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:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
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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.
2016, English
Softcover, 480 pages, 12.7 x 19.5 cm
Published by
Fitzcarraldo Editions / London
$35.00 - In stock -
One of the most widely celebrated artists of his generation, Ed Atkins makes videos, draws, and writes, developing a complex and deeply figured discourse around definition, wherein the impossibilities for sufficient representations of the physical, specifically corporeal, world — from computer generated imagery to bathetic poetry — are hysterically rehearsed.
A Primer for Cadavers, a startlingly original first collection, brings together a selection of his texts from 2010 to 2016. ‘Part prose-poetry, part theatrical direction, part script-work, part dream-work,’ writes Joe Luna in his afterword, ‘Atkins’ texts present something as fantastic and commonplace as the record of a creation, the diary of a writer glued to the screen of their own production, an elegiac, erotic Frankenstein for the twenty-first century.’
‘Discomfited by being a seer as much as an elective mute, Ed Atkins, with his mind on our crotch, careens between plainsong and unrequited romantic muttering. Alert to galactic signals from some unfathomable pre-human history, vexed by a potentially inhuman future, all the while tracking our desperate right now, he do masculinity in different voices – and everything in the vicinity shimmers, ominously.’
— Bruce Hainley, author of Under the Sign of [sic]
Afterword by Joe Luna
Ed Atkins is a British artist based in Berlin. In recent years, he has presented solo shows at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, and MoMA PS1 in New York, among others. His writing has appeared in October, Texte zur Kunst, frieze, The White Review, Hi Zero and EROS Journal. A Primer for Cadavers is his first collection.
Joe Luna writes poetry and critical prose out of Brighton, UK. He teaches literature at the University of Sussex.
1953, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. VII, No. 4, 1953. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne. Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1954, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. VIII, No. 1, 1954. Works by J. M. W. Turner, Derwent Lees, Eric Thake, Ian Fairweather... Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1954, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. VIII, No. 2, 1954. Works by Benedetto Buglione, Simon Marmion, Bartolomeo Bellano, Michael Kmit, Russell Drysdale. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne. Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1954, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. VIII., No. 4, 1954. Works by Alessandro Turchi, Bernard Buffet, Nicolas de Staël, Michel Kikoine, classical roman sculpture.... Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1955, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. IX, No. 1, 1955. Works by Peter Foldes, Frank Hinder, Hector Gilliland, Arthur Boyd, G. F. Lewers, Max Beerbohm. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1956, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. X, No. 4, 1956. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1958, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. XII, No. 1, 1958. Works by Lucas von Leyden, Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Edward Burne-Jones. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1958, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - In stock -
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. XII, No. 2, 1958. Works by Eric Gill, David Jones, Domenico Campagnola, plus Silverwear. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne.
Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1958, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 26 x 20 .5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$8.00 - Out of stock
The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria Vol. XII, No. 3, 1958. Works by Arthur Boyd, John Brack, Michael Shannon, Frank Hodgkinson, Lawrence Daws, Len Crawford, Russell Drysdale, Robert Dickerson, Justin O'Brien. Recent acquisitions and activities at the NGV, Melbourne. Good with wear, ageing, light marks.
1970, English
Softcover (stapled), 28 pages, 25 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Peter Stuyvesant Trust / Australia
$25.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published to accompany a touring exhibition of British Painting in the Peter Stuyvesant Trust in Australia. The exhibition toured across Adelaide, Perth, Launceston, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Newcastle, featuring the works of Ivon Hitchens, Ceri Richards, Francis Bacon, Victor Pasmore, Bryan Wynter, William Scott, Henry Mundy, Alan Davie, Howard Hodgkin, Patrick Heron, Tess Jaray, Leon Kossoff, Peter Sedgley, Bridget Riley, Anthony Hill, David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj, etc. Illustrated in colour and black and white throughout.
Good copy with only light handling/pitching.
1973, English
Softcover (folding card), 4 pages, 18 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Whitney Museum of American Art / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
Rare catalogue folding-card to accompany the exhibition Anne Truitt Sculpture and Drawings, 1961 — 1973, Whitney Museum of American Art. Typeset list of works and bio, illustrated front.
Anne Truitt was a major figure in American art for more than forty years, and her bold use of geometry and color signaled a new direction for modern sculpture. Abstract yet rich with feeling, her work is grounded in memories and sensations accumulated over a lifetime. This referentiality is in stark contrast to the literalness of Minimalism, a movement with which her work is sometimes associated. For Truitt, abstraction provided a syntax for her impressions — of people, places, ideas, and events. She wielded color and form as metaphors for thought, developing a visual grammar that remains unique in the history of art. As she explained, “What is important to me is not geometrical shape per se, or color per se, but to make a relationship between shape and color which feels to me like my experience. To make what feels to me like reality.”
Anne Truitt (1921–2004) grew up in Easton, Maryland, and spent most of her adult life in Washington, DC. The large-scale, meticulously painted wood sculptures for which she is best known were first exhibited in 1963 at the André Emmerich Gallery in New York. She lived in Japan from 1964 to 1967, and the legendary curator Walter Hopps organized her first museum retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1973. The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington mounted the first posthumous retrospective of her work in 2009, and a survey exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid is scheduled for 2022. Truitt received numerous awards during her lifetime, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and five honorary doctorates. Today she is renowned not just for her art but also for her three books — Daybook (1982), Turn (1986), and Prospect (1996) — which distilled years of journal entries into a vivid account of her life as an artist.
Lightly tanned with age. Very Good copy.
2014, English / Japanese
Hardcover, 166 pages, 23.8 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha / Japan
$100.00 - Out of stock
The finest book on the work of iconic Swedish ceramicist, Lisa Larson.
