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—FRI 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.
1980, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. acetate jacket and obi-strip), 190 pages, 30 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo
$850.00 - In stock -
First edition. A seminal Japanese photo book and instant classic upon release, Flash up is one of the most remarkable photographic excursions into the seedy underbelly of 1970s Tokyo. Kurata (b. 1945—2020), one Japan’s formidable contemporary photographers who’s work is often referenced in the same circles as his "Provoke" teachers Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, won the fifth Kimura Ihei Award in 1980 for this, his first book, his acclaimed collection of photographs of creatures of the night — gangsters showing off their full-length tattoos, youth styling themselves after the Hells Angels, self-professed ultra-nationalists from the notorious Black Dragon Society, transvestites drawing in crowds of men, cabaret girls...
"The photographs of Seiji Kurata are striking for their violence. The viewer must be prepared to be hit by his flashgun along with the subjects. ‘Violence’, in this case, is not necessarily invoked by the scenes of blood-shed; rather, it is Kurata’s sharp-shooting ability to stop the flow of time, capture the moment, draw of details we would otherwise never see, then proffer them up before our eyes. Sometimes our response is to avert our eyes for fear of seeing too much. This is not to say that the images are not exaggerated; for after all, people tend only to see what they want to see. If there are those who find Kurata’s photographs ‘ugly’, it can only be said that he has succeeded in paradoxically pointing the finger at them: You who want to avoid ugliness, he says, this is reality and I have cut it out for you. [...] we must admit that the ugliness apparent in these photographs is our ugliness. Our failure to do so simply invites Kurata to deal us an extra-violent blow with his images."—Akira Hasegawa, from the afterword.
Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Vol. II.
Text in English and Japanese.
Very Good copy, wear and usual shrinkage to publisher's thick acetate dust jacket, VG original metallic obi-strip, Very Good book, light bump to one corner.
1996/2003, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 176 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
Pan-Exotica / Tokyo
$300.00 - In stock -
The second volume of Toshio Saeki's erotic nightmare masterpiece, "Chimushi II" was published in 1996 by Treville, only available in Japan, and now very collectible in every edition. A lavishly illustrated book collection of every darkest sexual depravity rendered in vibrant colour by Japanese master of Ero guro, Toshio Saeki, published by Treville and Pan-Exotica, here in the 2003 softcover edition. In the introduction, Timothy Leary writes, "We salute the style and grace with which you tease our secret sensualities. And teach us how our dark, twisted images and fearful fantasies are created by our own minds."
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Good—Very Good copy, with light wear/bumping to cover extremities, interior Fine. With Average obi inserted.
2018, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by
Seven Stories Press / New York
$35.00 - In stock -
“A novel too weird and perverted and frankly minacious to stay in print, too unforgettable not to be reissued.”—Sarah Nicole Prickett, from the introduction
The narrator of Gone Tomorrow is an actor who has been cast in an unlikely art film set in Colombia. But from the moment he arrives at the airport in Bogota, only to witness a policeman beat a beggar half to death for no apparent reason, it becomes clear that this will not be the story of gritty bohemians triumphing against the odds. The director, Paul Grasvenor, seems more interested in manipulating his cast than shooting film. The cult star, Irma Irma, is a vamp too bored and boring to draw blood. And the incomparably beautiful Michael Simard doesn't seem to be putting out. Meanwhile, the film's shady financier appears to be sleeping with his mother, and a serial killer is skulking around the area killing tourists. Everything comes to a head when the carnaval celebration comes to nearby Cali. But once the fiesta comes to an end, all that's left is the memory and the narrator's insistence on telling the tale. "Unlike the majority of pointedly AIDS-era novels," writes Dennis Cooper, "Gone Tomorrow is neither an amoral nostalgia fest nor a thinly veiled wake-up call hyping the religion of sobriety. It's a philosophical work devised by a writer who's both too intelligent to buy into the notion that a successful future requires the compromise of collective decision and too moral to accept bitterness as the consequence of an adventurous life."
