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 / 2021, English
Softcover, 408 pages, 22.5 x 14.5 cm
Published by
iUniverse / US
$49.00 - In stock -
The spectre of the marauding serial killer has become a relatively common feature on the American landscape. Reactions to these modern-day monsters range from revulsion to morbid fascination--fascination that is either fed by, or a product of, the saturation coverage provided by print and broadcast media, along with a dizzying array of books, documentary films, websites, and "Movies of the Week."
The prevalence in Western culture of images of serial killers (and mass murderers) has created in the public mind a consensus view of what a serial killer is. Most people are aware, to some degree, of the classic serial killer 'profile.' But what if there is a much different 'profile'--one that has not received much media attention?
In Programmed to Kill, acclaimed and always controversial author David McGowan takes a fresh look at the lives of many of America's most notorious accused murderers, focusing on the largely hidden patterns that suggest that there may be more to the average serial killer story than meets the eye. Think you know everything there is to know about serial killers?
Or is it possible that sometimes what everyone 'knows' to be true isn't really true at all?
1992, Japanese
Hardcover (clothbound), 96 pages, 18 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Mole / Tokyo
$300.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition of one of the greatest kinbaku photo books ever published, Bind by Akio Fuji. Published in 1992 by Mole Gallery, Tokyo, to accompany Fuji's exhibition of the same name, Bind is now a classic photo book of masterful aesthetic bondage photography, featuring the rope work of Chimo Nureki, gloriously reproduced in lush black and white plates bound in silver-foiled cloth hardcovers. Exquisite compositions capturing the two artists at the height of their powers, and an important book and exhibition for bringing the world of kinbaku to the recognition of the fine art world in Japan the 1990's.
Akio Fuji (b. 1959) is a pioneer of bondage photography in Japan, founding the legendary bondage enthusiast circle "Kinbiken" in Tokyo in 1985 with rope master Chimuo Nureki (who also produced the magazines Kitan Club and Uramado), developing into the cult kinbaku bulletin Kinbiken Communications, with core contributions by both Fuji and Nureki, Katsuya Kasui, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Yuri Sunohara, Asoji Muroi, Akira Minomura, and other members of the circle. The object of the group was to study the beauty of bondage, observing the techniques of master Nureki through a membership with one of the most distinctive facets of the club being that the bondage women participate as members themselves. Says Nureki, “One of the main reasons I started this circle was to provide a facility for masochistic women, who are often misunderstood and therefore despised.” Kinbiken Communications remain one of the most desirable kinbaku publications of this period, the photography from which is showcased here in Akio Fuji's debut collection, featured heavily in Masami Akita's compilation of the “History of Bondage Photography in Japan”.
Fine copy.
1994, English
Softcover, 132 pages, 27 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
AK Press / Edinburgh
$100.00 - In stock -
First 1994 AK Press printing of the book anthology of the first three issues of ANSWER Me!, the short-lived but ever-controversial Los Angeles zine edited by Jim and Debbie Goad and published between 1991 and 1994. At the forefront of 1990's "End of the Century"/anti-humanist/nihilist/piss-take underground rant/black humour publishing, ANSWER Me! focused on the social pathologies of interest to the Los Angeles–based couple ("Two Against The World, honest assholes in a world of dishonest ones"). The anthology sold thousands before going out of print. ANSWER Me! has been blamed for a White House shooting and a triple suicide. It has been banned in several countries and put on trial for obscenity in the USA. Chock full of well-written rants, interviews, and articles on topics ranging from music and subcultures to sex, love, hate, murder, serial killers, and suicide, this fat, gorgeous anthology contains the legendary rant-zine’s first three issues in their entirety.
"ANSWER Me! was so wonderful because it reminded me of when my uncle Joey turned me on to National Lampoon when I was eight years old. After National Lampoon I was always looking for uglier forms of humor, and then comes along ANSWER Me!"—Shaun Partridge, Partridge Family Temple
The mouthpiece of Jim and Debbie Goad, ANSWER Me! also featured written and illustrated contributors, from comic artists to serial killers, such as Adam Parfrey (Feral House/Apocalypse Party), Mike Diana, Boyd Rice, Peter Sotos, Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez, Molly Kiely, Jim Blanchard, Frank Kozik, Randall Phillip, Nick Bougas, Mark David Chapman, John Wayne Gacy, Trevor Brown, Kenneth Bianchi, Gary M. Heidnik, Phil Cisco, Marcel Ruijters, Larry Wessel, Tom Crites, Shaun Partridge, Ottis Toole, Henry Lee Lucas, Timothy Patrick Butler, Coop, who contributed the cover artwork to the anthology (and also the following issue 4), and others.
