World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2017, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 13.5 x 21 cm
Published by
Harvard University Graduate School of Design / Cambridge
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$22.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
When Yoshi Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima of the Tokyo-based firm Atelier Bow-Wow arrived at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design as guest professors, in the winter of 2016, they challenged students to deeply consider their surroundings and record their reactions as a large pencil drawing. In this “public drawing” time is suspended and expanded; futures, presents, and pasts converge; and the act of drawing becomes an instrument of dialogue and engagement.
Tsukamoto and Kaijima later spoke about the project with K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and reflected on representation, occupation, and the democracy of architecture. They unfolded their concept of an “ecology of livelihood,” wherein shadowless figures, objects, and spaces coexist with construction details. Explaining their belief in the “behavioral capacities” of humans, architecture, and nature, Tsukamoto and Kaijima revealed the generosity of spirit in their work, and the importance of pushing such capacities to their most yielding limits.
The Incidents is a series of publications based on events that occurred at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design between 1936 and tomorrow.
Book series designed by Åbäke
2014, English
Softcover, 296 pages, 10.8 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$45.00 $5.00 - In stock -
Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He was born in 1962 in Beirut or Baghdad and died before dying in 1989 in Evanston, Illinois. This second edition of a collection of his essays whirls around the appearance of the unworldly in art, culture, history, and the present.
On the first edition of Forthcoming published by Atelos in 2000: “Although sometimes couched in what looks like the language of critical theory, Toufic’s formal hybridity and poetic methods sharply distinguish Forthcoming from most other titles on those shelves labeled Cultural, Poststructuralist, or Postcolonial Studies.… In his insistence upon treating the dead as a great part of the potential force of this world, Toufic plumbs the poetics of disaster and recuperation in ways that remain both incredibly suggestive and relentlessly radical.”
—Village Voice Literary Supplement, April 2001
Design by Kloepfer-Ramsey-Kwon
2017, English
Softcover, 280 pages, 10.8 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$45.00 $5.00 - Out of stock
What Was I Thinking? is an initiation into thinking. With a mind that is extremely analytical and yet extremely capable of rendering all kinds of knowledge and experiences permeable to each other, Jalal Toufic creates here a “summa,” but an open-ended one. He looks into the arts as if they were the privileged site of thinking, even when they inevitably fail, and still confronts his insights/thoughts with texts taken from the traditional religions and mystics of the past. He has reached in this work an Olympian attitude—tuned to his basically Dionysian temperament—that announces the beginning of a detachment, of a remarkable serenity (a joy in thinking that Nietzsche had already understood). Jalal Toufic is today, and has been for some time, the most original thinker on the planet. He assumes the challenge stated by Heidegger in What Is Called Thinking? by his own thinking (by writing this book). To imagine the best possible worlds, to go into uncharted territory; these worlds are eminently those of the arts (as he practices them, as he delves into their layers, their paradoxes, their darings, ever admitting their maddening inbuilt inaccessibility). His kind of an endeavor takes a tremendous courage. And a unique freedom: letting his mind go into unpredicted ascertainments, so that his writing “does not fall apart two days later.” Situated somewhere close to the spirit of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Nietzsche's breakthroughs, we can say that Jalal Toufic is indeed a “destiny.”
—Etel Adnan
Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Stephen Squibb, Anton Vidokle
Design by Jeff Ramsey, front cover design by Liam Gillick
2011, English
Softcover, 116 pages, 11.2 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$45.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Welcome to Finland, a young land of rapid aging, where newly founded institutions are already outmoded and geographic impediments are a constant crippling agent. As part of Ingo Niermann’s Solution Series, Solution Finland: The Welfare Game by architect Martti Kalliala with writer and curator Jenna Sutela and architect Tuomas Toivonen, addresses the Nordic country’s numerous predicaments.
The three authors offer readers eight and a half solutions to their native country’s quandaries, ranging from the absurd (the implementation of fiction-mongering emissaries to boost tourism) to the earnest, if far-reaching (the repurposing of the country to host nuclear waste). Solution Finland elucidates the northern country’s modern history as a nation under construction, proposing that its identity remain a malleable myth, in which designing a more tenable future is the conduit for crucial adaptation.
