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
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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.
2004, Japanese
Softcover, 176 pages, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$65.00 - In stock -
"Doll" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, published in 2004, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese with in-depth profiles, interviews and essays on leading artists that work with dolls, including contemporary Japanese masters of doll art, Koitsukihime, Katan Amano, Etsuko Miura, Yoshiko Hori, Yogu, Simon Yotsuya, Ryo Yoshida, Akiyama Mahoko, Mari Shimizu, influential Gothic Lolita illustrator Mitsukazu Mihara, Nori Doi, legendary Czech artist and animator Jan Švankmajer, Polish artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi, film-maker Floria Sigismondi, Louise Bourgeois, Slawomir Rumiak, Nori Doi, and a fantastic illustrated book guide of doll-related art books and literature, from Mary Shelley to The Surrealists, Hans Bellmer, Ken Katayama, Pierre Mollinier, Makoto Aida, Irina Ionesco, H.R. Giger...
Very Good copy with some wear to cover extremities.
1992, Japanese
Hardcover, 98 pages (w. fold-outs), 42 x 30 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
First special Japanese hardcover edition of H.R. Giger's Necronomicon II, the second oversized and visually overwhelming Giger-designed collection that takes us further through the incredible history of one of the most brilliant fantasy artists of the century. Reproducing Giger's award-winning work for the film ALIEN, lavish reproductions of his major paintings, environments, sculptural works, his work for never-shot film "The Tourist", his early grotesque ink illustrations, collaborations with Blondie's Debbie Harry, his "New York City" series from the late 1970's and so much more, all beautifully reproduced in full-colour and black and white, full-bleed spreads, including fold-out pages. Also includes interviews, texts, biography. These Giger folio books have become very desirable, collectable editions in their various printings around the world, the series encompassing the work of one of the world's most unique and influential visionaries of the macabre. This is volume 2 of 2 of "HR Giger's Necronomicon" where Al Azred's legendary magical book of the most wonderful abominations and perversions, "Necronomicon" (made infamous in the pages of HP Lovecraft's "Cthulhu" mythology), becomes a visual reality!
First hardcover Japanese edition, published by Hardcover edition published by Treville, Tokyo, in 1992. Light foxing/splitting/bumping to spine top and bottom, one semi-detaching from binding on endpaper, otherwise internally VG well preserved throughout.
2025, English / Dutch
Softcover, 464 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Published by
WIELS / Brussels
$110.00 - In stock -
The first total survey of Jef Geys' work. Art critics commonly describe the work of Belgian artist Jef Geys (1934-2018) as "unruly, and impossible to categorize in conventional art-historical categories." Despite Geys' subversive and critical attitude towards the art world, this ambitious publication shows that his work is not only deeply engaged and socially critical but also funny and sensory.
Since the early 1960s Geys had compiled an archive of everything he considered part of his artistic practice in to form of his "List of Works" serving as his oeuvre's index. With a total of 844 entries, Catalogue Raisonnable, is the first total survey of Jef Geys' work.
Through access to the artist's archive, close collaboration with Geys' next of kin, and thorough art-historical research, this publication offers a rare opportunity for understanding and appreciating the fascinating practice of one of Belgium's greatest artistic figures.
Jef Geys (1934-2018) was a prominent Belgian conceptual artist known for his multifaceted and often provocative work that intersected art with everyday life. Born in Leopoldsburg, Belgium, Geys was a teacher by profession, a role that deeply influenced his artistic practice. His work is characterized by its exploration of social, political, and cultural themes, often challenging the boundaries between art and daily experience.
Geys gained recognition for his innovative approach to art, which included photography, installation, sculpture, and publications. One of his notable projects was the "Kempens Informatieblad," a self-published newspaper that combined local news with critical commentary on contemporary art and society. This project exemplified his commitment to making art accessible and relevant to the broader public. Throughout his career, Geys exhibited internationally, including notable appearances at Documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennale. His work remains influential, celebrated for its critical engagement with the world and its capacity to blur the lines between art, education, and activism.
