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
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2017, 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
2009, English / Japanese
Softcover, 108 pages, 26cm x 36cm
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.
Photographed by Yoshio Futagawa, this edition provides the viewer an opportunity to extensively visit Barragán's self-designed Mexican house through a rich collection of both interior and exterior images. Filled with full-page vivid colour, and black and white photographs that capture both the contemplative spaces and rich details of this influential building, the publication is accompanied by floor plans and a short introductory text.
Printed in Japan.
1939 / 1973, French
Softcover (w. lace-printed dust jacket), 26 pages, 13.4 x 9.5 cm
1st Facsimile Edition,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
GQ / Tokyo
$250.00 - Out of stock
Super rare and mysterious 1973 reprint of the exceptionally rare 'Oeillades Ciselées en Branche' (1939), Hans Bellmer's (1902 – 1975) collaboration with fellow Surrealist Georges Hugnet (1906 – 1974), published in Paris by publisher Jeanne Bucher in an edition limited to 230 hand-numbered copies wrapped in lace paper. Although Bellmer had illustrated books before 'Oeillades Ciselées en Branche', those, such as the notoriously scarce 'Die Puppe' (1934) and the later French version 'La Poupée' (1936) were illustrated with original photographs, this was his very first illustrated book. Bellmer had worked as a draftsman for his own advertising agency and his technical virtuosity combined with his inspirational predilections produced a highly original body of illustration - here in heliogravure - for Hugnet's erotic text. In the words of Pierre Seghers, the poet and publisher, the text and illustration, as well as the design of the book, with its patterned lace over pink paper, combined to produce 'an absolutely perfect little book'. Hugnet was a French graphic artist, poet, writer, art historian, bookbinding designer, critic and film director and a figure in the Dada movement and Surrealism. This was his second book after the famous collage novel Le septième face du dé (1936). The text is a prose poem on the theme of young adolescent girls, articulated with the erotic images of Bellmer, whose extraordinary skill, inherited from the technical drawing of his engineering studies, perfectly serves this particular eroticism. 'Bellmer's color engravings, placed outside the text or using free spaces in the text, offer variations on the theme of the metamorphosis of the female body associated with that of the double. Disarticulated puppets or slender silhouettes with sometimes disproportionate limbs, young girls evolve slightly over the pages, drawn with spider-like finesse by Bellmer, one of the most successful of all. '
Lovingly reproduced here in limited offset-print on warm, fragile, soft paper stocks with delicate dust jacket lace over-prints, reproducing in simplified facsimile edition number "221" of the original 230. Published in Tokyo by the great 1970s GQ (Graphic Quarterly) periodical, their facsimile editions were widely regarded for their quality, and very collectible in their own right, usually only available to those on their mailing list. They were also official reproductions, permitted by their original publishers and authors. That said, there is little to no information anywhere about this particular 1973 edition, published shortly before the deaths of both artists.
Very Good copy.
1977, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 98 pages, 29 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Éditions Mondio-Vidéo / France
$85.00 - In stock -
Rare December 1977 issue of French men's magazine le Nouvel Absolu, with cover by french photographer Jacques Bourboulon, featuring photographic features by Bourboulon, Roland Carre, photo stories on the film The Last Romantic Lover (1978), American truckers, French illustrator Michel Gourdon, French painter Camille Hilaire, Charles Bukowski, ski kamikazes, futuristic Renaults, and much more.
Very Good copy but listed as Average due to one photograph of "Karen" spread cut from page by previous owner.
1993, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Haga Bookstore / Japan
$80.00 - Out of stock
The wonderful Japanese photo-book / "Cine Album" that documents the work of François Truffaut, father of French new wave, profusely illustrated with all of his films illustrated with lush colour and b/w photographs, photofiles on all the stars of his films, many behind the scenes images, interviews with actresses Isabelle Adjani and Sabine Haudepin, even a chapter on Truffaut's film company Les Films du Carrosse, complete filmography, and much more. Absolutely exploding with hundreds of images crammed into over 200 pages. The 400 Blows (1959), Jules and Jim (1962), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Day for Night (1973), Two English Girls (1971), The Bride Wore Black (1968), The Soft Skin (1964), et al. A must for any fan. Published by the great Haga Bookstore imprint.