“Horribly refreshing, like an ice-cold glass of acid on a sweltering summer day . . . Indiana writes with an art critic’s eye for detail and a poet’s ear for language.” –Philadelphia Inquirer
“A disturbing, vivid, and brutal novel that succeeds in its dizzy mix of genres and influences. Not for the prudish, though.” –Kirkus Reviews
“Amazingly perverse, savagely amusing, unflinchingly serious. It may be in fact be the first really serious work of the imagination to come out of the AIDS catastrophe.” –Michael Herr, author of Dispatches
2018, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 14 x 21.8 cm
Published by
Seven Stories Press / New York
$35.00 - In stock -
Introduction by Tobi Haslett
"This story, if it is one, deserves the closure of a suicide, perhaps even the magisterial finality of what is usually called a novel, but the remnants of that faraway time offer nothing more than a taste of damp ashes, a feeling of indeterminacy, and the obdurate inconclusiveness of passing time." So writes the unnamed narrator of Horse Crazy, looking back on a season of madness and desire. The first novel from the brilliant, protean Gary Indiana, Horse Crazy tells the story of a thirty-five-year-old writer for a New York arts and culture magazine whose life melts into a fever dream when he falls in love with the handsome, charming, possibly heroin-addicted, and almost certainly insane Gregory Burgess. In the derelict brownstones of the Lower East Side in the late eighties, among the coked out restauranteurs and art world impresarios of the supposed "downtown scene," the narrator wanders through the fog of passion. Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic is spreading through the city, and New York friendships sputter to an end. Here is a novel where the only moral is that thwarted passion is the truest passion, where love is a hallucination and the gravest illness is desire.
“Horse Crazy is a sad, insane journey of infatuation and love. Frustrating to the bitter end—where all that is left is truth.” – Tracey Emin
“An archetypical story, expertly told. Fascinating to every man, no matter what his sexual tastes—like the characters in Genet.” – William S. Burroughs
“Sex, hypocrisy, solitude, loss, the punitive affinities that swallow the self—these are Gary Indiana’s themes, jingling through his books like money in Balzac. But rumbling beneath the malice is a melancholy yearning, a mind groping vulnerably for a human link.” – Tobi Haslett, from the introduction
1997, English
Softcover, 56 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Last Gasp / San Fransisco
$60.00 - Out of stock
First 1997 English-language edition of Erich von Gotha's A Very Special Prison, published by Last Gasp, San Fransisco. Dark and disturbing Sadean sadomasochistic masterpiece of bandes dessinées érotiques, first published in France in the 1980s.
Adults only!
Erich von Götha (b. 1924, Wimbledon, London) is the pseudonym of the British illustrator, comic book artist, aconteur, and English gentleman Robin Ray. Robin Ray has gained fame with his erotic and, above all, sadomasochist content. He studied drawing and painting for four years at St Martins art school in London and enjoyed a career in London advertising agencies as designer and copywriter. He took time off for three years to teach graphic design at Ealing School of Art. A chance meeting with the English human rights activist, sex therapist, consultant, campaigner, writer and adult model Tuppy Owens led to the "Sex Maniac's Diary", a remarkable and successful publication which amazingly sold mainly to women, for which EvG became the illustrator from 1975 to 1984. His relationship and ongoing friendship with Tuppy was enormously influential and helped lead to his artistic contributions to erotic publications. But it is "Torrid", entirely conceived and realised by EvG, that is the substantial overture to the comic strip (Bande Dessinée) extravaganza that was to follow. This ground-breaking publication, carried by the creative freedom of the 1970's sexual revolution of the 1970's, and pushing the legal boundaries in its path, spanned 1979 to 1986, all while EvG was running a successful advertising firm. However, his most famous work is The Troubles of Janice, set in the time of the Marquis de Sade. It has appeared in four albums; the first album appeared in 1980, and they represented a close collaboration with the French campaigning writer, historian and collector Bernard Joubert. A luxury edition of all four was published in 2008 by Dynamite. English versions of "Janice" and "Twenty", his other 'serial' story were published in the Noughties by the Erotic Print Society. Since the 80s he has produced many erotic paintings for friends and fans and has several books published by "Larmes d'Eros" in Paris. He continues to produce prints and execute commissions of an erotic nature usually with a mythological theme. He has had solo exhibitions in the Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Bologna, titled Sweat Tears & Reflections and In "Larmes d'Eros" in Paris on the publication of "The Secret Notebooks of Janice".
VG copy.
1999, English
Softcover, 56 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Last Gasp / San Fransisco
$60.00 - Out of stock
First 1999 English-language edition of Erich von Gotha's The Troubles of Janice Part 1, published by Last Gasp, San Fransisco. The first book of von Gotha's classic story set in the time of the Marquis de Sade, and a masterpiece of bandes dessinées érotiques, first published in France in 1980.