Issue No. 1 (October 1991) features interviews with Russ Meyer, Timothy Leary, Holly Woodlawn, Kid Frost, Public Enemy, Iceberg Slim, and pieces on Bakersfield, California, Sunset Boulevard, masturbation in literature, and Twelve-Step programs.
Issue No. 2 (July 1992) features Anton LaVey, David Duke, Al Goldstein, El Duce of The Mentors, the Geto Boys, Ray Dennis Steckler, 100 serial killers and mass murderers, Vietnamese gangs, and Mexican murder magazines.
Issue No. 3 (July 1993) features Jack Kevorkian, Al Sharpton, NAMBLA, the Kids of Widney High, Boyd Rice, Suzanne Muldowney, 100 suicides, guns, Andrei Chikatilo, pedophilia in Steven Spielberg's work, Mexican deformity comics[clarification needed], paintings and drawings by murderers, and a prank call to a suicide hotline.
"THIS IS HATE LITERATURE. IF YOU AREN'T FILLED WITH HATRED, THIS BOOK ISN'T FOR YOU. IT'S NOT WHAT YOUR MOTHER WARNED YOU ABOUT, BECAUSE THE OLD BITCH COULD NEVER IMAGINE SOMETHING SO VILE.
YOUR STUBBY, UNDESERVING FINGERS HOLD THE ENTIRE FIRST THREE ISSUES OF ANSWER Me! MAGAZINE-HERE ARE THE GENESIS, EXODUS, AND LEVITICUS OF THE "BIBLE OF HATRED." ANSWER Me! WAS CREATED BY TWO HUMANS WHO WERE BRAVE ENOUGH TO DENY THEIR OWN HUMANITY. THEY HAVE SAVAGELY SWALLOWED EVERY EXISTING SOCIAL PATHOLOGY, SLOSHED THEM AROUND INSIDE THEIR BILIOUS STOMACHS, AND REGURGITATED THE ONLY MAGAZINE WORTH HATING.
HATRED IS THE ONLY RATIONAL RESPONSE TO AN UNLOVABLE WORLD. LOVE IS FOR EVERYONE;
HATRED IS FOR THE FEW. IF YOU READ ANSWER Me!, YOU WILL BUILD SELF-ESTEEM
BY EXPLOITING THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS. THROUGH THE FINE ART OF "SCAPEGOADING," YOU WILL LEARN TO BLAME THE WORLD FOR YOUR PROBLEMS.
HATE EVERYONE YOU SEE TODAY.
YOU'LL FEEL BETTER.
HATRED IS THE EASY WAY OUT.
HATRED WILL HEAL YOU.
HATRED IS THE ONLY ANSWER."
—book jacket blurb
Mature audiences only!
VG copy with wear to extremities.
1998, English
Softcover, 334 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$80.00 - In stock -
First 1998 edition of Jack Hunter's essential "pink" film reference book and the first of its kind in English.
SEX: The history of "pink" movies, from Daydream to Ai No Corrida and beyond, including the pop avant-garde violence of Koji Wakamatsu: Violated Angels, The Embryo Hunts In Secret, Violent Virgin and others. Bondage and S/M from Moju and Captured For Sex to Kinbiken rope torture. The New Wave pink films of Hisayasu Sato: The Bedroom, Naked Blood, Private Torture Of Uniforms: Thrust It In!, and much more.
BLOOD: From Shogun Assassin and Psycho Junkie to the killing orgies of Guinea Pig and Atrocity; from the "pink horror" nightmare Entrails Of A Virgin to the post-punk yakuza bloodbaths of Kei Fujiwara's Organ and Takashi Miike's Fudoh.
MADNESS: Homicidal psychosis, hallucination, mutation: Tetsuo, Death Powder, the films of Shozin Fukui: Pinocchio 964, Rubber's Lover. Post-punk excess, nihilism, violence, suicide: Burst City, Labyrinth Of Dreams, Squareworld, Tokyo Crash.