Fine copy in dust jacket.
1992, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Haga Bookstore / Japan
$80.00 - In stock -
The wonderful Japanese photo-book / "Cine Album" that documents Jean-Luc Godard's film works through to 1983, from "Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick" (1957 w. Eric Rohmer) to "Lettre à Freddy Buache" (1982), each film chapter profusely illustrated with lush colour and b/w photographs summarising the scenes of the film, and including behind the scenes images, photofiles on all Godard's "stars", everyone is here — Anna, Isabelle, Jean-Paul, Brigitte, Chantal, Jean-Pierre, Anne, Hanna, Mick, Eddie, Marina, Nathalie, Macha... Absolutely exploding with hundreds of images crammed into over 200 pages. Published by the great Haga Bookstore imprint.
Fine copy in dust jacket.
1970, English / German / French / Spanish
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 128 pages, 24.5 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Arthur Niggli / Niederteufen
$90.00 - In stock -
Second 1970 hardcover edition of Swiss designer and photographer, Armin Haab's (1919—1991) Lettera 3, the third in his wonderful series of lettering books for Swiss publisher Arthur Niggli. Cover design by typographer Walter Haettenschweiler, typesetting and layout by Armin Haab and Walter Haettenschweiler. Gorgeously designed selection of five varieties of typeface : 19th century ornamental, Egyptian, English-Italian, Art Nouveau, new sans-serif creations and the latest trends in type face design from the period (end of the 1960s). Text in English, German, French and Spanish; printed in Switzerland.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket. Light wear to dj with faint former owner stamp to front, interior sharp and well-preserved.
1972, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and complete 5 cut-outs), 432 pages, 20 x 25cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
MoMA / New York
Centro Di / Florence
$180.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the stunning "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape (Achievements and Problems of Italian Design)", published by Museum of Modern Art, New York, in association with Centro Di Florence, in 1972. Includes the famous glassine dust jacket with all five (rarely present) cardboard cutout inserts. A most complete copy of this very important reference book on Italian design of the 1960s-1970s.
Edited by Emilio Ambasz while he was the curator of design at Museum of Modern Art, this is the first book to comprehensively survey the important design developments of 1960s Italy, published to coincide with the landmark exhibition at MoMA, May 26 - September 11, 1972. The museum commissioned 12 environments especially for the exhibition, covering two modes of contemporary living; Permanent Home and the Mobile Home, using 180 objects produced in Italy during the decade by more than 100 designers, including the finest examples of product design, furniture, lighting, appliances, flatware, glass, ceramic, putting new (radical) Italian design on the international map. Profusely illustrated throughout with over 500 illustrations across over 400 pages, alongside essays by Paolo Portoghesi, Maurizio Fagiolo Dell'Arco, Leonardo Benevolo, Vittorio Gregotti, Germano Celant, Manfredo Tafuri, Filiberto Menna and others. Includes the work of Archizoom, Joe Colombo, Gae Aulenti, Sergio Asti, Tobia and Afra Scarpa, Mario Bellini, Jonathan De Pas, Andrea Branzi, Cesare Casati, Rodolfo Bonetto, Cini Boeri, Achille Castiglioni, Piergiacomo Castiglioni, Piero Gilardi, Anna Castelli Ferrieri, Gruppo Strum, Ugo La Pietra, Paolo Lomazzi, Vico Magistretti, Superstudio, Angelo Mangiarotti, Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari, Adolfo Natalini, Gaetano Pesce, Ettore Sottsass Jr., Massimo Vignelli, Nanda Vigo, Marco Zanuso, Arflex, Arredoluce, Arteluce, Artemide, Brionvega, Cassina, C & B Italia, Danese, Driade, Flexform, Flos, Gufram, Kartell, Olivetti, Poltronova, Stilnovo, Zanotta, and so many more...
Very Good copy with tanning to edges and the usual yellowing to glassine dust jacket. Otherwise well-preserved with the rarely preserved 5 cut-out inserts present.