Texts by Dirk Snauwaert and Charlotte Friling.
1992, English
Softcover, 460 pages, 24 x 17.25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Godine / New England
$40.00 - In stock -
An anthology of writing on modernism edited by Brian Wallis and foreword by Marcia Tucker. Includes essays by Kathy Acker, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Jorge Luis Borges, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Jonathan Crary, Douglas Crimp, Hal Foster, Michel Foucault, J. Hoberman, Robert Hughes, Fredric Jameson, Mary Kelly, Rosalind Krauss, Donald Kuspit, Thomas Lawson, Kate Linker, Lucy R. Lippard, Laura Mulvey, Craig Owens, Constance Penley, Martha Rosler, Abigail Solomon-Godeau. Photographs selected and arranged by Louise Lawler in collaboration with Wallis. Includes short biography for each contributor.
"The waning of the century-old modernist movement in the arts has called forth an astonishing array of artistic and critical responses. The twenty-five essays in Art After Modernism provide a comprehensive survey of the most provocative directions taken by recent art and criticism, exploring such topics as the decline of the ideology of modernism in the arts and the emergence of a wide range of postmodern practices; recent directions in painting, film, video and photography; visual artists' investigations of mass-media systems and imagery; and the dynamics of the social network in which art is produced and disseminated. This major collection is an indispensable guide to the ideas and issues animating this decade's art the far-reaching cultural reorientation known as postmodernism."
Good copy with general handling wear/cover creasing.
1981, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 15.5 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$45.00 - In stock -
First 1981 edition of Passages in Modern Sculpture, Rosalind E. Krauss classic study of major works by important sculptors since Rodin in the light of different approaches to general sculptural issues to reveal the logical progressions from nineteenth-century figurative works to the conceptual work of the present.
"...Krauss's book is undoubtedly the best treatment of its subject yet written. As a textbook, it ought to raise the level of discourse in art history classes, for it is the meaning, not the chronology, of sculpture since Rodin that is the book's central concern. Krauss avoids the conventional plodding survey and divides the book into a sequence of 'case studies' that permit sustained attention to specific works and artists. In so doing, she attempts to trace a 'tradition' to stand behind that portion of American sculpture of the past 15 years which she espouses critically."—Art in America
"Distinguished art historian and critic Rosalind Krauss analyzes with exceptional clarity and insight the major works that have led 20th century sculpture from the traditional and figurative to the revolutionary conceptual art of the 1970s—an art which has developed a new 'syntax' that discards 'narrative' for instantaneous impact and boldly breaks new ground. Beginning with a penetrating study of Rodin's modernity in rejecting 'narrative' in his 'The Gates of Hell,' she moves successively through detailed examinations of futurism, constructivism, Duchamps' 'readymades,' Brancusi, David Smith's 'Tanktotem,' sculptural realism, and the introduction of light, motion, and theatrical elements into sculpture by Picabia, Calder, Oldenburg, and others right up to younger sculptors like Carl Andre, Blochner, and others [including Robert Morris, Don Judd, Richard Serra, Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson, and Michael Heizer]. As critic and theorist, Krauss makes demands that will challenge even the most sophisticated."—Publishers Weekly
Rosalind E. Krauss, editor and cofounder of October magazine, is University Professor at Columbia University. She is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, The Optical Unconscious, Bachelors, and Perpetual Inventory, all published by the MIT Press.
Good—Very Good copy with general light wear.
1977, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 308 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$65.00 - In stock -
First 1977 hardcover edition of Passages in Modern Sculpture, Rosalind E. Krauss classic study of major works by important sculptors since Rodin in the light of different approaches to general sculptural issues to reveal the logical progressions from nineteenth-century figurative works to the conceptual work of the present.