Eros In Hell examines all these movies and many more besides, is profusely illustrated with rare and unusual photographs, and contains illuminating interviews with Japanese film-makers Koji Wakamatsu and Takao Nakano; comprising a unique guide to the most prolific, fascinating and controversial underground/alternative cinema in the world.
VG copy with bump to top corner, some light edge wear.
1996, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$55.00 - In stock -
First 1996 edition.
Twins George and Mike Kuchar were born in the Bronx in 1942. As teenage cinephiles, both began producing films based on their own version of Hollywood movies, going on to produce a string of low budget classics such as: 1 Was A Teenage Rumpot, Pussy On A Hot Tin Roof, Mike's Sins Of The Fleshapoids and George's infamous Hold Me While I'm Naked.
Baltimore-born John Waters was profoundly and irreversibly affected by the visionary, trashy aesthetic of the '60s underground, especially the Kuchars, who Waters insists "...made me want to make films. THEY are the reason". His films were also influenced by the low budget exploitation pictures of directors like Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Like his predecessors, Waters used a regular cast of friends, which included Divine, Edith Massey, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole and Cookie Mueller, all to become trash stars/icons. He is the director of such trash classics as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living; his more recent films have included Hairspray and Serial Mom.
Camp America includes interviews not only with John Waters, but also with members of his notorious entourage; plus extensive interviews with George & Mike Kuchar and a comprehensive assessment of their career and influence as well as a unique feature on underground actress Marion Eaton, star of Curt McDowell's Thundercrack! The book has many rare photographs, plus a filmography and index, and not only documents a fascinating period of extreme underground film-making, but contextualises it firmly within the social fabric of the times, bringing the New York, Baltimore and San Francisco underground/sleaze film scenes of the '60s and '70s vividly to life.
Good copy with crease to back cover, wear to corners, thumb marking to block edge.
1989, English / German
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 392 pages, 24 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
$165.00 - In stock -
Absolutely essential reference work on the artists associated with the Vienna Actionism group, the second volume of an exhaustive account of Viennese Actionism, this book covering the later years of the movement—1960 through 1971.
Viennese Actionism was the most extreme artistic project of the 1960s, mostly preceding and always surpassing the other performance art, body art and happenings in terms of sheer violent excess. Though never officially a group, Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler shared a similar reaction to the restrictive political and cultural climate of the Austrian art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. They established the body as a site of exploration, and its blood, sweat and excrement as art material: performance as the transgression of both social and religious taboo, and art itself as a violent, tragic recognition of brute fact.
Volume two of an exhaustive two-volume exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held at Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Wien, March—April 1989 that traveled to Museum Ludwig, Köln, August—September 1989. This handsome volume presents a vast collection of images and essays about Viennese Actionism between 1960—1971, focusing on work produced after 1964, particularly work involving process and performance. Includes essays by Hubert Klocker, entitled "The Dramaturgy of the Organic" and "The Shattered Mirror"; an essay by Konrad Oberhuber entitled "Thoughts on Viennese Actionism" ; biography, action chronology, and related images for artists Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler; bibliography.
Edited by Hubert Klocker.
Texts in both English and German.
Highly recommended.
Near Fine copy.
1997 / 2001, English
Softcover, 246 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$80.00 - In stock -
2001 updated edition of Brottman's classic study of cannibalism in film, first issued in 1997.
Violent death, murder, mutilation, gluttony and defaecation, ritualism, bodily extremes; cannibalism combines these taboo themes to represent one of the most symbolically charged narratives in the human psychic repertoire. As a grotesque figure of power, threat, and primal appetites, the cannibal has played a formidable and enduring role in the tales told by members of all cultures - whether oral, written, or filmic - and embodies the ultimate extent of transgressive behaviour to which human beings can be driven.
Meat Is Murder! is a unique and explicit exploration of cannibal culture from classical myth to contemporary film and fiction. It features an in-depth illustrated critique of cannibalism as portrayed in the cinema, from mondo and exploitation films such as Cannibal Holocaust to arthouse classics and horror movies such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It also details the atrocious crimes of real-life cannibals such as Albert Fish, Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer and Andrei Chikatilo.
This improved, expanded edition includes a brand new chapter on cannibal zombie films such as Dawn Of The Dead, Zombie Flesh Eaters and Braindead, plus 8 color pages of cannibal carnage and screen gore, and is fully updated.
VG copy with some wear to covers/extremities.
