World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2021, English
Softcover, 368 pages, 22.1 x 14.3 cm
Published by
Picador / USA
$32.00 - Out of stock
A rollicking, sexy memoir of a young poet making his way in 1960s New York City.
When he graduated from Columbia in 1958, John Giorno was handsome, charismatic, ambitious, and eager to soak up as much of Manhattan's art and culture as possible. Poetry didn't pay the bills, so he worked on Wall Street, spending his nights at the happenings, underground movie premiers, art shows, and poetry readings that brought the city to life. An intense romantic relationship with Andy Warhol--not yet the global superstar he would soon become--exposed Giorno to even more of the downtown scene, but after starring in Warhol's first movie, Sleep, they drifted apart. Giorno soon found himself involved with Robert Rauschenberg and later Jasper Johns, both relationships fueling his creativity. He quickly became a renowned poet in his own right, working at the intersection of literature and technology, freely crossing genres and mediums alongside the likes of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
Twenty-five years in the making, and completed shortly before Giorno's death in 2019, Great Demon Kings is the memoir of a singular cultural pioneer: an openly gay man at a time when many artists remained closeted and shunned gay subject matter, and a devout Buddhist whose faith acted as a rudder during a life of tremendous animation, one full of fantastic highs and frightening lows. Studded with appearances by nearly every it-boy and girl of the downtown scene (including a moving portrait of a decades-long friendship with Burroughs), this book offers a joyous, life-affirming, and sensational look at New York City during its creative peak, narrated in the unforgettable voice of one of its most singular characters.
2021, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Published by
Critical Editions / US
$19.00 - Out of stock
"The Debordian analysis of modern life resonates more deeply and darkly than perhaps even its creator thought possible..."—The New Yorker
"Never before has Debord's work seemed quite as relevant as it does now"—The Guardian
"Guy Debord is a time bomb, and a difficult one to defuse."—Michael Loewy
First published in 1967, Guy Debord's stinging revolutionary critique of contemporary society, The Society of the Spectacle has since acquired a cult status. The Das Kapital of the 20th century. An essential text, and the main theoretical work of the Situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life.
"In Society of the Spectacle, Debord sets out his best-known statement of how the categories of capitalism colonise everyday life to such an extent that we can barely imagine an existence beyond them."—Sydney Review of Books
"The Society of the Spectacle [is] about not just the clamor of images but also the silence of power, a silence which, since the seventies, has become deafening."—McKenzie Wark
"Never before has Debord's work seemed quite as relevant as it does now, in the permanent present that he so accurately foretold? Open his book, read it, be amazed, pour yourself a glass of supermarket wine - as he would wish - and then forget all about it, which is what the Spectacle wants."—Will Self
"In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord made plain that a 'unified critique of culture' implied a critique of the social totality. This was his practico-theoretical method throughout his career as a revolutionary: he saw no distinction between cultural work and political work."—Bruce Russell
Guy Debord (1931-1994) was a Marxist theorist, writer, poet, filmmaker, hypergraphist, cultural revolutionary and a founding member of the Lettrist International and Situationist International - groups that fused avant-garde art and politics as an anti-capitalist weapon. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative as Debord's Society of the Spectacle, which decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and contemporary life.
2021, English
Softcover, 254 pages, 23.5 x 15.6 cm
Published by
Critical Editions / US
$28.00 - Out of stock
The fascinating work of a Russian prince-turned-anarchist, Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). Kropotkin one of the world's first international celebrities. In England, Kropotkin was known as a brilliant scientist, famous for his work on animal and human cooperation, but Kropotkin's fame in continental Europe centered more on his role as a founder and vocal proponent of anarchism. In the United States, he pursued both passions. Tens of thousands of people followed ex-Prince Peter during two speaking tours in America.
Kropotkin's path to fame was unexpected and labyrinthine, with asides in prison, breathtaking 50,000-mile journeys through the wastelands of Siberia, and banishment, for one reason or another, from most respectable Western countries of the day. In his homeland of Russia, Peter went from being Czar Alexander II's favored teenage page, to a young man enamored with the theory of evolution, to a convicted felon, jail-breaker and general agitator, eventually being chased halfway around the world by the Russian Secret police for his radical - some might (and did) say enlightened - political views.