Solution Series edited by Ingo Niermann
Design by Zak Group
2015, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 11.2 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$46.00 $10.00 - In stock -
What is luxury? Anything that is not essential to life and that, once everyone has it, is rather annoying.
—Solution 264, “Public Poverty”
Having furnished solutions for Germany and Dubai, Ingo Niermann takes a new look at what nationhood can mean and accomplish today, finding inspiration, of all places, in North Korea. Now that the promise of global prosperity and abundance can technically be fulfilled, the time has come for a minimalist rethink of society. By relying on drills and a principle of reduction, the individual can be granted a freedom for experiences and ideas that are not possible otherwise. The more we simplify, the lighter the ballast we’ll have to carry.
The twelfth volume in the Solution series includes an account of Niermann’s travels through North and South Korea, accompanied by the author's photographs. The eleven solutions in Solution 264–274: Drill Nation build from insights culled while on the trip.
Published to coincide with the Real DMZ Project 2015, curated by Sunjung Kim and Nikolaus Hirsch
Solution Series edited by Ingo Niermann
Design by Zak Group
2020, English
Softcover, 34 pages, 10.6 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Pattern Books / UK
$12.00 - In stock -
He-Yin Zhen was an early 20th century Chinese feminist and anarchist. Born He Ban in Yizheng, Jiangsu, she married the noted scholar Liu Shipei in 1903 and went with him to Tokyo. She then took the name He Zhen but signed her published writings He-Yin Zhen in order to include her mother's maiden name. She published a number of strong attacks in anarchist journals on male social power which argued that society could not be free without the liberation of women. Her essay "On The Question Of Women's Liberation," which appeared in Tianyi in 1907, opens by declaring that "for thousands of years, the world has been dominated by the rule of man. This rule is marked by class distinctions over which men—and men only—exert proprietary rights. To rectify the wrongs, we must first abolish the rule of men and introduce equality among human beings, which means that the world must belong equally to men and women. The goal of equality cannot be achieved except through women's liberation." "On Feminist Antimilitarism", which was originally published in 1907, He Zhen addresses the importance of women protesting against militarism. "The Feminist Manifesto", which was also published in 1907, He Zhen Zhen tackles the institution of marriage as a route source of the inequalities between man and woman.
This is a copyright-free Radical Re-print pocket book.
2020, English / Italian
Softcover, 128 pages, 14.8 x 21 cm
Published by
Humboldt Books / Milan
$48.00 - In stock -
The expanded anastatic reprint of the Italian designer's sulphurous catalog of 1973.
Falce e martello: tre dei modi con cui un artista può contribuire alla lotta di classe (“Hammer and Sickle: three of the ways an artist can contribute to the class struggle”) by Enzo Mari was the little catalogue that accompanied his exhibition at the Galleria Milano in 1973. Today, the exhibition is re-proposed, with the same display and in the same historical Milanese gallery; the anastatic reprint of the catalogue is enriched with photographs and documents from the archives of the Gallery and from the Mari Archive, along with an essay by Bianca Trevisan which retraces the planning itinerary undertaken by the Milanese artist and designer, and an essay by Riccardo Venturi outlining the historical, artistic and political debate that the project was part of, and which was accompanied by a film that sparked a degree of controversy at the time. A snapshot of that tinderbox which was 1970s Italy, and a reflection on the hammer and sickle: the most iconic symbol of the whole of the twentieth century.
Enzo Mari (1932-2020) was an Italian designer, graphic designer, illustrator and artist. His works range from design to painting, from graphics to gallery displays. He was both a teacher and a political activist. Today he is considered one of the greatest theorists of design.
His works have been featured at the Venice Biennale, the Milan Triennale, the Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin, the MIC in Faenza, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome and the MoMA in New York. He was awarded the Golden Compass in 1986, a form of acknowledgement he had already been given in 1967 and 1979, as well as the International Design Center Prize in 1987 in New York. In 2008, the GAM in Turin dedicated a retrospective solo show to his work. Among his more recent writings, we might note: Progetto e passione (2001), La valigia senza manico (2004) and 25 modi per piantare un chiodo (2011).
2021, English
Softcover, 592 pages, 12 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Blank Forms / New York
$50.00 - Out of stock
The collection of previously unpublished interviews and extended versions of Alan Licht's famous conversations with figures in the American art and music scene.