2003, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 21.5 x13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$80.00 - In stock -
First 2008 English-language print of The Lost Journals Of The Marquis De Sade.
The secret journal which the Marquis de Sade worked hard at maintaining, even when ill and ageing at Charenton asylum, reveals the shadowy life of an exceptional, strange man whose abuses are often legendary. The book takes us beyond the prisoner who once fled the Vincennes fortress; it also takes us beyond the prisoner of the Bastille whose imagination tortured him, both deliciously and cruelly, and who projected onto paper the burning and pitiable ghosts of his imagination with a desperate sensuality. This book contains the living, everyday presence of the old man, almost 67 years old when the "first notebook" begins of this once-lost journal.
He had seven years left to live in the "hospital-prison" of Charenton, where his days were slow and grim, full of everyday preoccupations, worries about money, nasty quarrels with the people around him - but were also lit up by the sordid, squalid episodes of a final erotic adventure: the last flames of his senile passion. At the Charenton asylum, where he was under a liberal regime of surveillance, Sade's death approached, darkening the colours of his life and tearing apart his feelings.
Only the first (1807-8) and fourth (1814) of these notebooks have been rediscovered, out of a series of four.
The Ghosts Of Sodom also includes a selection of Sade's letters from Charenton, as well as the working notes for his terminal novel "The Days At Florbelle" - a huge work deemed so pornographic that the only manuscript was burned by the police at the behest of Sade's own son.
1990, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$50.00 - In stock -
First 1990 edition of Shock Treatment, the collection of Karen Finley’s most provocative and acclaimed performance monologues, essays, and poems, with “The Constant State of Desire,” “We Keep Our Victims Ready,” “It's Only Art,” and “The Black Sheep.” Excoriating misogyny, homophobia, abusive families, greed, and state coercion of bodies and minds, Finley holds out hope for a world informed not by hate and fear, but by truth and unconditional love.
“If you haven’t read this book yet–buy it, take it home, and read it now! This is the work that made me get off my ass and actually do something, and it will inspire you, too.”–Kathleen Hanna, singer, Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin
“Finley’s Shock Treatment is more than just ‘art.’ It remains a searing and necessary indictment of America, a call to arms, a great protest against the injustices waged on queers and women during a time in recent American history where government intervention and recognition was so desperately needed. Twenty-five years on, Finley’s work continues to shock and provoke readers and audiences, demonstrating the powerful cultural and political impact her work has had on modern American art and performance art.”–Nathan Smith, Los Angeles Review of Books
No other artist captures the drama and fragility of the AIDS era as Karen Finley does in her 1990 classic book Shock Treatment. “The Black Sheep,” “We Keep Our Victims Ready,” “I Was Never Expected to Be Talented,”–these are some of the seminal works which excoriated homophobia and misogyny at a time when artists and writers were under attack for challenging the status quo. This twenty-fifth anniversary expanded edition features a new introduction in which Finley reflects on publishing her first book as she became internationally known for being denied an NEA grant because of perceived obscenity in her work. She traces her journey from art school to burlesque gigs to the San Francisco North Beach literary scene. A new poem reminds us of Finley’s disarming ability to respond to the era’s most challenging issues with grace and humor.
KAREN FINLEY’s raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. Karen Finley (b. 1956) is an American performance artist, musician, poet, and educator. Her raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity.Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement in her work. She is a professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
VG copy.
1994, English
Softcover, 334 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / Australia
$25.00 - In stock -
Few topics are as deeply disturbing as torture. And yet, as this powerful polemic makes clear, we all need to face up to it: 'If we know these things, there is some hope that they can be changed; if we care, there is the possibility of action against this evil ...'
Drawing largely on the testimonies and imaginative recreations of survivors, the book reveals how methods honed in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag and the Nazi death camps have been imitated ever since - in South Africa and Northern Ireland, in French Algeria and the 'little schools' of Argentina, in China, Guatemala and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In her boldest and most important work since Sexual Politics, Kate Millett both exposes the workings of the system and captures the sheer numbing terror of the prison cell; it will undoubtedly become a classic in the literature of human rights.