Both while in jail, and while on the run when he was entertaining and enlightening huge crowds, Kropotkin found the energy and concentration to write books on a dazzling array of topics: evolution and behavior, ethics, the geography of Asia, anarchism, socialism and communism, penal systems, the coming industrial revolution in the East, the French Revolution, and the state of Russian literature. Though seemingly disparate topics, a common thread - the scientific law of mutual aid, which guided the evolution of all life on earth - tied these works together. This law boils down to Kropotkin's deep-seated conviction that what we today would call altruism and cooperation - but what the Prince called mutual aid - was the driving evolutionary force behind all social life, be it in microbes, animals or humans. Today, anthropologists, political scientists, economists and psychologists publish hundreds of studies each year on human cooperation, and researchers in these fields are just beginning to realize that so many of the topics they are investigating were first suggested and promulgated by Peter Kropotkin.
2012, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 16 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Tibor de Nagy Editions / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
In 1952, the New York gallery Tibor de Nagy published A City Winter, Frank O'Hara's first collection of poems, under the Tibor de Nagy Editions imprint, inaugurating the gallery's now longstanding association with what has come to be known as the New York School of poetry. O'Hara had been in the city for barely a year, but was already immersing himself in its art scenes, becoming especially close to Grace Hartigan, and collaborating on a series of poem-pictures which Tibor de Nagy exhibited in 1953. For this occasion, O'Hara's second book, Oranges, was published: a series of prose poems in the Rimbaud manner, printed in an edition of about 75. A third collection, Love Poems (Tentative Title), was published in 1965, as O'Hara was preparing the manuscript of Lunch Poems (often described wrongly as the poet's first book). Poems from the Tibor de Nagy Editions collects these three volumes.
Cover photograph by Renate Ponsold. Drawings by Larry Rivers for A City Winter and Other Poems; and painting by Grace Hartigan for Oranges: 12 Pastorals.
Collectible, out-of-print, first-only edition. As New copy.
2022, English / German
Hardcover, 120 pages, 20 x 26.5 cm
Published by
Weiss Berlin / Berlin
$82.00 - Out of stock
In 1984, the German photographer Helga Paris spent several weeks at a state-owned clothing factory, during which time she shot more than 1,500 photographs. From these she selected the 49 powerful images that make up the series Women at the Clothing Factory VEB Treff-Modelle Berlin. These photographs capture her subjects engaged in their work or taking cigarette breaks, conveying the serenity and beauty of the sitters in their brief moments of tranquility amid the factory environment.This title collects the entire series and gathers it in a format that is affordable to a wider audience. This beautifully designed volume features a linen-bound printed cover with embossed text.
2021, English
Hardcover, 152 pages, 18.5 x 24 cm
Published by
Spector Books / Leipzig
$82.00 - Out of stock
With an eye trained by modernist painting and early Soviet, Italian, and French cinema and influenced by theatre and poetry, self-taught photographer Helga Paris developed an extensive oeuvre of gently nuanced black-and-white images over a period of four and a half decades. The great trust and confidence that people had in her as an artist and as a person are a hallmark of all her portraits. Her subjects open themselves up to her and let her into their lives. The photographs show figures like Christa Wolf, Elke Erb, and Charlotte E. Pauly in private moments as well as the literary counter-public of Prenzlauer Berg and its protagonists. The book is accompanied by texts penned by publisher Gerhard Wolf and curator and art historian Eugen Blume. Paris’s portraits of artists and writers in the GDR are being published for the first time in book form in conjunction with an exhibition at the Leonhardi Museum in Dresden.
2005, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 13.2 x 22.6 cm
Published by
University of Michigan Press / Michigan
$46.00 - In stock -
The first full-length translation in English of an essential work of postmodernism. The publication of Simulacra et Simulation in 1981 marked Jean Baudrillard's first important step toward theorizing the postmodern. Moving away from the Marxist/Freudian approaches that had concerned him earlier, Baudrillard developed in this book a theory of contemporary culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure. Baudrillard uses the concepts of the simulacra - the copy without an original - and simulation. These terms are crucial to an understanding of the postmodern, to the extent that they address the concept of mass reproduction and reproduceability that characterizes our electronic media culture. Baudrillard's book represents a unique and original effort to rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a new concept of cultural materialism, one that radically redefines postmodern formulations of the body.