For the past thirty years, Alan Licht has been a performer, programmer, and chronicler of New York's art and music scenes. His dry wit, deep erudition, and unique perspective—informed by decades of experience as a touring and recording guitarist in the worlds of experimental music and underground rock—have distinguished him as the go-to writer for profiles of adventurous artists across genres. A precocious scholar and improvisor, by the time he graduated from Vassar College in 1990 Licht had already authored important articles on minimalist composers La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, and Charlemagne Palestine, and recorded with luminaries such as Rashied Ali and Thurston Moore. In 1999 he became a regular contributor to the British experimental music magazine The Wire while continuing to publish in a wide array of periodicals, ranging from the artworld glossies to underground fanzines.
Common Tones gathers a selection of never-before-published interviews, many conducted during the writing of Licht's groundbreaking profiles, alongside extended versions of his celebrated conversations with artists, previously un-transcribed public exchanges, and new dialogues held on the occasion of this collection. Even Lou Reed, a notoriously difficult interviewee also included here, was suitably impressed.
Alan Licht (born 1968) is a writer, musician, and curator based in New York City. He is equally known for his guitar work in the underground rock bands Run On and Lovechild and in the experimental groups the Blue Humans and Text of Light. He has released numerous solo guitar albums and duo and trio records of improvised music, collaborating with avant-garde musicians such as Jim O'Rourke, Loren Mazzacan Connors, Rudolf Grey, Lee Ranaldo and Aki Onda.
Introduction by Jay Sanders. Interviews by Alan Licht with Vito Acconci, ANOHNI, Cory Arcangel, Matthew Barney, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad, Karl Precoda (Dream Syndicate), Richard Foreman, Henry Flynt, Milford Graves, Adris Hoyos, Ken Jacobs, Jutta Koether, Christian Marclay, Phill Niblock, Alessandra Novaga, Stephanie Oursler, Kelly Reichardt, The Sea and Cake, Suicide, Michael Snow, Greg Tate, Tom Verlaine, Rudy Wurlitzer, Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo).
2021, English
Hardcover, 360 pages, 19.5 x 25.2 cm
Published by
Faber & Faber / London
$52.00 - Out of stock
A definitive insight into the ever-influential world of Mark E. Smith and the Fall, featuring never-before published essays and ephemera from fans, collectors and the artist and band themselves.
This is not a book about a rock band. This is not even a book about Mark E Smith. This is a book about The Fall group - or more precisely, their world. Over a prolific forty-year career, the Fall created a world that was influential, idiosyncratic and fiercely original - and defied simple categorisation. Their frontman and lyricist Mark E. Smith spun opaque tales that resisted conventional understanding; the Fall's worldview was an education in its own right. Who wouldn't want to be armed with a working knowledge of M. R. James, shipping-dock procedures, contemporary dance, Manchester City and Can? The group inspired and shaped the lives of those who listened to and tried to make sense of their work.
Bringing together previously unseen artwork, rare ephemera and handwritten material, alongside essays by a slate of fans, EXCAVATE! is a vivid, definitive record - an illumination of the dark corners of the Fall's wonderful and frightening world.
This is a book about Mark E. Smith and The Fall - or more precisely, their ever-influential world. The Fall were so many things, so many worlds; if you got it (and not everyone did), they represented everything.
'To 50,000 Fall Fans: please buy this inspired & inspiring, profound & provocative, beautiful & bonkers Book of Revelations, choc-stock-full of loving Acts by true Apostles, simultaneously both the scrapbook you wished you'd kept and a portal to futures & pasts, known & unknown, & a Fantastic Celebration of this Nation's Saving Grace.' — DAVID PEACE
Contributions by : Elain Harwood, Ian Penman, Paul Wilson, Owen Hatherley, Mark Fisher, Mark Sinker, Michael Bracewell, Jon Wilde, Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey, Sian Pattenden, Dan Fox, Adelle Stripe, Scott King, Richard McKenna...
1995, English
Softcover, 392 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
Published by
Duke University Press / North Carolina
$64.00 - Out of stock
Animals and Women is a collection of pioneering essays that explores the theoretical connections between feminism and animal defense. Offering a feminist perspective on the status of animals, this unique volume argues persuasively that both the social construction and oppressions of women are inextricably connected to the ways in which we comprehend and abuse other species. Furthermore, it demonstrates that such a focus does not distract from the struggle for women’s rights, but rather contributes to it.