"...Krauss's book is undoubtedly the best treatment of its subject yet written. As a textbook, it ought to raise the level of discourse in art history classes, for it is the meaning, not the chronology, of sculpture since Rodin that is the book's central concern. Krauss avoids the conventional plodding survey and divides the book into a sequence of 'case studies' that permit sustained attention to specific works and artists. In so doing, she attempts to trace a 'tradition' to stand behind that portion of American sculpture of the past 15 years which she espouses critically."—Art in America
"Distinguished art historian and critic Rosalind Krauss analyzes with exceptional clarity and insight the major works that have led 20th century sculpture from the traditional and figurative to the revolutionary conceptual art of the 1970s—an art which has developed a new 'syntax' that discards 'narrative' for instantaneous impact and boldly breaks new ground. Beginning with a penetrating study of Rodin's modernity in rejecting 'narrative' in his 'The Gates of Hell,' she moves successively through detailed examinations of futurism, constructivism, Duchamps' 'readymades,' Brancusi, David Smith's 'Tanktotem,' sculptural realism, and the introduction of light, motion, and theatrical elements into sculpture by Picabia, Calder, Oldenburg, and others right up to younger sculptors like Carl Andre, Blochner, and others [including Robert Morris, Don Judd, Richard Serra, Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson, and Michael Heizer]. As critic and theorist, Krauss makes demands that will challenge even the most sophisticated."—Publishers Weekly
Rosalind E. Krauss, editor and cofounder of October magazine, is University Professor at Columbia University. She is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, The Optical Unconscious, Bachelors, and Perpetual Inventory, all published by the MIT Press.
Very Good in VG dust jacket designed by Krauss with interior architect Alan Buchsbaum!
2024, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 496 pages, 29 x 24 cm
Published by
Mumok / Vienna
Walther König / Köln
$100.00 - In stock -
The rediscovery of a still underappreciated artist who, along with Auguste Rodin, revolutionised sculpture in the 19th century.
Artist and artisan, art theorist and proto-installation artist, master of high-publicity productions and rival of Auguste Rodin, Medardo Rosso (b. 1858 in Turin, d. 1928 in Milan) was one of the great pioneers of modernism and a figure as extraordinary as he was eccentric.
Published on the occasion of a comprehensive retrospective curated by Heike Eipeldauer withexhibition design by Florian Pumhösl and Walter Kräutler, devoted to the Italian-French artist’s still little-known oeuvre, with more than fifty sculptures and a large selection of photographs, photocollages, and drawings. The exhibition and catalogue (at almost 500 pages) delves into a thorough analysis of Rosso’s processual and repetitive approach, with which the artist defied all conventions of traditional sculpture. A concise selection of works by artists directly or indirectly influenced by Rosso further unpack and create a dialogue with Rosso’s equally groundbreaking and hermetic work. The show thus adheres to Rosso’s own artistic practice of not exhibiting alone but always in “conversation” with others — among them Francis Bacon, Nairy Baghramian, Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brancusi, Edgar Degas, Alberto Giacometti, David Hammons, Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, and Andy Warhol - who resonate directly or indirectly with Rosso. The book is profusely illustrated with Rosso's works, as well as the works in dialogue and full installation documentation of this triumphant exhibition.
Artists in dialogue with Medardo Rosso: Giovanni Anselmo / Guillaume Apollinaire / Francis Bacon / Nairy Baghramian / Olga Balema / Phyllida Barlow / Lynda Benglis / Louise Bourgeois / Anton Giulio Bragaglia / Constantin Brâncuși / Eugène Carrière / John Chamberlain / Honoré Daumier / Edgar Degas / Raymond Duchamp-Villon / Luciano Fabro / Loïe Fuller / Isa Genzken / Alberto Giacometti / Robert Gober / David Hammons / Eva Hesse / Jasper Johns / Hans Josephsohn / Ellsworth Kelly / Käthe Kollwitz / Yayoi Kusama / Maria Lassnig / Sherrie Levine / Matthijs Maris / Marisa Merz / Amedeo Modigliani / Robert Morris / Juan Muñoz / Senga Nengudi / Carol Rama / Auguste Rodin / Richard Serra / Georges Seurat / Erin Shirreff / Edward Steichen / Alina Szapocznikow / Paul Thek / Rosemarie Trockel / Hannah Villiger / Andy Warhol / Rebecca Warren / James Welling / Francesca Woodman
Texts by: Jo Applin, Birgit Brunk, Georges Didi-Huberman, Heike Eipeldauer, Elena Filipovic, Ines Gebetsroither, Francesco Guzzetti, Karola Kraus, Lisa LeFeuvre, Megan R. Luke, Esmee Postma, Florian Pumhosl, Nina Schallenberg, Francesco Stocchi, Matthew S. Witkovsky.