2013, English
Hardcover, 576 pages, 30 x 24 cm
Published by
Museum of Modern Art / Warsaw
ERSTE Foundation / Vienna
The KwieKulik Archive / Warsaw
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$130.00 - In stock -
Since the 1970s Zofia Kulik and Przemyslaw Kwiek (KwieKulik) have pioneered the transformation of artistic practice into social experimentation. KwieKulik sought to reconcile artistic praxis with everyday life, essentially based on the premise that form is a fact of society. The couple’s pioneering approach to film, photography, and multi-screen slide projection epitomises their unique variation of expanded cinema.
This comprehensive monograph documents their collective works from 1971 to 1987, illuminating the radically unique position of the artists in the history of neo-avant-garde in Central Europe. The book covers and documents more than 200 events, and includes a ‘KwieKulik Glossary’, the collection of concepts introduced and applied by the artists.
Published with the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, BWA Wroclaw-Galleries of Contemporary Art, ERSTE Foundation and The KwieKulik Archive, Warsaw-Lomianki.
Edited by Lukasz Ronduda and Georg Schöllhammer.
Texts by Jacek Dobrowolski, Maciej Gdula, Klara Kemp-Welch, Zofia Kulik, Przemyslaw Kwie, Ewa Majewska, Pawel Moscicki, Luiza Nader, Maryla Sitkowska, Tomasz Zaluski.
1970, Japanese
Softcover, 180 pages, 26 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Film Art
Inc. / Tokyo
$100.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of issue no. 6 of Film Quarterly, an important but short-lived film theory periodical published out of Tokyo in the late 1960s—early 1970s. With incredible psychedelic covers by graphic designer Kiyoshi Awazu, this issue is dedicated largely to three leading European film directors of the avant-garde — Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni, but also features articles on Takahiko Iimura and Alain Resnais, amongst much more. Includes interviews and many essays in Japanese, with illustrations, film stills and collages scattered throughout. Contributioning editorial committee of Japanese critics, film-makers and composers includes Takahiko Iimura, Toru Takemitsu, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Yusuke Nakahara, Toshio Matsumoto, Koichi Yamada. Say no more!
Good copy with repaired, closed tear to back-cover, otherwise Very Good rest with only light wear.
2017 / 2022, English
Softcover, 600 pages, 15.2 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Nightboat Books / New York
$58.00 - Out of stock
At last a major anthology of New Narrative, the movement fueled by punk, pop, porn, French theory, and social struggle to change writing forever.
Impossible to get for years, now finally back in print, and back in stock!
In the twenty years that followed America’s bicentennial, narrative writing was re-formed, reflecting new political and sexual realities. With the publication of this anthology, the New Narrative era bounds back to life, ripe with dramatic propulsion and infused with the twin strains of poetry and continental theory. The reader will discover classic New Narrative texts, from Robert Glück to Kathy Acker, as well as rare supplemental materials, including period interviews, essays, and talks, which form a new map of late 20th century creative rebellion.
"Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian’s edited anthology, Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative 1977–1997, takes an expansive view. A monumental tome decades in the making, it contains the work of forty-two recognised and little-known authors… Published, unpublished, and long-forgotten works, interviews, illustrations, and ephemera are all included, and each piece is accompanied by an invaluable note by Bellamy and Killian offering context and contributing to a sense of an exceptionally large, diverse, and exciting writing scene. Proof that nothing sticks a scene together like bodily fluids, the editors’ notes are also heavy on gossip and innuendo. Like New Narrative prose itself, which often used salacious, intimate asides to establish a conspiratorial relationship with its reader, Bellamy and Killian’s reminiscences seem designed to make their reader feel included or at least momentarily implicated in their community." — Diarmuid Hester, Critical Quarterly
Includes the writings of : Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Robert Glück, Kathy Acker, Edith A. Jenkins, Carla Harryman, David O. Steinberg, Michael Amnasan, Judy Grahn, John Norton, Marsha Campbell, Brad Gooch, Camille Roy, Sam D'Allesandro, Bruce Boone, Dennis Cooper, Kathe Burkhart, Roberto Bedoya, Steve Abbott, Gabrielle Daniels, Gary Indiana, Leslie Dick, Scott Watson, Gail Scott, Richard Hawkins, Kevin Killian, Matias Viegener, R. Zamora Linmark, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Rebecca Brown, Nayland Blake, Lynne Tillman, Bruce Benderson, Cecilia Dougherty, Eileen Myles, Sarah Schulman, Laurie Weeks, Bob Flanagan, Lawrence Braithwaite, Chris Kraus.