This wide-ranging multidisciplinary anthology presents original material from scholars in a variety of fields, as well as a rare, early article by Virginia Woolf. Exploring the leading edge of the species/gender boundary, it addresses such issues as the relationship between abortion rights and animal rights, the connection between woman-battering and animal abuse, and the speciesist basis for much sexist language. Also considered are the ways in which animals have been regarded by science, literature, and the environmentalist movement. A striking meditation on women and wolves is presented, as is an examination of sexual harassment and the taxonomy of hunters and hunting. Finally, this compelling collection suggests that the subordination and degradation of women is a prototype for other forms of abuse, and that to deny this connection is to participate in the continued mistreatment of animals and women.
2021, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 21 x 21 cm
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$38.00 - In stock -
Black Art Notes is a collection of essays edited by artist and organizer Tom Lloyd. Originally published in 1971, the book was conceived as a critical response to the Contemporary Black Artists in America exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art but grew into a “concrete affirmation of Black Art philosophy as interpreted by eight Black artists,” as Lloyd notes in the publication’s introduction.
Published on the 50th anniversary of the original printing, Black Art Notes features writings by Lloyd, Amiri Baraka, Bing Davis, Melvin Dixon, Jeff Donaldson, Ray Elkins, Babatunde Folayemi, and Francis and Val Gray Ward. “If there is one lesson the post–civil rights period has taught us, it is that those most likely to shape the destiny of Black Americans in the next decade are activists and artists, who may possess additional skills as organizers,” write Ward in “The Black Artist—His Role in the Struggle.”
The artists featured in the publication position the Black Arts Movement outside of white, western frameworks, and articulate the movement as one created by and existing for Black people. Their essays condemn the attempts of museums and other white cultural institutions to tokenize, whitewash, and neutralize Black art, and call for immediate political and institutional reform and the self-determination of Black cultural producers. While the publication was created to respond to a particular historicized moment, the systemic problems that it addresses remain pervasive, making the artists’ potent critiques both timely and urgent.
Tom Lloyd (1929–1996) was a kinetic artist and organizer whose electronically programmed light works were chosen for the inaugural exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 1968. In 1971, Lloyd founded the Store Front Museum in New York, a cultural center that hosted exhibitions, concerts, classes, and lectures for the predominantly Black community of Jamaica, Queens, for over a decade. The center acted in tandem with his call for the marriage of social action and aesthetics in Black Art Notes, published the same year.
2021, English
Softcover, 94 pages, 15 x 23 cm
Published by
Debris / Naarm - Melbourne
$25.00 $5.00 - In stock -
DEBRIS is a bi-annual, independent literary magazine based in Narrm (Melbourne).
ISSUE 01 ‘Grief’ features twelve texts, a photo essay and a comic strip exploring instances of imagined, delayed and anticipated grief. We unravel grief, looking within and peering beyond bereavement and loss. We look at grief that has been experienced personally, that is held collectively, that is carried in the body, and sedimented in place.
Contributors : Elena Tjandra, Julia Flaster, Mahmood Fazal, Barkaa Shokoofeh Azar, Lujayn Hourani, Chris Taylor, Sofie Westcombe, Alice Pung, Mira Asriningtyas, Lur Alghurabi, Nick Kilner, Jon-Michael Frank, Jennifer Philip, Tim Edensor, Ngoc Trân
2021, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 14 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Divided Publishing / London
$34.00 - In stock -
Close to spiritual anarchism, Georgia Sagri’s writing happens in the heat of negotiation. Her political communiqués, essays, poems, lectures and one-on-one care reports span a decade of artistic and activist practice. Starting in the months leading up to the occupation of Zuccotti Park in 2011, which became the movement for people’s self-governance known as Occupy, this book carries the energy and commitment of open struggle, direct address, self-organisation and public assembly. It is a critique of representation and its implicit oblivion. Having grown up in Athens, Sagri’s intuition upon moving to New York was that being in public without consuming is the biggest threat to those in control. And hearing the voices of others beyond what is a given generates this threat to capitalism. The writing is a mode of recovery, it is pre-content shared to encourage open processes not institutions.
1984, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 26 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
International General / New York
$100.00 - In stock -
Scarce copy of the second (expanded and enlarged) 1984 English-language edition of "How to Read Donald Duck", first published in 1975.