'A passionate, heroic effort to fathom the nature of a phenomenon that all too oft drains us emotionally and incapacitates us intellectually. I can think of no better introduction to a sorely neglected subject'—Kanan Makiya, author of Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World
'Kate Millett faces the horrors with skinless courage, and survives not just with h imagination but with her faith'—Maureen Freely in the Observer Books of the Ye
It manages to be thought-provoking and frightening, while keeping a balance between horror and the inspiration created by the resilience of victims'—Nigel Wright in The Times Higher Education Supplement
Katherine Murray Millett was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended the University of Oxford and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors after studying at St Hilda's College, Oxford.
VG copy, light wear.
1984, English
Softcover, 414 pages, 20 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Picador / USA
$30.00 - In stock -
First 1984 Picador edition of the immediately controversial msterpiece that established Kathy Acker as the preeminent voice of post-punk feminism, "Blood and Guts in High School", published together with "Great Expectations" and "My Death, My Life, by Pier Paolo Pasolini". Acker's first person narratives combine detailed eroticism with detailed politics and what Acker calls 'pop content'. Acker hasn't lacked controversy. She doesn't shy away from what is brutal, violent and ugly. She describes sexual acts graphically, frequently and seldom in the approved 'feminine', 'Romantic' manner. Her narrative is both poetic and powerful - a montage of conversation, description, conjecture, moments snatched from history and from literature. Short, episodic, outspoken and outrageous, Acker's eerie exposition of antisocial values, her attack on religion, education and government, chart the emergence of the new culture.
BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Janey lived in the locked room. Twice a day the Persian Slave Trader came in and taught her to be a whore. Otherwise there was nothing. One day she found a pencil stub and scrap paper in a forgotten corner of the room. She began to write down her life...
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Great Expectations begins when a young boy, Pip, learns he has come into great expectations. What these expectations actually are, or the change from the total disparity between Pip's ideas of 'expectations' and what is real to Pip's learning to feel, is the narrative of this plagiarized Bildungsroman. This book is totally sensuous.
MY DEATH, MY LIFE, BY PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
The renowned philosopher, poet, cinematographer, painter and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini solves the mystery of his own death.
Kathy Acker (1948 – 1997) was an influential postmodernist writer and performance artist, whose many books include Blood and Guts in High School; Don Quixote; Literal Madness; Empire of the Senseless; In Memoriam to Identity; My Mother: Demonology; Pussy, King of the Pirates; Portrait of an Eye; and Rip-Off Red, Girl Detective.
Very Good copy.
1973, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 20 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Jonathan Cape / London
$400.00 - In stock -
Rare elusive first 1973 hardcover edition of the Jonathan Cape edition of Ballard's Vermilion Sands, which is considered the complete collection, adding an additional story, "The Singing Statues", to the original Berkley paperback edition from 1971, and a preface, both only available in the British edition.
Vermilion Sands is a collection of surreal science fiction short stories by Ballard, one of his finest, all set in an imaginary vacation resort called Vermilion Sands which suggests, among other places, a latter-day Palm Springs. Vermillion Sands is a fully automated desert resort designed to fulfil the most exotic whims of the idle rich. But now it languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie stars, solitary impresarios, parasites, and artistic and literary failures, a place where love and lust pall before the stronger pull of evil. It is a lair for malice and hate and envy — and the more cancerous forms of madness; a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits for their masters in a grotesque parody of art; where poets press the buttons of mechanical versifiers; where sculptures grow like funguses, and plants respond to music; where psychosensitive houses are driven mad by their owners' neuroses; where love and affection, and even lust, are effete madrigals played in a minor and discordant key.
From the dark recesses of a superb imagination, J. G. Ballard has conjured up an elegant nightmare of decadence, a portrait of a future Gomorrah where a Nero might play an automated violin.
"Ballard is one of the brightest stars in post-war science fiction."—Kingsley Amis
"Collection of stories first published in magazines between 1956 and 1970 "about a decaying artists' colony in the near future, set against surrealistic desert landscapes. With their motifs of singing flowers and statues, living clothes, cloud-sculpting and psychotropic houses, the tale are not conventionally linked, and have differing characters. All marvelously original, with unforgettable imagery. One of Ballard's most brilliant books ..." —Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, second edition (1995), p. 401.
Good ex-libris copy in Very Good dust jacket (well preserved but for but for small internal price-clipping). Book has some light general aging/light spotting to block edges. Paste-in to first blank page from "South Australian Railways Institute Library", otherwise only very mild marking to blanks.
1995, English
Softcover, 276 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$70.00 - In stock -
From Peeping Tom to Videodrome, Mondo Cane to "shockumentaries", Faces of Death to live TV suicides.