Adults only!
Erich von Götha (b. 1924, Wimbledon, London) is the pseudonym of the British illustrator, comic book artist, aconteur, and English gentleman Robin Ray. Robin Ray has gained fame with his erotic and, above all, sadomasochist content. He studied drawing and painting for four years at St Martins art school in London and enjoyed a career in London advertising agencies as designer and copywriter. He took time off for three years to teach graphic design at Ealing School of Art. A chance meeting with the English human rights activist, sex therapist, consultant, campaigner, writer and adult model Tuppy Owens led to the "Sex Maniac's Diary", a remarkable and successful publication which amazingly sold mainly to women, for which EvG became the illustrator from 1975 to 1984. His relationship and ongoing friendship with Tuppy was enormously influential and helped lead to his artistic contributions to erotic publications. But it is "Torrid", entirely conceived and realised by EvG, that is the substantial overture to the comic strip (Bande Dessinée) extravaganza that was to follow. This ground-breaking publication, carried by the creative freedom of the 1970's sexual revolution of the 1970's, and pushing the legal boundaries in its path, spanned 1979 to 1986, all while EvG was running a successful advertising firm. However, his most famous work is The Troubles of Janice, set in the time of the Marquis de Sade. It has appeared in four albums; the first album appeared in 1980, and they represented a close collaboration with the French campaigning writer, historian and collector Bernard Joubert. A luxury edition of all four was published in 2008 by Dynamite. English versions of "Janice" and "Twenty", his other 'serial' story were published in the Noughties by the Erotic Print Society. Since the 80s he has produced many erotic paintings for friends and fans and has several books published by "Larmes d'Eros" in Paris. He continues to produce prints and execute commissions of an erotic nature usually with a mythological theme. He has had solo exhibitions in the Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Bologna, titled Sweat Tears & Reflections and In "Larmes d'Eros" in Paris on the publication of "The Secret Notebooks of Janice".
VG copy.
2022, English / French
Hardcover (clothbound), 96 pages, 30 x 22 cm
Published by
Timeless Edition / Paris
$95.00 - In stock -
‘In Steel Grey Armour’ consistis of the complete reproduction of an infamous and mysterious collage book created by Genesis P-Orridge in 1979 and entrusted to his friend Yves Adrien,
a regular columnist of French music magazine ‘Rock’n’Folk’. It also explores the friendship between the 2 individuals with reproductions of some letters, photos and other artworks that Gen and Yves used to exchange. The book closes with a few words from the wise collector and current owner of the actual book, recounting his first encounter with the original Genesis collage book thanks to Jacques Noel, warden and smuggler-in-chief at Un Regard Moderne bookshop in Paris.
Artist, performer, musician and writer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson, 1950-2020), leader of COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, was a major, pioneering, radical and subversive figure in British industrial and experimental music.
Yves Adrien (born 1951) is a French writer, best known for his articles in Rock & Folk magazine from the early 1970s onwards, for his subsequent theorization of post-punk, and for his first book Novövision.
2022, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 192 pages, 30 x 22 cm
Published by
Timeless Edition / Paris
$95.00 - In stock -
Personal correspondence between Genesis P-Orridge and Jean-Pierre Turmel over a fifteen-year period.
This book pays tribute to one of counter-culture's single most iconic figures of the past fifty odd years, someone who has over the course of he/r career influenced countless fellow artists and theorists. Comprised of an exclusive unpublished interview with the artist conducted by Nicolas Ballet in 2016, theoretical texts on he/r work, and archival documents from the personal collection of Jean-Pierre Turmel.
Comprised theoretical texts on he/r work, and archival documents from the personal collection of Jean-Pierre Turmel. The Last Slogan offers a completely new perspective on the work of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.The book collects multiple letters sent by Genesis to Jean-Pierre Turmel from the mid-1970s till early 1990s. These unique personal archives provide an unequaled insight into Genesis Breyer P-Orridge's life-long journey via a deeply intimate correspondence with a close friend and associate, an intellectual sparring-partner of sorts, in which the artist discusses he/r inner thoughts, strategies, doubts and plans without any of the usual control filters.