“A literary grandmaster.” ―Time
"A Hand-book of De-Colonisation" — John Berger
First published in 1971, How to Read Donald Duck shocked readers by revealing how capitalist ideology operates in our most beloved cartoons. Having survived bonfires, impounding and being dumped into the ocean by the Chilean army, this controversial book is once again back on our shelves.
Written and published during the blossoming of Salvador Allende's revolutionary socialism, the book examines how Disney comics not only reflect capitalist ideology, but are active agents working in this ideology's favour. Focusing on the hapless mice and ducks of Disney, curiously parentless, marginalised and always short of cash, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart expose how these characters established hegemonic ideas about capital, race, gender and the relationship between developed countries and the Third World. Disney recognized the challenge and, when the book was translated and imported into the United States in 1975, managed to have all 4,000 copies impounded. Ultimately, 1,500 copies of the book were allowed into the country, the rest of the shipment was blocked, and until now no American publisher has re-released the book, which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide.
A devastating indictment of a media giant, a document of twentieth-century political upheaval, and a reminder of the dark undercurrent of pop culture, How to Read Donald Duck is once again available, together with a new introduction by Ariel Dorfman.
Translated by art historian David Kunzle.
Very Good copy. Some pinching (not splitting) to spine edge, previous owner's signature to first page, otherwise beautifully preserved, crisp copy.
2021, English
Softcover, 146 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Hand-numbered edition of 250,
Published by
SPLM / Melbourne
$25.00 - Out of stock
From the outer demons that brought you the cult of Dionysus, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, Acéphale and the CCRU comes SPLM, Society for the Propagation of Libidinal Materialism. This book gathers a gourmet selection of the secret society’s leaked X-files on libidinal materialist paraphenomena. Its pages bear witness to NEET redeemers, doomsday communists, messianic nihilists, Disney accelerationists, catacomb explorers, Faustian ravers, acne-ridden teen Nietzscheans, psychonauts k-holing through lockdown, hijacked surveillance devices spiralling out of control and archaeologists of an enigmatic cult from the future. This book is for anyone—and no-one as Nietzsche might add—who finds themselves perversely interested in studying, tasting and propagating what libidinal matter can do, be they already fanatically devoted or perhaps merely tempted.
Contributors : Anabel Robinson, Archeological Study Group A, Audrey Schmidt, Billy Bob Coulthurst, E. P. Trahar, Geoff Hondroudakis, Gregory Marks, Hector Zeroni, Jasmine Pickup, Jasper Jordan-Lang, Julia McInerney, Katherine Botten, Luara Karlson-Carp, Nicolas Hausdorf, Sally Olds, Thomas Moran, Timothy Deane-Freeman, Ursula Cornelia de Leeuw, Vincent Le
Edited by Vincent Le and Audrey Schmidt
Print design by Amici (Selena Repanis, Liz Luby and James Meadowcroft)
Cover type design by James Vinciguerra
Hand-numbered edition of 250 copies.
1964, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Oz Publications / Sydney
$70.00 - Out of stock
OZ No. 14, October 1964.
Editors: Richard Walsh and Richard Neville.
Art Director: Martin Sharp
Oz magazine was first published in Sydney in 1963 under the general editorship of Richard Neville, Richard Walsh and Martin Sharp. Taking a pen nib to the eye of Australian conservatism, the magazine covered topics such as homosexuality, abortion, inequality, police brutality, the White Australia policy and the Vietnam War. After fighting obscenity charges in Sydney, Neville and Sharp moved to the UK in 1967 and established London Oz with writer and editor Jim Anderson. Although Sharp continued as an artist, Neville enlisted British designer Jon Goodchild to ‘shape the magazine’ for a new audience. During this period, Sharp had established himself as one of the leading artists of the psychedelic era, designing album covers and posters for Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Bob Dylan. His ‘Plant a Flower Child’ (No.5) and ‘Bob Dylan’ (No. 7) covers from 1967 placed Oz at the vanguard of 60’s counter-culture publishing.
In 1970, Neville, Anderson and street seller cum editor Felix Dennis were charged with obscenity and conspiring to ‘debauch and corrupt the morals of young children’ after they invited a group of secondary school students to author, edit and design the School Kids Oz issue (No. 28).