Medardo Rosso, b. 1858 in Turin, d. 1928 in Milan, was a resident of Paris from 1889 on. There, he befriended Auguste Rodin, whose collaborator and later rival he became. Both artists sought to radically redefine the ostensibly unmodern medium of sculpture, which had been stuck in the confines of the monumental. Designed in the spirit of a fluid idea of modernism and shaped by the philosopher Henri Bergson's revolutionary concept of space and time, Rosso's sculptures overcame classical characteristics such as solidity and durability in favor of modern phenomena of the transitory and immaterial.
The exhibition, which is organized in close collaboration with the Medardo Rosso Estate, travels from Mumok, Vienna to Kunstmuseum Basel, spanning 2024—2025.
Highly recommended!
2006, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 27.1 x 21.4 cm
Published by
Hayward Gallery Publishing / London
$75.00 - In stock -
An exploration of the unsettling collisions of art and culture in Georges Bataille's revolutionary journal and a new consideration of twentieth-century masterpieces by Picasso, Miro, Dali, and others against the canvas of their renegade times.
In the Paris art world of the 1920s, Georges Bataille and his journal DOCUMENTS represented a dissident branch of surrealism. Bataille—poet, philosopher, writer, and self-styled "enemy within" surrealism—used DOCUMENTS to put art into violent confrontation with popular culture, ethnography, film, and archaeology. Undercover Surrealism, taking the visual richness of DOCUMENTS as its starting point, recovers the explosive and vital intellectual context of works by Picasso, Miro, Dali, Giacometti, and others in 1920s Paris.
Profusely illustrated (featuring 180 colour images) and filled with valuable English translations of original French texts from DOCUMENTS accompanied by essays and shorter descriptive texts, Undercover Surrealism recreates and recontextualizes Bataille's still unsettling approach to culture. Putting Picasso's Three Dancers back into its original context of sex, sacrifice, and violence, for example, then juxtaposing it with images of gang wars, tribal masks, voodoo ritual, Hollywood musicals, and jazz, makes the urgency and excitement of Bataille's radical ideas startlingly vivid to a twenty-first-century reader.
2024, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 334 pages, 32 x 22 cm
Published by
Centre Pompidou / Paris
$110.00 - In stock -
The defining book for the centenary of Surrealism. From September 2024 to January 2025, the Centre Pompidou will celebrate the 100th anniversary of André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto. For the next two years, their unprecedented Surrealist exhibition will tour the art galleries of the world, accompanied by this special catalogue.
Perhaps more than any other artistic movement, Surrealism had a cataclysmic effect on the modern mind, changing forever the way we think about experiencing the world. By rejecting the gross linearity that typified several centuries of preceding artworks, the legendary Surrealists Magritte, Ernst, Carrington, Dali, Tanning and so many others reached beyond the facade of that which is patently visible and found something more. Featuring original essays from leading academics and excerpts from the Surrealist Manifesto itself, this stands among the most essential Surrealist catalogues ever published.
2020, English
Hardcover, 200 pages, 26.7 x 33 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$120.00 - In stock -
Featuring paintings from series that span from 1994 through 2009, this volume traces Mike Kelley's (1954–2012) engagement with the medium through bodies of work including The Thirteen Seasons (Heavy on the Winter), a series of oval-shaped paintings on wood; Timeless Painting, which marked Kelley's distinct return to painting in colour, and which he described as "mannerist take-offs on Hans Hofmann's compositional theory of ‘push and pull'"; and the Horizontal Tracking Shots series.