Artist, performer, musician and writer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson, 1950-2020), leader of COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, was a major, pioneering, radical and subversive figure in British industrial and experimental music.
Jean-Pierre Turmel (born 1947 in Rouen, France) is co-founder of the legendary Sordide Sentimental label, which since 1978 has pioneered industrial, new wave and gothic music, producing Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division, Tuxedomoon, The Durutti Column, Savage Republic, Monte Cazazza, Davie Allan & The Arrows, etc.
Contributions by Genesis P-Orridge, Jean-Pierre Turmel, Nicolas Ballet.
2017, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 11.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$26.00 - Out of stock
Odd Jobs by Tony Duvert is a series of 23 satirically scabrous short texts that introduce the reader to an imaginary French suburb via the strange, grotesque small-town occupations that defined a once reliable, now presumably vanished way of life. A catalogue of job descriptions that range from the disgusting functions of “The Snot-Remover” and “The Wiper” to the shockingly cruel dramas enacted by “The Skinner” and “The Snowman". Through these narratives somewhere between parody and prose poem, Duvert assaults parenthood, priesthood and neighbourhood in this mock handbook to suburban living; Leave It to Beaver as written by William Burroughs.
Duvert (1945-2008) earned a reputation as the “enfant terrible” of the generation of French authors known for defining the post-war Nouveau Roman. Expelled from school at the age of 12 for homosexuality (and then put through a psychoanalytic “cure” for his condition), Duvert declared war on family life and societal norms through a controversial series of novels and essays (whose frequent controversial depictions of child sexuality and pedophilia often led his publisher to sell his works by subscription only). He won the Prix Medicis in 1973 for his novel Strange Landscape. His reputation faded in the 1980s, however, and he withdrew from society. He died in 2008.
2025, English
Softcover, 455 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Headpress / Oxford
$65.00 - In stock -
From filmmaker, former Fangoria editor-in-chief, and Corman/Poe author Chris Alexander comes ART! TRASH! TERROR! Adventures in Strange Cinema, a treasure trove of in-depth essays and edifying interviews that celebrate some of the most eccentric and unforgettable movies in cult cinema history. From recognized classics (George A. Romero's Dawn Of The Dead, David Lynch's The Elephant Man) to misunderstood masterpieces (Michael Mann's The Keep, Boris Sagal's The Omega Man) to unfairly maligned curios (Kostas Karagiannis' Land Of The Minotaur, Brett Leonard's Hideaway), the author takes an alternately serious and playful but always personal look at several strains of international horror, dark fantasy, and exploitation film -- motion pictures that transform, transgress, challenge, infuriate, shock, and entertain.
Connecting these passionate and critical essays are insightful interviews with revered talents, such as John Waters (writer/director, Cecil B. Demented), Michael Winner (director, The Sentinel), Nicolas Cage (actor, Vampire's Kiss), Gene Simmons (co-founder/bassist, KISS), William Crain (director, Blacula), William Lustig (director, Maniac), Werner Herzog (director, Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht) and many more, as well as witty, heartfelt memoirs charting the author's oddball experiences on the fringes of Hollywood and beyond.
Illustrated with more than 200 startling photographs!
2003, English
Softcover, 164 pages, 14 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$140.00 - Out of stock
Long out-of-print 2003 English edition of Eden, Eden, Eden - Pierre Guyotat's masterpiece of atrocity and obscenity.
The most subversive French novelist of the later 20th century, Pierre Guyotat (b. 1940) was the uncompromising heir of De Sade, Artaud, Rimbaud and Genet. Published in France in 1970 by Gallimard, with a preface by Michel Leiris, Roland Barthes and Philippe Sollers, Eden, Eden, Eden was greeted by both furore and acclaim. The book was immediately banned by the French government as pornographic. A campaign of international support for the book was signed by the like of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Boulez, Joseph Beuys, Pierre Dac, Jean Genet, Simone de Beauvoir, Joseph Kessel, Maurice Blanchot, Max Ernst, Italo Calvino, Jacques Monod, and Nathalie Sarraute. François Mitterrand and Georges Pompidou tried to get the ban lifted but failed until 11 years later when a newly elected President Mitterrand personally intervened to lift the ban in 1981.