Good copy of one of the very collectable Australian issues, now rarely seen. Contains text and illustrations of a satirical nature, addressing political and social issues of the time, including religion and the Royals. General tanning and wear.
1967, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Oz Publications / Sydney
$40.00 - In stock -
OZ No. 33, March 1967.
Editors: Richard Walsh and Dean Letcher.
Artists: Mike Glasheen, Garry Shead, Peter Fisher.
Foreign Agents: Richard Neville and Martin Sharp.
Oz magazine was first published in Sydney in 1963 under the general editorship of Richard Neville, Richard Walsh and Martin Sharp. Taking a pen nib to the eye of Australian conservatism, the magazine covered topics such as homosexuality, abortion, inequality, police brutality, the White Australia policy and the Vietnam War. After fighting obscenity charges in Sydney, Neville and Sharp moved to the UK in 1967 and established London Oz with writer and editor Jim Anderson. Although Sharp continued as an artist, Neville enlisted British designer Jon Goodchild to ‘shape the magazine’ for a new audience. During this period, Sharp had established himself as one of the leading artists of the psychedelic era, designing album covers and posters for Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Bob Dylan. His ‘Plant a Flower Child’ (No.5) and ‘Bob Dylan’ (No. 7) covers from 1967 placed Oz at the vanguard of 60’s counter-culture publishing.
In 1970, Neville, Anderson and street seller cum editor Felix Dennis were charged with obscenity and conspiring to ‘debauch and corrupt the morals of young children’ after they invited a group of secondary school students to author, edit and design the School Kids Oz issue (No. 28).
Good copy of one of the very collectable Australian issues, now rarely seen. Has one single clipped illustration on one internal page (not affecting text). General tanning and wear.
1968, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 26 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Revolutionary Marxist Tendency of the Fourth International / Balmain
$90.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of Issue 3 (August / September 1968) of International : "A Revolutionary Socialist Magazine", published in Balmain, N.S.W, between 1960 — 1976. International was a Trotskyist magazine and the organ of the Australian Section of the Fourth International. Features articles on the Czech crisis, students and the Australian revolution, the policy of the French Communist Party in the May crisis, the C.P.A.s attitude when confronted with both developments in France and Czechoslovakia, international responses, publication lists, and more.
Good copy. Light wear/softening from age, rust to staples, some marking to front cover, creasing to back.
1969, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Revolutionary Marxist Tendency of the Fourth International / Balmain
$90.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of Issue 7 (May / June 1969) of International : "A Revolutionary Socialist Magazine", published in Balmain, N.S.W, between 1960 — 1976. International was a Trotskyist magazine and the organ of the Australian Section of the Fourth International. Features articles on the resistance in Czechoslovakia, France : One year after the May '68 revolt, Australian politics (should Socialists support the A.L.P?), worker-student protest demonstration call-out to oppose the Australian visit of racist South African economics minister in solidarity with revolution in South Africa, the Sino-Soviet border dispute, and more.
Very Good copy. Light wear/softening from age, rust to staples.
2016, English / Italian
Softcover (w. dustjacket), 496 pages, 23 x 31 cm
Published by
A+m Bookstore / Viaindustriae
$109.00 - Out of stock
The ultimate compendium of counterculture press in the United States and the Netherlands during the heady decades of the 1960s and ’70s, this volume is the definition of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. From underground pornography, free love, anti-establishment anarchism, and Provo, to anti-war protests, spiritual empowerment, the Black Panthers, and women’s liberation, it’s all here. Page after page of magazine covers, articles, advertisements, and clippings encapsulate the era when academia revolted, gays marched in the streets, and hippies wondered if Jesus got high, too. Newspapers and magazines included are Aloha, American Avatar, Avatar, Bauls, Berkeley Barb, Berkeley Tribe, Big Muddy Gazette, Countdowm, East Village The Other, Fapto, Fire!, Freedom News, Friends, Gay, Gay Power, Gay Scene, Gay Sunshine, Georgia Straight, Good Times, Haight Ashbury Eye, Haight Ashbury Free Press, Haight Ashbury Love Street, Haight Ashbury Maverick, Haight Ashbury Tribune, Harbinger, Helix, Hitweek, Idiot International, Iets, Insekten Sekte, Juche, Kabouter Krant, Kaleidoscope, King Kong International, Kiss, Klaas Krant, Liberated Guardian, Los Angeles Free Press, Mondo Beat, Muhammad Speaks, Nola Express, Old Mole, Open City, Oracle Los Angeles, Oracle San Francisco, Other Scenes, Peninsula Observer, Pic up, Pleasure, Provo, Quicksilver Times, Rampage, Rat, Real Free Press, Re Nudo, Rising Up Angry, Royal World Countdown, San Francisco Ball, San Francisco Express Times, Screw, Search & Destroy, Sette Aprile, Sniffin' Glue, Southern Free Press, Spy-in, Styng, Suck, The Bird, The Black Dwarf, The Black Panther, The International Times, The New York Review of Sex, The Oracle, The Seed, Virginity, Washington Free Press, Witte Krant.