Translated by Sheila Faria Glase
2022, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$46.00 - In stock -
Foreword by W. H. Auden
Translated, with an introduction, by Irving Weiss
“We have heard nothing so powerful since Lautréamont.”—André Breton
After seeing an azalea looking at him in the Curepipe Botanic Gardens (and realizing that he himself was becoming a flower), Malcolm de Chazal began composing what would eventually become his unclassifiable masterpiece, Sens-Plastique, which would take its final form in 1948. Containing over two thousand aphorisms, axioms, and allegories, the book was immediately hailed as a work of genius by such poets as André Breton and Francis Ponge and such painters as Jean Dubuffet and Georges Braque. Embraced by the surrealists as one of their own but also viewed dubiously by other readers as something of an occultist, Chazal chose to avoid all literary factions and steadfastly anchored himself in his solitary life as a bachelor mystic on the island nation of Mauritius, where he would proceed to write books and paint for the rest of his life.
Sens-Plastique employs a strange humor and an alchemical sensibility to offer up an utterly original world vision that unifies neo-science, philosophy, and a hyper-detailed poetry into a new form of writing. Mapping every human body part, facial expression, and emotion onto the natural kingdom through subconscious thinking, Chazal presents a world in which humankind is not just made in the image of God, but Nature is made in the image of humankind: a sensual, synesthetic world in which everything in the universe, be it animal, vegetable, mineral, or human, manifests a spiritual copula.
“Sens-Plastique has now been a companion of mine for nearly twenty years, and so far as I am concerned, Malcolm de Chazal is much the most original and interesting French writer to emerge since the war.”—W. H. Auden
“Malcolm de Chazal has, perhaps alone in our time, given a resolute expression to the happiness of sensuality.”—Georges Bataille
“This art deserves the name of genius, that name and no other.”—Jean Paulhan
Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) was a Mauritian writer and painter. Forsaking a career in the sugar industry, he spent the majority of his life in a solitary, mystical pursuit of the continuity between humankind and nature.
2020, English
Softcover, 322 pages, 13 x 19.5 cm
Published by
Repeater Books / London
$26.00 - In stock -
Edited and with an introduction by Eugene Thacker, On the Suffering of the World comprises a core selection of Schopenhauer's later writings, gathered together for the first time in print.
These texts, produced during the last decades of Schopenhauer's long life, reveal a unique kind of philosophy, expressed in a singular style. Eschewing the tradition of dry, totalizing, academic philosophy prevalent during the time, Schopenhauer's later writings mark a shift towards a philosophy of aphorisms, fragments, anecdotes and observations, written in a literary style that is by turns antagonistic, resigned, confessional, and filled with all the fragile contours of an intellectual memoir. Here Schopenhauer allows himself to pose challenging questions regarding the fate of the human species, the role of suffering in the world, and the rift between self and world that increasingly has come to define human existence, to this day. It is these writings of Schopenhauer that later generations of artists, poets, musicians, and philosophers would identify as exemplifying the pessimism of their era, and perhaps of our own as well.
On the Suffering of the World is presented with an introduction that places Schopenhauer's thought in its intellectual context, while also connecting it to contemporary concerns over climate change, the anthropocene, and the spectre of human extinction. The book also includes a bibliography and chronology of Schopenhauer's life.
2018, English
Softcover, 400 pages, 13 x 19.7 cm
Published by
Repeater Books / London
$39.00 - Out of stock
Comprised of aphorisms, fragments, and observations both philosophical and personal, Thacker's new book traces the contours of pessimism, caught as it often is between a philosophical position and a bad attitude.
Reflecting on the universe's "looming abyss of indifference," Thacker explores the pessimism of a range of philosophers, from the well-known (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Camus), to the lesser-known (E.M. Cioran, Lev Shestov, Miguel de Unamuno). Readers will find food for thought in Thacker's handling of a range of themes in Christianity and Buddhism, as well as his engagement with literary figures (from Dostoevsky to Thomas Bernhard, Osamu Dazai, and Fernando Pessoa), whose pessimism about the world both inspires and depresses Thacker.
By turns melancholic, misanthropic, and darkly funny, ("Birth is a metaphysical injury - healing takes time - the span of one's life"), many will find Infinite Resignation a welcome antidote to the exuberant imbecility of our times.
“Scholarly advice for dark times.”
—The New Yorker
“Provides a metric ton of misery and a lot of company.”