Today Eden, Eden, Eden is recognised as one of the major works of the last century. In literally a single sentence, a desert-like, polluted, apocalyptic landscape of unending civil war unfolds without any morality (and therefore also without evil). This delirious, lacerating novel of startling innovation brings scenes of brutal carnage into intimate collision with relentless acts of prostitutional sex and humiliation.
'a new landmark and starting-point for new writing'—Roland Barthes
'I have never read anything like it in any stream of literature'—Michel Foucault
Very Good copy. Light corner bump, light crease to top back cover, otherwise Fine throughout.
2003, English
Softcover, 310 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$150.00 - Out of stock
First 2003 English Edition of Antonin Artaud’s evil simulacrum of The Monk, the only work of sustained fiction by the infamous literary provocateur. Taking Matthew Gregory Lewis's gothic novel of 1794 as the raw material for an astonishing exploration of the far edges of death, sexuality, terror, language and the body, Artaud conducted an aberrant evisceration of the original novel, discarding entire chapters, recreating others and stamping his own distinctive identity on the work in his avowed aim to accentuate the story's violence and atrocity to the maximal degree.
In Artaud's The Monk, sexual obsession is irrepressibly crushed together with murder, cruelty and blasphemy. The result is a searing narrative of massacred nuns, raped virgins and satanic retribution which will leave the reader simultaneously ensnared, gratified and abused.
Best known for his Theatre of Cruelty manifestoes, experimental film projects and corporeal poetry, Artaud created The Monk in France in 1930, to the acclaim of such figures as Jean Cocteau, at a time when Artaud's explicit purpose in his work was to cancel out all existing social and moral systems. This is the first time ever that the book has appeared in English. With an introduction by Stephen Barber.
"A great masterpiece of fantastic literature... marvels burst out at the reader, burning with a thousand fires... the spirit of the supernatural inflames this book to the very core"—André Breton
Very Good—NF copy.
2024, English
Softcover, 32 pages, 29.8 x 21.4 cm
Published by
Cultural Traffic / London
$69.00 - In stock -
Cultural Traffic presents PRELUDE: Transgression In The UK, by Toby Mott. This visual archive explores the UK’s fetish and transgressive scenes from the 1980s onwards, featuring material from Mott’s collection. The book includes pre-internet items, club flyers, posters, and fashion catalogues, documenting this underground movement.
PRELUDE highlights the influence of publications like Skin Two magazine and clubs such as Torture Garden, where fashion, music, and art combined. Mott’s collection traces how leather, latex, punk, and goth subcultures moved from Soho to mainstream fashion.
From London’s Kensington Market to Manchester’s Affleck’s Palace, this book offers a look into the culture that shaped ideas of self-expression. PRELUDE marks a movement that continues to challenge norms.
Publisher: Cultural Traffic, London, 2024 Size: A4 - Pages: 32 Graphic Design: Nicolás Meza Printed by: Angel Press, UK Edition: First Edition, 300 copies Binding: Centre sewn and wrapped Printing: Digital print on 120gsm Stardream Silver, including insides and dust jacket
2017, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 15.5 x 23 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$38.00 - Out of stock
A forgotten gem of French literature, Duvert's version of The Lord of the Flies: an indictment against the violence embedded in a middle-class community. Translated by Purdey Lord Kreiden and Michael Thomas Taren.
Tony Duvert's novel Atlantic Island (originally published in French in 1979) takes place in the soul-crushing suburbs of a remote island off the coast of France. It is told through the shifting perspectives of a group of pubescent and prepubescent boys, ages seven to fourteen, who gather together at night in secret to carry out a series of burglaries throughout their neighborhood. The boys vandalize living rooms and kitchens and make off with, for the most part, petty objects of no value. Their exploits leave the adult community perplexed and outraged, especially when a death occurs and the stakes grow more serious.
Duvert's portrayal of adult life on this Atlantic Island is savage to the point of satire, but the boys and their thieving and sexuality are explored with sympathy. A novel on the loneliness of childhood and the solitude induced by geographical space, it is also an empathetic and generous homage to youth, a crime novel without suspense, and an unsettling fairytale for adults.
Atlantic Island today is a forgotten gem of French literature: Duvert's own version of The Lord of the Flies, it is attentive to details and precise in its depiction of French mores and language. An indictment against the violence embedded in a middle-class community, it is also a love letter to childhood, incorporating the heroic vistas in which a child needs only a fertile imagination to become the secret hero of his or her own life.
