tensions and the geopolitical stakes of the spaces he explores. From urban strolls to exploring territories and their borders, Alÿs chronicles everyday rituals, habits and experiences through poetic films and works on paper. Among the many projects highlighted in this publication are Alÿs' works related to his Afghan experience and his Children's Games series in which the imaginary spaces of childhood join the artist's poetics of space.
Edited and introduced by MCBA Lausanne curator Nicole Schweizer, the book features essays by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor of History of Art, University of California, Berkeley; Luis Pérez-Oramas, independent curator and writer, New York; and Judith Rodenbeck, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Cultural Studies, University of California, Riverside.
Francis Alÿs was born in Belgium in 1959 and trained as an architect before re-locating to Mexico City in 1986, where he has been based ever since. He is best known for his actions which he documents in various ways. Some just involve him walking through the city; other actions are epic events set in dramatic landscapes involving hundreds of participants. Alÿs also works with painting, animation and drawing, and many of the images he creates have a dreamlike surreal quality. His actions are frequently humorous, often transient, and can sometimes seem absurd, but they are always concise and carefully planned. For a long time Alÿs has been interested in spreading news about his work through unconventional means such as rumour, so audiences can interpret his projects in unpredictable ways without seeing images of them. All these poetic qualities lead to his idiosyncratic way of approaching questions to do with urbanism, economics, migration, and borders. Throughout his career he has particularly investigated the processes of modernisation in Mexico and in Latin America.