1970, English / German
Softcover (soft flexible silver cloth cover bound w. screws into metal case), 150 pages (inc. numerous fold-outs), 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf / Düsseldorf
$100.00 - Out of stock
The fantastic Edward Kienholz "1960-1970" book-object/catalogue, published for a show curated by Pontus Hulten that toured to Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf in 1970. Designed by Kienholz himself, this book functions as a sort-of bound archive/artist's book of Kienholz's major sculptural works and installations throughout the 1960's. Wrapped in a printed, soft, silver "faux-leather" cloth cover, bound with metal screws into a galvanised metal case, this folio compiles and surveys the work of American installation-artist/sculptor Ed Kienholz between 1960-1970, each work illustrated through colour fold-out gloss pages and multiple black and white images, accompanied by introductory texts by Jürgen Harten in English and German and a foreword by Karl Ruhrberg. Also features a biography and bibliography. An incredible, rare book on Kienholz and an enormously valuable reference source on the artist's amazing early works. First edition.
Edward Kienholz (October 23, 1927 – June 10, 1994) was an American installation artist and assemblage sculptor whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. From 1972 onwards, he assembled much of his artwork in close collaboration with his artistic partner and fifth wife, Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Throughout much of their career, the work of the Kienholzes was more appreciated in Europe than in their native United States, though American museums have featured their art more prominently since the 1990s.
Art critic Brian Sewell called Edward Kienholz "the least known, most neglected and forgotten American artist of Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation of the 1950s, a contemporary of the writers Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Norman Mailer, his visual imagery at least as grim, gritty, sordid and depressing as their literary vocabulary".
Very Good with light wear, light curling/creasing to cover edges - common with this book material.
2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 264 pages, 24 x 28 cm
Published by
Skira / Milan
$60.00 - Out of stock
A leading light of the Art Informel generation that also included Tàpies and Dubuffet, Alberto Burri (1915-95) continues to exert a huge influence on artists today, as the popularity of his 2015 Guggenheim show and the perpetual scarcity of Burri monographs attests. This volume—the most comprehensive book on the artist in print—explores the beauty and complexity of the creative process, "material poetry," that undergirded all of his work.
Burri worked with the most varied materials with an inexhaustible creative energy: tar, paper, fabric, jute sacks, combustions of plastic, wood and iron all found their way into his picture plane, transfiguring the vocabulary of painting for the postwar sensibility. The titles of Burri's various series convey this "material poetry": Gobbi (hunchbacks), Muffe (molds), Bianchi (whites), Legni (woods), Ferri (irons), Combustioni plastiche (plastic combustions), Cretti and Cellotex. This affordable volume introduces Burri's poetical vocabulary of materials for a new audience.
1968, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 42 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Melbourne University Film Society / Melbourne
$25.00 - In stock -
Melbourne Film Bulletin, much like Annotations on Film, was a journal published by the Melbourne University Film Society to accompany their film programming, film groups and film festivals. Starting in 1948, the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) changed its name to Cinémathèque in 1984 and continues to this day in Melbourne. A written accompaniment to their programme can be seen in the form of the current-day online journal Senses of Cinema.
This scarce early bulletin (no. 4, July 1968) from the University Film Group at Melbourne University Film Society edited by former MIFF director (1980-1982), film distributor and writer, Geoffrey Gardner, features an extensive 15-page interview with Indian film-maker Satyajit Ray, the Bulletins selections of the best films at the Melbourne Film Festival 1968 (including films by István Szabó, Robert Bresson, Jiří Menzel, Pavel Juráček, Jerzy Skolimowski, Satyajit Ray...), a review on Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, plus testaments, letters to the editor, group notes, and more. Published in Melbourne in 1968.