Tony Duvert (1945–2008) is the author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His fifth novel, Strange Landscape, won the prestigious Prix Médicis in 1973. Other books translated into English include the novels When Jonathan Died and Diary of an Innocent as well as the essay Good Sex Illustrated, the last two both available from Semiotext(e).
2010, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 15.5 x 23 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$38.00 - In stock -
"'I always write completely nude, and I don't wash before,' writes Tony Duvert, whose explosive Diary of an Innocent is part tract, part porn, part theory, part fiction, and (I presume) part fact. Certain pages of Gide, Genet, Hocquenghem and certain scenes from Bresson or Pasolini suggest themselves as mild precursors, but Duvert goes further, filthier, faster. Only the Marquis de Sade outpaces him. Must we burn Duvert? I pray not. This book, troubling and memorable, interrogates with delicate strokes the damaged state of contemporary sexual relations."—Wayne Koestenbaum
Now in English, Duvert's shocking novel about a sexual adventurer among a tribe of adolescent boys in Northern Africa. Translated with introduction by Bruce Benderson.
"I'd find it amusing if, in a few centuries, the only thing that our descendents condescend to retain of our artistic production, the only thing in which they'll see worlds to admire, to penetrate, the only thing that they'll show off as precious in immense museums after having flushed down the toilet all our acknowledged masterpieces, the only thing that will give them nostalgia and love for us will be our porn."—from Diary of an Innocent
Exiled from the prestigious French literary circles that had adored him in the 1970s, novelist Tony Duvert's life ended in anonymity. In 2008, nineteen years after his last book was published, Duvert's lifeless body was discovered in the small village of Thoré-la-Rochette, where he had been living a life of total seclusion.
Now for the first time, Duvert's most highly crafted novel is available in English. Poetic, brutally frank, and outright shocking, Diary of an Innocent recounts the risky experiences of a sexual adventurer among a tribe of adolescent boys in an imaginary setting that suggests North Africa. More reverie than narrative, Duvert's Diary presents a cascading series of portraits of the narrator's adolescent sexual partners and their culture, and ends with a fanciful yet rigorous construction of a reverse world in which marginal sexualities have become the norm.
Written with gusto and infused with a luminous bitterness, this novel is more unsettling to readers today than it was to its first audience when published in French in 1976. In his openly declared war on society, Duvert presents a worldview that offers no easy moral code and no false narrative solution of redemption. And yet no reader will remain untouched by the book's dazzling language, stinging wit, devotion to matters of the heart, and terse condemnation of today's society.
"Diary of an Innocent by Tony Duvert is a truly scandalous work, but first and foremost a work of great depth and freedom.... A book that reinvents the seduction of literature."—Abdellah Taïa, author of Salvation Army
Tony Duvert (1945–2008) is the author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His fifth novel, Strange Landscape, won the prestigious Prix Médicis in 1973. Other books translated into English include the novels When Jonathan Died and Diary of an Innocent as well as the essay Good Sex Illustrated, the last two both available from Semiotext(e).
Novelist, translator, and essayist Bruce Benderson is the author of a memoir, The Romanian: Story of an Obsession, winner of France's prestigious Prix de Flore in French translation, and Pacific Agony (Semiotext(e), 2009.)
2024, English
Softcover, 248 pages, 20.32 x 13.97 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$38.00 - In stock -
A classic queer text of trauma, written by one of the most talented novelists of her generation.
"The reason it's never just once is the same reason money's only a part of it. Most anyone can take or leave that, though they don't think they can. The cover story of all time, that's what money is. The excuse of excuses no one will question because they so much need to use it themselves."
Published by Doubleday in 1994, Heather Lewis's chilling debut novel took place on the northeastern equestrian show-riding circuit, to which Lewis herself belonged in her teens. Expelled from boarding school, its fifteen-year-old narrator moves numbly through a world of motel rooms, heroin, dyke love, and doped horses. Kirkus Reviews found it "brutal, sensual, honest, seductive ... a powerful debut," while the New York Times found the book "grating and troublesome ... it's difficult to imagine a more passive specimen."
Almost immediately, Lewis began writing Notice, a novel that moves even further into dark territory. The teenaged narrator Nina begins turning tricks in the parking lot of the train station near the Westchester County home of her absent parents. She soon falls into a sadomasochistic relationship with a couple. Arrested, she's saved by a counselor and admitted to a psychiatric facility. But these soft forms of control turn out to be even worse. Writing in the register of an emotional fugue state, Notice's helpless but all-knowing narrator is as smooth and sharp as a knife.