–The New York Times
2021, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 16 x 23 cm
Published by
Camden Art Centre / UK
$98.00 - Out of stock
Humanity’s place in the natural order is under scrutiny as never before, held in a precarious balance between visible and invisible forces: from the microscopic threat of a virus to the monumental power of climate change.
Drawing on indigenous traditions from the Amazon rainforest; alternative perspectives on Western scientific rationalism; and new thinking around plant intelligence, philosophy and cultural theory, The Botanical Mind investigates the significance of the plant kingdom to human life, consciousness and spirituality across cultures and through time. The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and The Cosmic Tree was conceived as a trans-generational group exhibition by Gina Buenfeld and Matt Williams for the Camden Art Centre, bringing together surrealist, modernist, visionary, outsider, indigenous Amazonian, and contemporary works alongside historical and ethnographic artefacts, textiles and manuscripts spanning more than 500 years. Through the symbolism of diverse cultural artefacts and the works of mystics, artists and thinkers around the world, 'The Botanical Mind' reveals how the vegetal kingdom has metaphysical importance to the development of consciousness and spirituality.
This richly illustrated 224-page companion publication includes essays by the curators and contributions from scholars on the key themes of the exhibition – alchemy, art history, plant ontology, Gaian ecology, anthropology and ethnobotany – unifying philosophical, scientific, spiritual and artistic approaches to meditate on the cosmic significance of plants in different worldviews.
Edited by Gina Buenfeld and Martin Clark
Designed by Sara De Bondt studio.
Artists and Writers
Eileen Agar / Anni Albers / Josef Albers / Sarah Angliss / Consuelo "Chelo" González Amézcua / Gemma Anderson with Wakefield Lab and John Dupré / Anna Atkins / Kirk Barley / Jordan Belson / Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater / Karl Blossfeldt / Carol Bove / Jagadish Chandra Bose / Kerstin Brätsch / Bernd Brabec De Mori / Hildegarde von Bingen / Andrea Büttner / Adam Chodzko / Ithell Colquhoun / Bruce Conner / Brenda Danilowitz / Das Institut / Mirtha Dermisache / Minnie Evans / Cerith Wyn Evans / Charles Filiger / Robert Fludd / Monica Gagliano / Giorgio Griffa / Brion Gysin / Friedrich Wilhelm Heine / Ernst Haeckel / Dr Stephan Harding / Anna Haskel / Tamara Henderson / Channa Horwitz / Textiles from the Huni Kuin (Kaxinawa) people / C.G. Jung / Joachim Koester / Rachid Koraïchi / Hilma af Klint / Emma Kunz / Yves Laloy / Ghislaine Leung / Linder / Simon Ling / Michael Marder / Agnes Martin / André Masson / John McCracken / Terence McKenna / Henri Michaux / Matt Mullican / Wolfgang Paalen / Paul Păun / Stefan A. Pedersen / Santiago Ramón y Cajal / Steve Reinke and James Richards / Edith Rimmington / Adele Röder / Daniel Rios Rodriguez / Rupert Sheldrake / Textiles and ceramics from the Shipibo-Conibo people / Penny Slinger / F. Percy Smith / Janet Sobel / Philip Taaffe / Priscilla Telmon and Vincent Moon / Fred Tomaselli / Delfina Muñoz de Toro / Alexander Tovborg / David Tudor / Lee Ufan / Scottie Wilson / Terry Winters / Adolf Wölfli / Bryan Wynter / Henriette Zéphir / Anna Zemánková / Unica Zürn / artists from the Yawanawá community
1989, English
Softcover, 16 pages + 4-track 3" MINI-CD, 28 x 19.5 cm
No. ed of 5000 copies,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sordide Sentimental / France
$25.00 - In stock -
Martyn Bates — Port Of Stormy Lights booklet and 4-track 3" MINI-CD issued in 1989/1990 by Sordide Sentimental in a limited and machine-numbered No. 001622 out of 5000 copies. Booklet combines photographs, album covers and graphics with a parallel French/English texts by Muriel Quoniam and Jean-Pierre Turmel, discussing themes, links and symbology in Bates' work, tying it to the Cashmere region, Third Ear Band, and much more. Martyn Bates (b. 1960) is an English singer, musician and songwriter. After releasing tapes of experimental, industrial music as Migraine Inducers Bates formed post-punk duo Eyeless In Gaza with Peter Becker in January 1980. The duo became known for their unconventional instrumentation and arrangements, and for Bates’s passionate vocals, which at times were whispered, howled, or stammered. During his 20+ year career producing countless releases under Eyeless In Gaza, solo recordings and various collaborations with film-maker Derek Jarman, poet Anne Clark, This Mortal Coil's Deirdre Rutkowski, Napalm Death's Mick Harris, Orchis/Temple Music/Nurse With Wound collaborator Alan Trench, et al), Bates managed to shape a unique, instantly recognizable form of music based on a deeply rooted, 100% English folk tradition.