2025, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 16 x 11 cm
Published by
Spector Books / Leipzig
$30.00 - In stock -
Envision a world without architecture, a world-tecture without arche, the latter meaning not only beginning or origin but also the authority to arrange and subordinate persons, objects, and processes into an identifiable power structure. Pre-architecture is not simply “not architecture”—it is what architecture could have become but ultimately disavowed. The same unfulfilled potentialities haunt not only the distant past but also architecture’s anxious present in a time of environmental crisis, energetic transformation, and related social challenges. The publication, which accompanies the exhibition of the same name in Brussels, refers to the beginnings of human habitat and features a transdisciplinary field of architects, artists, sociologists, and archaeologists. Speculating on the “birth” of design, it questions the cultural, social, economic, and political foundations of spatial organization.
Silvia Franceschini is a curator at CIVA in Brussels. Previously, she was a curator at Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design, and Architecture, Hasselt. Nikolaus Hirsch is artistic director of CIVA, Brussels. He has previously held the positions of dean at the Städelschule, Frankfurt, and director of Portikus Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. Spyros Papapetros teaches art and architectural theory and historiography at the School of Architecture and the Programs on Media and Modernity as well as European Cultural Studies at Princeton University.
2024, English
Softcover, 328 pages, 21 x 28 cm
Published by
Spector Books / Leipzig
$110.00 - In stock -
The book Archive of Dreams is published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name that will open the Archiv der Avantgarden. Marking the hundredth anniversary of the first surrealist manifesto and the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research in Paris in 1924, the volume is dedicated to the surrealist movement as well as the networks it engendered and the artistic stimuli it provided in the twentieth century. The idea was for the Bureau to collect dream testimonies in whatever form, not only to preserve and analyse them but also to give active expression to them in artistic processes. The publication shows how the practices of the avantgardes blurred the boundaries between dream and reality, between the traditional, passive notion of the archive and the idea of active, innovative artistic experiment — and thus ultimately also between the past, the present, and possible futures.
Works and documents from the period before, during, and after the Second World War shed light on the working methods of international artists and the global network they were involved in. They are complemented by diverse reflections on global protest movements and the traumas of war, thus connecting, too, to everyday experiences in a Europe beset by warfare.
2005, English / German
Softcover, 192 pages, 22.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$280.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of Rosemarie Trockel's Post Menopause catalogue (raisonné), published on the occasion of the major 2005—2006 exhibition Rosemarie Trockel: Menopause, at the Museum Ludwig, Köln, and MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome.
This wonderful, major survey disappeared from print very fast, quickly becoming a valuable item in the mid-2000s. A catalogue raisonné of sorts, collecting Rosemarie Trockel's work from 1980—2005 (sculpture, wool works, drawings, publications, garments, photography, video — including many very rarely seen objects), Post Menopause remains one the best, most comprehensive, and Trockel-esque books produced on one of Germany's most important and influential conceptual artists. Not surprisingly, since Post Menopause was realised in close collaboration between Trockel herself with Museum Ludwig curator Barbara Engelbach, and designed by her regular design collaborator, and sometimes muse, the great graphic designer Yvonne Quirmbach. Extensive chronological cataloguing of all works, biography, bibliography, and bilingual (English and German) essays by Brigid Doherty, Silvia Eiblmayr, Barbara Engelbach, Kasper König, and Gregory Williams.
A highly recommended and invaluable resource on the artist.
Rosemarie Trockel (*1952) is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential conceptual artists in Germany. Her sculptures, collages, ceramics, knitted works, drawings and photographs are noted for their subtle social critique and range of subversive, aesthetic strategies—including the reinterpretation of “feminine” techniques, the ironic shifting of cultural codes, a delight in paradox, and a refusal to conform to the commercial and institutional ideologies of the art system.
Fine copy.