The 1994 cult classic, in the updated and revised 1995 edition, Killing for Culture: Death Film from Mondo to Snuff by David Kerekes & David Slater, the definitive investigation into that controversial and inflammatory of all urban myths: the "snuff" movie. Including: Feature film, Mondo film, Death film, and a comprehensive filmography and index. Illustrated by rare and stunning photographs from cinema, documentary and real life, Killing for Culture is a vital book which examines and questions the human obsession with images of violence, dismemberment and death, and the way our society is coping with an increased profusion of these disturbing yet compelling images from all quarters.
Very Good copy, light wear to covers.
1995, English
Softcover, 244 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Creation Books / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
HELL ON EARTH!
First 1995 Edition.
From the Roman games to American travelling carnivals, freakshows - human anomalies presented for spectacle - have flourished throughout recorded history. The birth of the movies provided a further outlet for these displays, which in turn led to a peculiar strain of bizarre cinema: Freak Film.
Inside Teradome is a comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to the roots and development of this fascinating, often disturbing cinematic genre.
Including:
A brief history of teratology; freaks in myth and medicine.
The history of freakshows, origins of cinema.
Influence of sideshows on cinema.
Use of human anomalies in cinema.
Freaks and geeks.
Bizarre cinema: mutilation and other fetishes.
Illustrated filmography; index.
From the pioneering illusions of Georges Méliès and the Expressionist distortions of Dr Caligari, the surgical horrors of Mad Love and real-life grotesqueries of Tod Browning's Freaks, to the modern nightmare visions of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Eraserhead, and Santa Sangre, Inside Teradome reveals a twisted thread of voyeuristic sickness running not only through cinema, but through the society of which it has always been the most telling barometer.
WARNING: CONTAINS ADULT MATERIAL
Average copy with wear to corners and edges, creasing.
2008 / 2012, English
Softcover, 242 pages, 23.4 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Crescent Moon / Kent
$30.00 - In stock -
Walerian Borowczyk (known as 'Boro') is one of cinema's one-offs. Quite simply, there is no filmmaker quite like Borowczyk. Borowczyk's films have an astonishing, magical quality. They reach a place very rare in contemporary cinema, and are quite unlike the films of any other auteur. Borowczyk's films create their own space, with imagery, sounds and music of a really exceptional power.
Jeremy Robinson discusses each Borowczyk film in detail, sometimes going through scenes shot by shot.
Fully illustrated, with stills from Borowczyk's movies, and from the history of erotica, a bibliography, filmography.
2008, English
Softcover, 150 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Solar Books / US
$45.00 - In stock -
The work of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) remains a constant source of seminal inspiration, astonishment and provocation across contemporary visual art, film, performance, choreography, digital media, and critical theory, throughout the entire world.
In Artaud: Terminal Curses, Stephen Barber explores the newly-revealed set of 406 notebooks which Artaud used in the final years of his life in Paris, after his release from a decade of asylum-incarceration, to carry through his projects for corporeal transformation and social refusal. Artaud’s notebooks are designed as an autonomous work in their own right, through which he distils his preeminent preoccupations: the envisioning of a new, organ-less human anatomy (crucial for Deleuze and Guattari’s theoretical work), his conception of the time and space of gesture, his raw fury against society and all of its manifestions, his visualization of a ruined and supplanted natural and urban world, his intensive confrontation between text and image, and his reflections on the fluctuationg parameters of life and death. Those preoccupations retrospectively illuminate Artaud’s earlier Surrealist work and theories of film and performance.
With 24 pages of illustrations, this eye-opening and original book will be of major significance for all readers interested in the extreme zones of art, literature and media, as well as providing critical new revelations for those engaged with Artaud’s work.
2025, English
Hardcover, 176 pages, 22.2 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$55.00 - In stock -
DRIVING THROUGH FAMINE ZONES IS NOTHING SHORT OF EUPHORIC.
'There is a young woman writing in London who really doesn't care what you think. Her name is Audrey Szasz. She is easily the wildest writer going. Her prose is direct, fast, witty, hot, horny, and furiously honest. Insofar as I can see, she's the dark horse on the literary scene, a true thoroughbred in the stable of nags. Not for fame, but for influence. Originality. Sheer voice. Nerve.'