Very Good copy, booklet with some light spine pinching, in plastic sleeve, CD sleeve opened but CD VG.
1992, English
Softcover, 8 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm folded, 42 x 29.7 cm unfolded
1st edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
City Gallery / Melbourne
$35.00 - In stock -
An Interview with Ashley Crawford
John Nixon is an Australian artist born in 1949, his Experimental Painting Workshop EPW – founded in 1990 – is not a physical workshop but an intellectual as well as a practical visual investigation into non-representational painting.
1986, English
Softcover, 32 pages, 20.5 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
IMA / Brisbane
$140.00 - Out of stock
"Recession Art & Other Strategies presents a selection of work by Robert MacPherson, Peter Tyndall, Gunter Christmann, Peter Cripps and John Nixon involving recessional techniques and strategies. The works span the period 1974 to 1985." - Peter Cripps
The wonderful and very scarce publication to accompany the exhibition "Recession Art & Other Strategies" at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, in 1986, curated by artist Peter Cripps. In our opinion, this is one of the finest Australian art exhibition catalogues ever made. Thoughtfully curated, beautifully designed and typeset, with photo documentation of works by the exhibiting artists and a great accompanying essay by curator and artist Peter Cripps. This text addresses and traces "a recurrence of a 'Recessional based' art practice in Australia". "The pressure of little money and a small art market has meant that many artists still own the greater part of their life's production. The initial difficulty of producing and the subsequent difficulty of disposing of art works is ever present...". Touching on Percy Grainger's 'Free Music' machines, to the recent histories of Australian exhibition spaces such Q Space, V Space, IMA, Q Space Annex, n-Space, and printed exhibition spaces such as Blunt Report, Hand Space, Pneumatic Drill, as well as projects such as The Fosterville Institute of Applied and Progressive Cultural Experience and The Anti-Music Collective, this text provides a clear insight into the many productions of these artists and their peers in Australia in the 1980's, as well as the climate that surrounded their activities.
Very Good copy.
1997, English
Softcover (wire-bound), 12 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Unique Ancient Tavern / San Francisco
$25.00 - Out of stock
Very rare copy of Loren Chasse's "an ear afoot", a very early publication of "object/area sonologies", published in 1997 in an unknown small edition by Unique Ancient Tavern in San Francisco. We cannot locate another copy. Lovely hand-made publication of Chasse's drawings and writings, bound with thin wire. Loren Chasse is an American musician, sound artist, field recordist and teacher, most notable for his association with Jewelled Antler and his work with Thuja, The Blithe Sons, The Child Readers, Of and many others.
Good copy with some wear and tanning to raw stock covers. Bound by light wire, traces of something organic possibly once attached to cover.
1993, German
Softcover, 20 pages + CD, 29 x 17.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Verlag Das Beispiel GmbH Darmstadt / Darmstadt
$140.00 $90.00 - In stock -
Rare first, only edition of Rolf Julius – Wind, beautiful artist book published with accompanying CD by Verlag Das Beispiel GmbH Darmstadt in 1993. Includes book with texts (score) by sound artist Rolf Julius (1939 — 2011), and Helga de la Motte-Haber (essay), and b/w illustrations (drawings and photographs) throughout. CD includes the pieces : Sommerstück (Belèm) - 1993 and Neues Klavierkonzert - 1992.
Rolf Julius has frequently been compared to John Cage for his attempts of integrating the world of common noises into the realm of sounds. "The surface of a sound interests me. Is it round or angled, grinding and raw, or smooth, etc." Julius thus creates extraordinary sound installations which can be described as "music for the eyes" and have secured him an unmistakeable place in the spectrum of contemporary art. An important book for anyone interested in Julius or Cage's concept of "Small Music" or ambient/field recording in general.