Rejected by every publisher who read it during Lewis's life, Notice was eventually published by Serpent's Tail in 2004, two years after her death. The book, long out of print, emerged as a classic queer text of trauma, written by one of the most talented novelists of her generation.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 224 pages, 29 x 29 cm
Published by
George Schwarz and Charis / East Sydney
$190.00 - In stock -
Powerful Paradise the Art of George Schwarz and Charis is an artists book, a collaboration between George Schwarz, his partner Charis, Linda Dement and Craig Judd. It is an introduction to a wonderful life and to beautiful, complex and intriguing art. Ernest Georg Schwarz and Charis Elizabeth McKittrick enjoy a unique partnership beginning 1964. The word collaborators in this case is an inadequate descriptor. In their presence one is witness to but a force of nature, a swirling vortex of creative mutuality. Simultaneously lovers, artists, apiarists, activists, authors, film and wine makers, 'Powerful Paradise' is a celebration and a legacy.
This extremely limited hardcover edition is the first survey of the couple's life in art, the last survivors of bohemian Kings Cross. Creators of the first Australian hardcore sex films to be passed by the censors (and also refused classification), George and Charis were ahead of the curve in every aspect of their practice. This volume features the only writing covering their film output, extensive photographic work and global travels. Simultaneously erotic, taboo, progressive, liberated; lives dedicated to their work and one another and perhaps too provocative/evocative for the Australian art establishment.
1991, English
Softcover, 155 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Marion Boyars / London
$55.00 - In stock -
First 1991 English edition.
Set against the backdrop of Europe's slide into Fascism, Blue of Noon is one of Bataille's most overtly political works, exploring the ambiguity of sex as a subversive force and synthesizing the fetishes of violence, power and death that mesmerized an age. In this classic of twentieth century eroticism, the reader is taken on a dark journey through the psyche of the prewar French intel- ligentsia, torn between identification with the victims of history and the glamour of its victors.
"The writing is superlative... daringly imaginative, intended only for those awake and aware of the possibilities of excess in literature and life. Along with Céline and Breton, Bataille writes as if he were dropping a bomb; in a fore-flash he creates a world of demented funereal sexuality."—Detroit Free Press
"Bataille is one of the most important writers of this century. He broke with traditional narrative to tell us what has never been told before."—Michel Foucault
"Bataille denudes himself, exposes himself, his exhibitionism aims at destroying all literature. He has a holocaust of words. Bataille speaks about man's condition, not his nature. His tone recalls the scornful aggressiveness of the surrealist. Bataille has survived the death of God. In him reality is conflict."—Jean-Paul Sartre
Very Good copy with light wear, light bumping to card covers.
1995, English
Softcover, 276 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$80.00 - 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.
2004, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 23 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Headpress / Oxford
$65.00 - In stock -
The slasher movie is the bloodiest incarnation of the modern horror film, tainted by criticisms of misogyny, yet remaining - on and off - a box-office draw for thirty years. Combining in-depth analysis with over 200 film reviews, Legacy of Blood is the most comprehensive examination of the slasher movie and its conventions to date, from Halloween and the notorious I Spit On Your Grave, to Scream - the re-defining genre hit in the nineties - and beyond. Heavily illustrated throughout.
VG copy.
1999, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fringecore / Belgium
$70.00 - In stock -
First edition of Cinema Contra Cinema is a collection of essays and interviews by cult author Jack Sargeant on the vertiginous extremes of underground cinema. Published in 1999 in Belgium, the book includes underground filmmakers, Bruce La Bruce, Beth B, David Cronenberg, M. Henry Jones, Jeff Keen, Harry Smith, Marne Lucas, Raymond Pettibon, Eric Brummer, Boyd Rice, David Alan Clarke, Craig Baldwin, Vivien Dick, Jeff Krulik, Huck Botko, Beat Takashi, as well as newcomers such as Tyler Hubby, Modi and Peter Strickland. Plus essays on David Cronenberg's Crash, Bruce La Bruce's Hustler White, Mark Heynar's award-winning Affliction and Blunt Cut's De Leiber Rausch. Fully illustrated with many rare and previously unseen photographs.