Good copy with light general wear and tanning.
1964, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 24.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Melbourne University Film Society / Melbourne
$30.00 - In stock -
This scarce brochure was published by Melbourne University Film Society on the occasion of a special season of screening of Early French Cinema Classics in 1964. Edited by Laurie Clancy and Peter Hourigan, features texts and illustrations on the films of Luis Bunuel, Jean Vigo, and Jean Cocteau, along with filmographies and a screening programme. Published in Melbourne in 1964 (we estimate, not dated).
The Melbourne University Film Society published periodicals (Annotations on Film) and guides to accompany their film programme, aimed at presenting films in Melbourne in the medium they were created and providing a critical reading of them for an independent, membership-based film society. Starting in 1948, the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) changed its name to Cinémathèque in 1984 and continues to this day in Melbourne. A written accompaniment to their programme can be seen in the form of the current-day online journal Senses of Cinema.
Very Good copy, light wear.
1958, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 18 pages, 26 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Melbourne University Film Society / Melbourne
$15.00 - In stock -
Annotations on Film was a journal published by the Melbourne University Film Society to accompany their film programme, aimed at presenting films in Melbourne in the medium they were created and providing a critical reading of them for an independent, membership-based film society. Starting in 1948, the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) changed its name to Cinémathèque in 1984 and continues to this day in Melbourne. A written accompaniment to their programme can be seen in the form of the current-day online journal Senses of Cinema.
This scarce early journal from the Melbourne University Film Society features writings on Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil, Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr, Raymond Longford's On Our Selection, Humphrey Jennings' A Diary for Timothy, Terry Bishop's Daybreak in Udi, John Alderson's El Dorado, plus Charlie Chaplin's Between Showers, Dough and Dynamite, The Champion, Police, Behind the Screen, The Rink, and essays on Chaplin and Silent film and Chaplin's early works, plus more. Published in Melbourne in 1958.
Good copy, nicely preserved with only light wear, tanning and rust to staple.
1957, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 34 pages, 26 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Melbourne University Film Society / Melbourne
$15.00 - In stock -
Annotations on Film was a journal published by the Melbourne University Film Society to accompany their film programme, aimed at presenting films in Melbourne in the medium they were created and providing a critical reading of them for an independent, membership-based film society. Starting in 1948, the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) changed its name to Cinémathèque in 1984 and continues to this day in Melbourne. A written accompaniment to their programme can be seen in the form of the current-day online journal Senses of Cinema.
This scarce early journal from the Melbourne University Film Society features writings on Jean Renoir's A Day In The Country, Humphrey Jennings' Fires Were Started, Sergei Eisenstein, Glauco Pellegrini's Experience in Cubism, Frank R. Strayer's And Then Were Four, Joan Long's In Harbour, Lewis Jacob's The World That Nature Forgot, Lotte Reiniger's Papageno, Norman McLaren's Hen Hop, Vittorio De Sica's Shoe-shine, Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar, Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon, Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets, G. W. Pabst's Kameradschaft, and many more, and was published in Melbourne in 1957.
Good copy, nicely preserved with only light wear, tanning and rust to staple.
1957, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 26 pages, 26 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Melbourne University Film Society / Melbourne
$15.00 - Out of stock
Annotations on Film was a journal published by the Melbourne University Film Society to accompany their film programme, aimed at presenting films in Melbourne in the medium they were created and providing a critical reading of them for an independent, membership-based film society. Starting in 1948, the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) changed its name to Cinémathèque in 1984 and continues to this day in Melbourne. A written accompaniment to their programme can be seen in the form of the current-day online journal Senses of Cinema.
This scarce early journal from the Melbourne University Film Society features writings on Carol Reed's The Third Man, Alf Sjöberg's Frenzy (aka Torment), Colin Low's The Great Outdoors, Earl Robinson's Muscle Beach, Lindsay Anderson's Thursday's Children, Marie Seton's Time In The Sun, Charlie Chaplin's The Last Laugh and The Pawnshop, and many more, and was published in Melbourne in 1957.