Very Good copy.
1996, English / German
Softcover, 256 pages, 16 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kehrer Verlag / Heidelberg
$100.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition of Small Music (Grau), the first major documentation on the work of sound artist Rolf Julius (1939 — 2011) who operated in the border area between music and visual arts. Published in 1996 to accompany the exhibitions in Heidelberg, Saarbrücken, and Heilbronn, 1995—1996, and since long out-of-print. Heavily illustrated throughout with many texts by Julius and accompanying essays. Rolf Julius has frequently been compared to John Cage for his attempts of integrating the world of common noises into the realm of sounds. "The surface of a sound interests me. Is it round or angled, grinding and raw, or smooth, etc." Julius thus creates extraordinary sound installations which can be described as "music for the eyes" and have secured him an unmistakeable place in the spectrum of contemporary art. An important book for anyone interested in Julius or Cage's concept of "Small Music" or ambient/field recording in general.
Very Good copy.
1970, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 19.5 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
Studio Vista
$45.00 - Out of stock
Revised 1970 Studio Vista edition of design legend Paul Rand's (1914-1996) absolute classic "Thoughts on Design", originally published in 1947. After a decade of establishing himself as the "wunderkind" of the emerging field of Graphic Design, Paul Rand sat down to codify his beliefs and working methodology into a single volume. "Thoughts on Design" was the result. With reproductions of his iconic designs and some of the best words yet written on graphic design, the publication of the book cemented Rand's international reputation in the field of modern design.
Printed in the Netherlands.
Good copy, light tanning, light wear, former owner inscription.
1963, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 19.5 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Studio Books / London
$80.00 - Out of stock
Rare first 1963 edition of graphic design classic, GRAPHIC DESIGN : VISUAL COMPARISONS, designed by Fletcher/Forbes/Gill for Studio Books, with cover design by Milton Glaser. Asked to make an educational book on graphic design, the designers decided to present a book of illustrations instead of theory, illustrations that don't insult your intelligence, featuring over 50 leading European and American designers and illustrators of the 1960s. Alongside the work of Fletcher/Forbes/Gill is the work of Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Tomi Ungerer, George Lois, R.O. Blechman, Norman Ives, Herb Lubalin, Henry Wolf, Chermayeff and Geismar, William Klein, George Tscherney, Dieter Rot, Wiliam Golden, Josef Muller-Brockman, and many others. A classic compendium of some of the finest examples of modern international design.
The graphic work of Fletcher, Forbes and Gill was at the forefront of 1960s England. In the early Sixties, Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes formalized their working relationship with American graphic designer Bob Gill, and Fletcher/Forbes/Gill was born. They pooled their clients, rented a studio in a mews house off Baker Street and became the most fashionable designers in town —their avant-garde fusion of type and image was unprecedented in the rather stuffy confines of British graphic design. Praised within London’s fledgling design community, Fletcher, Forbes and Gill were among the first graphic designers to make their mark outside it — notably being featured in Vogue magazine — and admiring clients clamoured for their services.
Printed in the Netherlands.
Very Good with a tiny former owner inscription to the first page. Light wear, tanning otherwise a nicely kept copy.
1977, German
Softcover, 300 pages (approx) plus inserts, 24 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Neue Galerie Graz und Künstlerhaus / Graz
$190.00 - In stock -
Rare catalogue published in the occasion of Trigon 77, 18 October–13 November 1977, Neue Galerie Graz und Künstlerhaus, Graz. The three-country project “trigon” was a biennial founded in Graz, Austria in 1963 that featured contemporary art from the regional neighbours Austria, Italy, and what was then Yugoslavia. Throughout its three-decade run, trigon sought to present the latest developments in art—and it was also one of the first international exhibition series to include artists from Yugoslavia. “The Creative Process” was the motto of trigon 77, held during the heyday of conceptual art—which opted for the total disintegration of conventional modes of artistic expression, transforming sculpture into a process by which to dematerialize both form and matter. Heavily illustrated throughout with work and texts by exhibiting artists : Giovanni Anselmo, Dadamaino, Zvi Goldstein, Fabio Mauri, Aldo Tagliaferro, Grazia Varisco, Nanda Vigo, Giancarlo Zen, Gilberto Zorio, Jovan Cekić, Boris Demur, Goran Djordjević, Mladen Galić, Julije Knifer, Ante Rasić, Šempas family, Predrag Ristić, Andraz Šalamun, Damir Sokic, Josef Bauer, Gottfried Bechtold, Hans Bischoffshausen, Wolfgang Buchner, Karl Hikade, Edelbert Köb, Ferdinand Penker, Arnulf Rainer, Ingo Springenschmid, Ingeborg Strobl... Includes both the (usually missing) foil sheet and frosted acetate sheet inserts edition by Italian artist Nanda Vigo.