1970/1971, French
Softcover, 2 volumes, unpaginated, 28.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Marie Concorde / Paris
$320.00 - In stock -
Both of the only volumes ever produced of this wonderful French avant-garde journal, published in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s. A visual manifesto against the prudishness of the times, KITSCH presented hundreds of illustrations of mostly erotic, fetish and fantastic/grotesque artwork by artists from all over the world, and spanning generations, with both issues wrapped in the most striking Tom Wesselmann covers. KITSCH 1 includes Toshio Saeki, Guido Crepax, Richard Linder, Robert Crumb, Guy Bourdin, Petr Herel, Hannes Jahn, Roman Cieślewicz, Ben Vautier, Christian Bour, Jacques Sternberg, Roland Topor, Jim, Allen Jones, Thomas Weir, alongside photo essays on upskirt polaroids, Satanik, Diabolik, fashion and more. KITSCH 2 includes Aslan, Roy Lichtenstein, Virgil Finlay, Jim Osborne, Ronald Lipking, Greg Irons, George Grosz, Egon Schiele, Mel Ramos, alongside photo essays on subjects such as "Pop Art", "Human Concern" and Paris' "Pigalle" district, further featuring work by H.C.Westermann, Paul Thek, Edward Keinholz, William Tunberg, Christian Schad, William Weegee, James Rosenquist, Frank Gallo, Tom Wesselmann, and many more.
Very good copies both, light wear.
1974 / 2025, English
Softcover, 28 pages, 24.4 x 18.2 cm
Published by
Hacienda Books / Zürich
Walther König / Köln
$48.00 - In stock -
Three subtle stories, told in 200 drawings across 28 pages.
Drei Geschichten was created between January and May 1973 in Zurich and Carona and was published in 1974 in an edition of 500 copies by Galerie Stähli in Lucerne. In 2014, Drei Geschichten was published - revised as a Comix - in the collection Nine Books 1973-1979, initiated by David Weiss (1946-2012), by Edition Patrick Frey. This new edition was published in summer 2025 on the occasion of the exhibition David Weiss Il sogno di Casa Aprile – Carona 1968-1978 at MASI in Lugano.
1974 / 2025, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 18.2 x 11.7 cm
Published by
Hacienda Books / Zürich
Walther König / Köln
$48.00 - In stock -
"Imagine: a small, white booklet with around 150 ink drawings and no text other than the title on the front: «up and down town» by David Weiss, written on a cover page that is, quite literally, rain-soaked. But it gets even worse. In all of the drawings, it keeps raining – constantly, heavily, pouring, drenching, streaming down – and it never stops. The wet asphalt glistens, neon signs reflect in reverse on car roofs, a tram splashes water from the tracks onto the hunched figures beneath umbrellas. But if you look more closely at this ever-changing urban setting, strange characters begin to flicker into view. A booklet to return to again and again, always discovering new details, events, constellations. And what's more, it is absolutely brilliantly drawn."—Bice Curiger, “Tages-Anzeiger”, Zürich (November 14, 1975)
up and down town was was first published in 1974 in an edition of 1000 copies by Edition Galerie Stähli in Zürich. In 2014, up and down town was published – as Regenbüchlein – in the collection Nine Books 1973-1979 initiated by David Weiss (1946-2012), by Edition Patrick Frey. This new edition was published in summer 2025 on the occasion of the exhibition David Weiss Il sogno di Casa Aprile – Carona 1968-1978 at MASI in Lugano.
2024, English
Hardcover, 304 pages, 25 x 23 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$110.00 - In stock -
An updated edition of the indispensable guide to the British artist Phyllida Barlow's sculptural oeuvre across 6 decades.
Phyllida Barlow: Sculpture, 1963-2023 is a comprehensive guide to Phyllida Barlow's sculptural language, charting the progression of the artist's extraordinary and influential career. Barlow's restless invented forms stretch the limits of mass, volume, and height, challenging her audience into a new relationship with the sculptural object, the gallery environment, and the world beyond.
Originally published by Fruitmarket and Hatje Cantz in 2015, this major monograph begins in the 1960s and documents six decades of Barlow's astonishing sculptures and expansive installations, including the Duveen Commission for Tate Britain (2014) and her 2015 Fruitmarket exhibition, set. It has now been expanded to include Barlow's important exhibitions in the years that followed, among them the British Pavilion for the 2017 Venice Biennale, her work for New York's High Line (2018), and her Schwitters-Prize-winning exhibition at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover (2022).