Her novels have been described as everything from abject filth to pure 21st century post-Sadeian feminism. Her poetic narratives are both political and personal - violent but triumphant - ghostly yet crystal clear - caustic streams of consciousness and gleeful perversity.
TELEPLASM charts the eerie emergence of a hostile new culture, where psychic liberation is the key.
2022, English
Hardcover, 214 pages, 22.5 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$60.00 - In stock -
A major novel of perversity and pleasure from a richly exciting new literary talent. Apparently orphaned in a foreign land engulfed by civil war, Tamara finds herself in an isolated and notoriously mismanaged home for abandoned children.
Initially unable to comprehend the local language, she attempts to communicate nonverbally, having seemingly lost the faculty of speech. Unaware of her parents’ true whereabouts – or whether in fact they are even alive – Tamara struggles to make herself understood and to survive in this alien environment where chaos reigns and brutality – or sheer indifference – unfortunately appears to be the norm.
A sinister cast of characters duly appears, including the glamorous but corrupt Director, her overbearingly sadistic partner the Doctor, not to mention the Father – a perverse cleric with a penchant for cruelty – amongst other unsavoury and remorseless individuals, all enforcing a strict hierarchy between the adults and the children (and thus the perpetrators and the victims of institutionalised violence).
Meanwhile, a number of different voices or alters jostle for psychic dominance over Tamara’s internal narrative; through various temporal shifts, rotations and leaps in chronological perspective our heroine’s journey – both geographical and psychological – is described in a disintegrating arc of obscure recollections, fragmented diary entries and increasingly obscene erotic fantasies.
Conversely, these kaleidoscopic projections, delirious daydreams and compulsive diatribes gradually accumulate to articulate a traumatised inner topography that mirrors the devasted and desolate external landscape of a perpetual war zone….
2023, English
Hardcover, 386 pages, 22.5 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$60.00 - In stock -
The long-awaited 3rd novel from a truly untamed literary talent.
Exquisitely printed with colour & b&w illustrations. First edition. Limited numbers.
Audrey Szasz’s epic third novel is her most ambitious trip yet. A 400-page psychic assault course journeying through the delirious present and harrowed hellscapes of futures past. This truly encyclopaedic outsider vision of ecstasy and, until now, unimaginable horror will surely warp your pretty little mind forever.
File under: Sex (Deviant). Violence (Frequent). Psychology (Experimental). Literature (Radical). Counter (Illumination).
We can confidently say you will have never read anything remotely like this before.
No spoilers: the complete Zutka Reconstruction Kit.
CAUTION: Adult Themes throughout
2017, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 44 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$30.00 - In stock -
Gabi Losoncy is a young woman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who makes various decisions with outer consequences based on how she feels, and to the end of expressing how she feels.
Generally working in unlayered, linear audio since her time as a member of Good Area, she expands her practice on a case-by-case basis, making great effort not to do anything unnecessary.
She has released and has relationships with Alien Passengers, c a d u c., Impulsive Habitat, Recital, and Kye, and her book, Second Person, is now available & was recently described as a "self-help book from hell".
2025, English
Softcover, 92 pages, 15.2 x 10.2 cm
Published by
Filthy Loot / Ames
$20.00 - In stock -
“Latex, Texas is a gripping, gorgeous portrait of purgatory. It fucked me up: I swore the words on the page were getting bigger and bigger, like the font had become infected, like the cut-up sentences had gotten sick and swollen. What a ride.” —Derek McCormack (author, Castle Faggot)
I see Houston on the TV It is not New York It is not Chicago It is not Washington
with its high population its surplus child sacrifice further foolish activities the great city stands
2018, English
Hardcover, 152 pages, 32 x 25 cm
Ed. of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Timeless Edition / Paris
$200.00 - In stock -
First 2018 regular hardcover edition of NEKROPHILE – “Archives & Documents” by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. Culled from Genesis’s private, mostly unpublished archives, “Archives and Documents” presents 152 full color pages of crucial early art terrorism from h/er little seen Nekrophile zine, reproduced here in full. Nekrophile magazine was conceived in 1968 by GPO as a single issue. The collages, drawings, poems and texts gathered in it deal with the themes that later prevailed in the iconography of Industrial Music. This volume also displays ultra rare and previously unseen TG and PTV documents selected by GPO. Edited by Nicolas Ballet with personal explanations and insights added by GPO, this volume is an essential visual document of Gen’s contributions to art and culture from the mid 1960s onwards with a strong emphasis on that most controversial and rewarding period of the late ’70s and early ’80s.