Good copy with heavy edge wear and dust marking. An indentation to back cover, inserts edge-worn due to being slightly larger than book dimensions.
1993, English / German
Softcover, 36 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Künstlerhaus Bethanien / Berlin
$30.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful early catalogue of an exhibition held at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Nov. 27-Dec. 13, 1993 by Australian artists Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley. Illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with essay in English and German by Rex Butler.
As New copy.
1996, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Artspace / Sydney
David Pestorius / Brisbane
Experimental Art Foundation / Adelaide
$25.00 $10.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the traveling exhibition Gail Hastings — To Make a Work of Timeless Art, at Artspace, Sydney; Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; David Pestorius Gallery, Brisbane, 1996. Illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with essay by Linda Michael. Published in an edition of 600 copies.
Australian abstract artist Gail Hastings makes work which she describes as 'sculptuation': a combination of sculpture and situation. Her work is a conversation about space and objects, and about the ideas that arise through their interaction and in different situations.
Very Good copy.
2021, English / Japanese
Softcover, 64 pages, 26 x 37 cm
Published by
A.D.A Edita / Tokyo
$78.00 - In stock -
One of the finest architecture series ever published, the world renowned GA (Global Architecture) series, presented by the highly esteemed publishing house that also published the GA Document, GA Houses, and GI (Global Interior) architectural publications.
Each over-sized photographic folio issue of the special GA Residential Masterpieces series highlights a renowned international architect and takes a detailed look into their creations for residence.
Absolutely stunning and vivid large-format architectural photography of the selected building’s interiors, exteriors and architectural details, along with texts (in English and Japanese) and floor-plans/elevation drawings make up the profiles on each featured architectural project. The visual generosity of these handsomely designed and beautifully printed over-sized publications make them a treasure for any architecture or interior design enthusiast or collector.
An icon of the modern movement and De Stijl, the Rietveld Schröder House in the Netherlands was designed by Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964) and completed in 1924. In 2000 the house was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Built together with his client, it was Rietveld’s first architectural manifestation, and would prove to be the key work for his entire oeuvre. The relationship between interior and exterior, for instance, would continue to play a major role in the form and situation of his houses. Another fascination of Rietveld’s was the open floor plan. Photographer Yoshio Futagawa pays tribute to a pioneering monument of experimental residential design.
Printed in Japan.
2017, Japanese / English
Softcover, 78 pages, 26 x 36 cm
Published by
A.D.A Edita / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
One of the finest architecture series ever published, the world renowned GA (Global Architecture) series, presented by the highly esteemed publishing house that also published the GA Document, GA Houses, and GI (Global Interior) architectural publications.
Each over-sized photographic folio issue of the special GA Residential Masterpieces series highlights a renowned international architect and takes a detailed look into their creations for residence.
Absolutely stunning and vivid large-format architectural photography of the selected building’s interiors, exteriors and architectural details, along with texts (in English and Japanese) and floor-plans/elevation drawings make up the profiles on each featured architectural project. The visual generosity of these handsomely designed and beautifully printed over-sized publications make them a treasure for any architecture or interior design enthusiast or collector.
Designed by Adolf Loos in his later years, the two houses featured in this edition are twin examples of the architect’s plain, unadorned style of architecture, despite their difference in size and budget. Both Villa Moller (1926–27) in Vienna and Villa Müller (1928–30) in Prague are illustrative of his ‘Raumplan’ design method. Loos applied a utilitarian approach in using the entire floor plan that would only later receive greater appreciation with the advent of postmodernism, an innovative spatialisation comprising sequences of spaces drawn in three dimensions. Photographed by Yoshio Futagawa, the two houses and the spatial brilliance of Loos come to life in an eclectic symbiosis with modernism.
Printed in Japan