Good copy, nicely preserved with only light wear, tanning and rust to staple.
1963, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 28 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
New Melbourne Film Group / Carlton
$25.00 - In stock -
Film Journal 22, October 1963, published in Carlton by the New Melbourne Film Group and the Melbourne University Film Society. This is issue features : Carl Mayer : The Author of Caligari by Herbert G. Luft; Joie de Vivre : Films of Phillipe de Broca by Brian Davies; Recent Films of Ingmar Bergman by Ian Jarvie; Films of the Quarter : Jules and Jim by John Flaus; and the Melbourne Festival 1963.
Good with edge tanning/light wear.
1964, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 26 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
New Melbourne Film Group / Carlton
$25.00 - Out of stock
Film Journal 23, July 1964, published in Carlton by the New Melbourne Film Group and the Melbourne University Film Society. This issue is dedicated to writings on the work of Jean Renoir with contributions by R. J. Garlick, R. G. Howard, James Merralls, Andre Bazin, and Charles Higham. Also features correspondents from London, Rome and Hollywood, plus book reviews. Illustrated throughout.
Good with edge tanning/light wear.
1993, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 66 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Musicworks / Toronto
$20.00 - In stock -
Issue 56 of Musicworks from 1993, The Journal of Sound Exploration, published out of Toronto. Includes features on and texts by Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Benary, R.I.P. Hayman, Iva Bittová, Stan Brakhage, David Rokeby, Jocelyn Robert, Don Ritter, Glenn Gould, reviews, announcements, sources, colloquies, classifieds, and more. Scarce and incredible resource for improvised and avant garde compositional music/performance/video histories from this publisher and cassette label established in the 1980s.
Good copy with with some general wear.
2005, English
Hardcover (w. dust jakcet), 80 pages, 22 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Assouline / Paris
$80.00 - Out of stock
Now long out-of-print hardcover book on Charlotte Perriand published in France by Assouline as part of their collectible memoire series — each volume like a glossy photo-portraits, scrapbooking the works of important icons in art and design — Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons, Picabia, Yohji Yamamoto, Pierre Paulin, Balenciaga, etc. An important figure of modernism in the 1930s, and the principal protagonist of organic design in the 1950s, Charlotte Perriand was a true 20th century pioneer. Although her name has long been inseparable from that of Le Corbusier, in this volume Charlotte Perriand is brought to a new light as her vital energy as well as the simple, rigorous, and natural forms of her furniture and integrated spaces are examined. Ultimately, this is the portrait of a free and generous woman, with a fascinating and active life, whose accomplishments continue to embellish our everyday life. Lavishly illustrated throughout wit text (in English) by Elisabeth Vedrenne.
As New copy.
1974, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 46 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Pinnacle Publishers / California
$90.00 - Out of stock
Very rare copy of seldom seen 1970s BDSM magazine from Rosslyn News — Kaptive Kittens (Vol. 1 No. 2), published in California in 1974. Cover to cover bondage photo-stories in colour and duotone of various female models gagged and bound. "Hoisted Harlot", "House of Bondage", "Housewife's Horror", "A Nasty Night"... Great design, fashion, interiors, plus adverts for Rosslyn News mail-order photographs and magazines. Includes the photographs of John Willie. Collectible.
Very Good, preserved copy.
1992, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
MARCY / Perth
$30.00 - In stock -
Rare third issue of seminal Australian rock fanzine MARCY, published out of Perth in Winter 1992. The "Gimme Indie Rock" issue, with Laura from Superchunk on the cover, features "The Politics of Young Corporate America with Amphetamine Reptile" (interview with Tom Hazelmeyer), Railroad Jerk, Jonestown, Nunbait, Tar, Dead C, Dogmeat Records (David Liang), Cop Shoot Cop, The films of Sam Pekinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, etc...), Hack, opinions, reviews, and much more. Printed evidence of Australia's annihilating live rock scene reputation in the 1990's, MARCY was a staple at all the good independent record haunts (Augogo, Thrash Grind Grunge, Redeye, Spiral), always selling out quick upon delivery and impossible to find today.
Good copy with some small tears to the cover, light wear.