Authored by curator Frances Morris, who has made extensive additions to her original text for this updated edition, and featuring illustrations of over 130 works, Phyllida Barlow: Sculpture, 1963-2023 is the indispensable resource on the important British sculptor.
2024, English
Softcover, 244 pages, 19.5 x 13.5 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$49.00 - Out of stock
Mike Kelley is best known as one of the most influential visual artists of his generation. But he was also an insightful theorist who wrote profusely about his work as well as on aesthetics in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, an epoch marked, in his view, by victim culture and the pop psychology phenomenon known as repressed memory syndrome.
Mike Kelley: Materialist Aesthetics and Memory Illusions presents the artist in a new light, almost as an empirical philosopher delivering his position through art as well as writing. In a meticulous and transdisciplinary approach, Laura López Paniagua presents Kelley’s oeuvre as a stance in materialist aesthetics and weaves thoughtful relations between the artist’s critique, statements, and comments and the theories of thinkers such as Georges Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. López Paniagua focuses on Kelley’s artistic production between 1995 and his death in 2012, analyzing these works vis-à-vis the concept of memory, one of the artist’s obsessions and leitmotivs throughout his career.
An essay by Laura López Paniagua, with an introduction by John Miller.
2024, Second edition
1999, English / German
Softcover, 64 pages, 27 x 21.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Kunstverein Braunschweig / Germany
$65.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1999, this catalogue is the first book to document two of Mike Kelley's central works, Sublevel (1998) and Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (1991-1999), and includes deluxe large-format installation shots of these two pieces, as well as an interview and an essay by the artist.
1981, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 40 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Charles E. Tuttle / Tokyo
$170.00 - In stock -
Scarce first Japanese edition (entirely in English language), published in Tokyo by Charles Tuttle, of this beautifully produced over-sized 1981 book by H. R. Giger. Foreword by Timothy Leary.
In 1981, a year after being awarded the Oscar for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for Alien, the book H.R. GIGER N.Y. CITY was published. This series of post Alien works, the result of an intense period of non-stop painting, literally day and night, were inspired by Giger's trip to New York City and a template which his colleague Cornelius de Fries, brought back from one of his excursions into the electronic industry. The stencil was actually a sheet of scrap metal from which electrical components had been punched out. Alongside these incredible works are drawings, articles, press clippings, posters and polaroids from Giger's time in New York City.
Fantastic Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger was born in 1940, the son of a chemist. He spoke of a father who viewed art as a "breadless profession", and strongly encouraged his son to enter into pharmaceutics. Despite this, in 1962, he moved to Zürich, where he studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970. Giger's style and thematic execution have been hugely influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence. Giger is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums. His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, he described as "biomechanical". His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. He was also a personal friend of Timothy Leary. Giger suffered from night terrors and his paintings are all to some extent inspired by his experiences with that particular sleep disorder, making his first paintings as a means of art therapy. In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H. R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.
Good copy, tight binding with some corner cover wear, tanning to page edges and foxing to preliminary pages.
2024, English
Softcover, 134 pages, 24 x 17.5 cm
Published by
ACCA / Melbourne
$25.00 - In stock -
Fusing First Nations cultural traditions, the industrial materiality of the mining industry, and regional and global art influences, this title and its accompanying exhibition asserts and re-imagines the artists’ cross-cultural identities, drawing upon the haunting wounds of post-contact histories, the renewal and remaking of cultural practices, and the collaborative resilience and audaciously punk attitude of a frontier community.Encompassing contemporary artists from Northern Central Australia and Melbourne, Tennant Creek Brio includes key members Fabian Brown Japaljarri, Lindsay Nelson Jakamarra, Rupert Betheras, Joseph Williams Jungarayi, Clifford Thompson Japaljarri, Jimmy Frank Jupurrula, Fabian Rankine Jampijinpa, Marcus Camphoo Kemarre, and collaborators including Eleanor Jawurlngali Dixon, Lévi McLean, and Gary Sullibhaine. The group first converged in 2016 when the artists initiated an outreach program at the local men’s centre, Anyinginyi Health Aboriginal Corporation.