2000, German
Softcover, 140 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Daniel Buchholz Galerie / Köln
b_books / Berlin
$55.00 - Out of stock
Scarce early artist's book (10 years is not a fat pig) by German painter Michaela Eichwald, featuring writings and artworks by the artist Michaela Eichwald from the period of 1989-1999, with a preface by fellow artist Kai Althoff.
"A book that belongs in every household." FAZ
2021, English / French
Softcover, 336 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Published by
Octopus Notes / Paris
$48.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
The tenth issue of the biannual journal-collection that brings together academic writings, interviews with artists, critical essays and artists’ interventions in the form of inserts.
With & about Sara de Chiara, Rafael Corcostegui, Moyra Davey, Pierre Dulieu, Guillaume Dustan, Jana Euler, Sylvie Fanchon, Jim Fletcher, Alexander García Düttmann, Jeanne Graff, Gary Haller, Alex Hay, Martin Laborde, Daniel Lentz, Mina Loy, Liz Magor, Nick Mauss, Nicolas Moufarrege, Baptiste Pinteaux, Richard Rezac, Clément Roussier, Edith Schloss, Albert Serra, Pierre Thévenin, Belén Uriel, Charles Veyron, Robin Waart, Emily Wardill, Román Yñán.
Edited by Alice Dusapin, Martin Laborde, Baptiste Pinteaux, Alice Pialoux.
Designed by Marc Touitou & Robert Milne.
2016, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 84 pages, 11.8 x 18 cm
Published by
Institut Kunst at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design / Basel
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$36.00 $10.00 - In stock -
“I’ve been writing these notes continuously for years but I never thought about publishing them. These pages gather some thoughts on artists who continue to be a source of motivation for me to invest in complexity and who also all possess a rare sense of humor. I write these texts mostly at the end of a working day or in the very early morning, which for me are not the hours for argumentation. They expose no foreseeable line of research or an unequivocal sequence of arguments. However, through continuous exchange with the students at the Institute of Art of the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, I came to the conclusion that it would be useful to publish this peculiar research as a strange textbook. Its sole goal is to motivate the students to keep our conversation going and to further open this possibility up to others.
These pages attribute an incredible intensity to certain artistic practices; they entangle personal passages with an interest in artists I would love for you to fall for too: Melquiades Herrera (1949–2003), Pedro Pietri (1944–2004), Federico Manuel Peralta Ramos (1939–1992), Jorge Bonino (1935–1990), and many others who aren’t included, at least not yet…”
This book is the result of ongoing research into historical and current artistic practices that explore new paradigms of experience. It is the first volume in a series of books that focuses on what is happening both inside and outside of the art institute.
Copublished with Institut Kunst at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel
Design by Ana Domínguez
2021, English / Arabic
Softcover, 178 pages, 13 x 21 cm
Published by
Archive Books / Berlin
$29.00 - Out of stock
This publication presents four essays and one conversation with contemporary artists and curators from different backgrounds and origins (Jerusalem, Lebanon, Kuwait, USA, Egypt) who discuss their experience of becoming mothers as professionals in the arts, its reality and effects. While their reflections represent a similar strata of art worker in terms of background, class, and career trajectory, the impact of instruments of patriarchy on rendering maternity invisible that they describe is recognizable and insidious.
Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab
Contributions by Mai Abu ElDahab, Lara Khaldi, Mary Jirmanus Saba, Mirene Arsanios and Nikki Columbus and Basma Alsharif