"The subject matter is excremental, the approach obsessional and the result a kind of pervo-deviant tribute to the spirit of Georges Bataille...serious research activity."—Steve Beard, iD
"The complex critical apparatus of Foucault's Language, Counter-Memory, Practice with the sensibilities of a Todd Browning movie."—Ken Hollings, The Wire
"The post-punk Parker Tyler."—Michael Simmons, LA Weekly
VG copy with light wear to cpver/extremities.
1996, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1996, Necronomicon: Book one continues the singular, thought-provoking exploration of transgressive cinema begun by the much-respected and acclaimed magazine of the same name. The transition to annual book format has allowed for even greater depth and diversity within the journal's trademarks of progressive critique and striking photographic content. Includes: Jean Rollin: The surreal and the sapphic Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Exploitation or modern fairytale Barbara Steele: Icon of S/M horror Frightmare: Peter Walker's psycho-delirium classic Marco Ferreri: Sadean cinema of excess Deep Throat: Pornography as primitive spectacle Dario Argento: Tortured looks and visual displeasure Last Tango in Paris: Circles of sex and death H P Lovecraft: Visions of crawling chaos Witchfinder General: Michael Reeves' classic of visceral violence Herschell G. Lewis: Compulsive tales and cannibal feasts Evil Dead: From slapstick to splatshtick * And much more....
VG copy.
1986, German
Softcover, 164 pages, 28 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Residenz Verlag / Salzburg
$65.00 - Out of stock
First 1986 edition of this profusely illustrated monograph on Viennese Actionist, painter, graphic artist, experimental filmmaker and writer, Günter Brus (b. 1938), published in Austria by Residenz Verlag. Features texts in German with contributions by Gunter Brus, Arnulf Meifert, Dieter Ronte, Gerhard Roth, and Peter Weibel, the book is predominantly made up of full page reproductions in colour and b/w of Brus' works, beginning with his radical performances into his prolific work as a painter and graphic artist. Includes biographical information, checklist, and bibliographical information.
Günter Brus (born 1938 in Ardning, Austria) is an Austrian artist known for his controversial films, performances, and paintings. He was notably a member of the Viennese Actionist Group alongside Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch. In 1960, the artist’s interest in the paintings of Jackson Pollock led his transition into making performance-based paintings regarding his own body. Many of the Viennese Actionist’s radical acts were intended as reactions to what they considered the ongoing legacy of Nazi fascism in Austrian culture. His 1968 performance Kunst und Revolution, consisted of the artist consuming his own urine, masturbating in public, and vomiting, he was subsequently jailed for six months. Brus currently lives and works in Graz, Austria.
Very Good copy.
1997, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 84 pages, 24 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
First 1997 hardcover edition of Trevor Brown’s first major art book, published in Japan by Treville. This collection of Brown's uniquely perverse, disturbing and now iconic paintings revolves around girls/dolls and themes of "medical art", like his friend, Bazooka-artist and photographer, Romain Slocombe. Lots of cutesy, lolita-esque girls and girl-dolls in transgressive scenarios of fetishism, bondage, body modification, etc. Published only in Japan, where the English artist has resided since 1994.
This very popular book was also published to coincide with Brown's solo exhibition at Azzlo Gallery, who specialised in fetish wear, run by artist, costume designer and student of Kaneko Kuniyoshi, Yumi Azzlo. Invitation to the exhibition is included as an insert.
Trevor Brown (b. 1959) is an illusive and prolific artist who's work explores paraphilias, such as lolicon, ero guro, BDSM, and other fetish themes. Innocence and violence collide in Brown's confronting images. Early features on his art appeared in Adam Parfrey's Apocalypse Culture II, Shade Rupe's Funeral Party 2, and in Jim Goad's ANSWER Me! zine, garnering him wide notoriety across the provocative underground publishing scene of the 1980s—90s. He's contributed artwork to many album covers of Whitehouse, Coil, John Zorn, and many more, illustrated for Coup de Grace, an edition of Friedrich Nietzsche's Der Antichrist, the covers of Timeless magazine, and more recently illustrated the cover of the Gothic & Lolita Bible (a subculture in which Brown has many dedicated fans) in Japan, where the the artist has lived since 1994 and where his work has been published in many art book editions.
VG—NF copy.