Edited by Max Delany and Elyse Goldfinch
2025, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 124 pages, 23 x 23 cm
Published by
Drill Hall Gallery / Canberra
$45.00 - In stock -
This title brings the collection of Canberra couple Susan Taylor and Peter Jones into focus on the advent of its 25th anniversary. Seeded from an initial interest in mid-century modern design and early twentieth century avant-gardes, the collection blossomed into an embrace of non-objective and abstract art. Artists featured include General Idea, Maria Kozic, Peter Maloneyi, Elizabeth Newman, John Nixon, Robert Rooney, Janet Burchill, Jennifer McCamley and many more.It has grown to revel in the intersections between conceptual art, geometric abstraction, seriality, non-objective painting, photography, contemporary jewellery and poetics to develop conjunctions across time, place and materiality.
The publication accompanies the exhibition curated by Peter Jones at the Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, 19 April – 15 June 2025.
Eye to Eye delves into several of the collection’s multi-faceted and revelatory cross-sections. In his essay Peter Jones explores how the couple’s interests have been refined and extended by the art they love and the people that surround that art. In an interview with Drill Hall Gallery director Tony Oates, Susan Taylor discusses the correlations between sustainable fashion and conceptual art with a focus on jewellery. National Gallery of Australia’s curator of photography, Shaune Lakin, traces developments in local conceptual photography from the 1960s as they play out across the Taylor Jones collection. Acclaimed writer Quentin Sprague offers illuminating insight into the work of Robert Rooney and John Nixon, two stalwarts in the Taylor Jones collection. The publication touches on a vast array of local and international art historically significant developments, revealing the power of the private collection to expose perspectives that may go unnoticed in larger, public collections.
2025, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 23 x 16.6 cm
Published by
Memo Review / Naarm
$35.00 - In stock -
What happens when political art becomes indistinguishable from marketing? Catherine Liu calls it “the highest form of kitsch” — where liberal good intentions become another elite commodity. Vincent Lê sees Apple’s crushingly smooth aesthetics not as mere flattening, but as capitalism’s natural logic of “creative destruction” at work: art compressed into commodity pixels; culture remade through self-improving competition. Either way, we’ve reached peak kitsch. Slavoj Žižek spots it: Trump’s AI-generated Gaza fantasy isn’t just tasteless satire; it’s political kitsch perfected. Call it hasbara via hyperpop.
Meanwhile, Isobel D’Cruz Barnes shows how artists on Narrm’s subculture music scene recognise that the real stage isn’t sound — it’s Instagram, TikTok, and every surface of aesthetic performance. Emerging now is culture as costume, rebellion reimagined as self-design, “lazy representation politics and identity capitalism” countered by their acceleration. And maybe that is just fine.
But no one slices open this tension between image and impact like artist Maria Kozic, whose visceral pop provocations twist kitsch into something uncomfortable, even violent—like Warhol thrown into a meat-grinder. Here kitsch doesn’t comfort but “pops.”
Khaled Sabsabi’s Venice controversy crystallises the stakes: Creative Australia recoiled from his political ambiguities, preferring art to neatly market their own virtue. Adorno (via Benjamin and Greenberg) knew all along: kitsch is the aestheticisation of politics. Or was it fascism? Or is art best when it risks being misunderstood or ambivalent, or, even better, wrong?
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 86 pages, 30 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
First Japanese edition of the official companion book to the 1995 American sci-fi horror film Species (directed by Roger Donaldson and written by Dennis Feldman) and the film's artistic designer H.R. Giger, famous for his creations for the Alien film. This profusely illustrated "Making of" book is packed with reproductions of Giger's incredible conceptual drawings and models as well as photographs of special effects processes, Giger's set-design, animatronics, and creature fabrication, detailing all the work involved in bringing the science fiction creature Sil to the screen. Includes fold-out illustration of the famous "Ghost Train" and much more.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.