Edition of 500 copies, out-of-print.
2010, English
Hardcover, 400 pages, 24 x 31 cm
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
Mennour / Paris
$150.00 - Out of stock
The Molinier bible! A mammoth, crucial 400 page book on the method and genesis of Pierre Molinier's provocative, gender-bending photos and artwork. Beautifully printed and prodigiously illustrated with over 800 pictures, mostly unpublished, numerous documents, manuscripts and letters, a complete (nearly 100-page) chronology, a critical biography, and a text by Jean-Luc Mercié.Molinier. Essential publication on Molinier, the most comprehensive to date, and a must for any fan.
Rare English edition translated from the French by Edward Penwarden.
Pierre Molinier is an unknown of worldwide renown. Every book and every exhibition on the body, gender confusion or sexual excess seems to feature at least one work by this artist whose “genius” was acclaimed by André Breton in a memorable text published in 1956. But the bulk of his work has remained inaccessible. A number of pictures have never been shown and a corpus of only 160 prints has been published. The ensemble revealed by the artist's archives is much more extensive. It includes numerous proofs made to prepare his photomontages and working prints given to friends, but also notebooks and personal letters. Here, precise links emerge between his paintings, photographs and scandalous life. The myth carefully constructed by the artist begins to crumble before the reality of the work.
An inveterate seducer, thoroughgoing fetishist, unrepentant transvestite and inadvertent bisexual, to the very last Molinier remained haunted by two obsessions: pleasure, meaning immediate access to la petite mort, and “leaving a trace in the infinity of time.” This book charts the aesthetic incarnation of his passions. Its 819 photographs, most of them never published before, reveal the method, shed light on the procedures and give details of the origin and alchemy of his latent or composed images. Finally, an exhaustive chronology offers a new biography of Molinier, based on his letters: for it is in the intimacy of these writings that the shaman's heart beats closest to the truth.
In a career shared between the university (fifteen years) and publishing (twenty) Jean-Luc Mercié has written widely on painting and photography. This monograph is his fourth book about Pierre Molinier, the master from Bordeaux.
Born 1900 in Agen (France), Pierre Molinier, surrealistic painter and photographer, a precursor to body art, died in 1976 after having thought out radical and pornographic artwork.
1980, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 114 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Seven Sha / Tokyo
$550.00 - In stock -
Rare first edition of Kohei Yoshiyuki's cult classic photo book, Document: The Park (Document Park), published in 1980 by Seven Sha, Tokyo. Yoshiyuki's voyeuristic masterpiece, The Park is like no other photo book. A controversial volume of 74 photographs taken by the photographer using a 35mm camera, infrared film, and flash, Yoshiyuki documented a secret community of lovers and voyeurs who gathered in Shinjuku Park and Yoyogi Park between 1971 and 1973. His pictures document the people who gathered in these parks for clandestine trysts under the cloak of darkness, as well as the many spectators lurking in the bushes who watched—and sometimes participated in—these couplings. With their raw, snapshot-like quality, these images not only uncover the hidden illicit sexual encounters of their subjects, both homosexual and heterosexual, but they also serve as a chronicle of a Japan we rarely see. As Martin Parr writes in The Photobook: A History, Volume II, The Park is "a brilliant piece of social documentation, capturing perfectly the loneliness, sadness and desperation that so often accompany sexual or human relationships in a big, hard metropolis like Tokyo."
A beautifully printed book, with original dust-jacket. Includes two conversations with Kohei Yoshiyuki with Kenichi Matsumoto and Nobuyoshi Araki.
Kohei Yoshiyuki (b. 1946—2022) came to recognition in 1972 when material from his photo project “The Park” was featured in magazine Shukan Shincho, and a year later, in respected photo journal Camera Mainichi. However, it was the 1979 photo exhibition “The Park” at Komai Gallery and 1980 photo book “Document: The Park” that established him within the contemporary photographic landscape. Since then, Yoshiyuki was a recurrent fixture in Japan debauchery journal Super Photo Magazine along photographers: Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Keizo Kitajima and Seiji Kurata.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket with usual tanning to spine edge, wear to extremities, and dj corner tear hidden inside jacket fold (blank black area, not affecting any content). Otherwise a well preserved copy.