Published in 2014 in Japan and long out-of-print, this wonderful hardcover book covers all of Larson's history of work in full-colour, dating from the 1950s - 2000. Texts in English and Japanese by Ikko Yokoyama (curator) and Johanna Larson (daughter and graphic designer), with details on all pieces in the book, comments, and illustrated history.
Contents: UNIQUE PIECES 1950's - 60's; UNIQUE PIECES 1970's; UNIQUE PIECES 1980's - 90's; UNIQUE PIECES 2000's - ; GUSTAVSBERGS FABRIKER 1950's; GUSTAVSBERGS FABRIKER 1960's; GUSTAVSBERGS FABRIKER 1970's; GUSTAVSBERGS FABRIKER 1980's; KERAMIKSTUDION; SKANDIA; LISA'S HISTORY; INTERVIEW; LIST OF WORK; COMMENTS ON WORKS
Lisa Larson, born in 1931, is an internationally renowned ceramicist and designer in Sweden. Famous among others for her sculptures Small Zoo (1955), ABC-girls (1958), Africa (1964) and Children of the World (1974–75). Larson studied at College of Crafts and Design in Gothenburg 1949 - 54, then joined Gustavsberg porcelain under the Artistic Director Stig Lindberg, one of Sweden's most important postwar ceramicist and designers. Larson left Gustavsberg in 1980 to work freelance for a number of Swedish companies including Duka, Kooperativa Förbundet and Åhléns. In 1992, she founded Gustavsberg Ceramic Studio with a few of her old colleagues. In the studio, new design and small scale production still takes place.
As new copy.
1976, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 26 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunstmuseum Basel / Basel
The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design / Halifax
New York University Press / New York
$220.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of the lovely catalogue raisonné of Donald Judd's drawings, published on the occasion of the solo exhibition held at Kunstmuseum Basel, April 14 - June 23, 1976. Indexes 252 drawings in catalogue raisonné style to complement the sculpture catalogue raisonné from the previous year (1975). Reproduces 143 drawings, along with a wonderful section of photographic documentation of sculptural installations, and individual sculptural works. Text by Dieter Koepplin in German and English, as well a a biography, bibliography, and checklist.
Very Good copy with a few light marks to covers, light tanning.
2020, English
Softcover, 34 pages, 10.6 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Pattern Books / UK
$12.00 - In stock -
He-Yin Zhen was an early 20th century Chinese feminist and anarchist. Born He Ban in Yizheng, Jiangsu, she married the noted scholar Liu Shipei in 1903 and went with him to Tokyo. She then took the name He Zhen but signed her published writings He-Yin Zhen in order to include her mother's maiden name. She published a number of strong attacks in anarchist journals on male social power which argued that society could not be free without the liberation of women. Her essay "On The Question Of Women's Liberation," which appeared in Tianyi in 1907, opens by declaring that "for thousands of years, the world has been dominated by the rule of man. This rule is marked by class distinctions over which men—and men only—exert proprietary rights. To rectify the wrongs, we must first abolish the rule of men and introduce equality among human beings, which means that the world must belong equally to men and women. The goal of equality cannot be achieved except through women's liberation." "On Feminist Antimilitarism", which was originally published in 1907, He Zhen addresses the importance of women protesting against militarism. "The Feminist Manifesto", which was also published in 1907, He Zhen Zhen tackles the institution of marriage as a route source of the inequalities between man and woman.
This is a copyright-free Radical Re-print pocket book.
2018, English
Hardcover, 136 pages, 29.5 × 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$220.00 - Out of stock
Robert Hunter was arguably Australia’s pre-eminent Minimalist painter. In 1968, at age twenty-one, he was the youngest artist represented in The Field, the inaugural and now-legendary exhibition at the new National Gallery of Victoria, which announced the arrival of late modernist abstraction in the Australian context. Hunter was also one of very few Australian artists to participate in an international art movement, exhibiting in Eight Contemporary Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974, and continuing to be involved in significant exhibitions in Australia and internationally throughout his career.
Published in an edition of only 500 copies and immediately out of print, this comprehensive publication, which coincided with the fiftieth anniversaries of The Field and Hunter’s first solo exhibition at Tolarno Galleries in 1968, surveys Hunter’s unswerving commitment to a singular aesthetic position, evident in his earliest white-on-white paintings through to the mature works for which he is best known. Heavily illustrated throughout, with essays by Jane Devery, Tom Nicholson, Ann Stephen and Jennifer Winkworth.
As New copy still in shrink wrap.
1996, German
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 312 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Haus der Kunst / Munich
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf / Düsseldorf
Cantz Verlag / Berlin
$220.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the best and still the most comprehensive book on Imi Knoebel, published in 1996 on the occasion of a major travelling retrospective exhibition in Munich, Amsterdam, Valencia, Dusseldorf, and Grenoble from 1996—1997.
Imi Knoebel (b. 1940) is one of the most important and consistent post-war German artists from the Beuys "school", known for his minimalist, abstract painting and sculpture, yet consciously eluding all interpretations and labels throughout his career. From 1962–64 he studied at the Darmstadt "Werkkunstschule", in a course based on the ideas of the pre-Bauhaus course taught by Johannes Itten and László Moholy-Nagy. From 1964–1971, he studied under Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with fellow students Blinky Palermo (with whom he shared a studio and collaborated), Jörg Immendorff, Ivo Ringe and Katharina Sieverding. Viewing himself primarily as a painter, Knoebel's work explores the relationship between space, picture support and color. Utilising painterly means such as colour, brush stroke, canvas, panel and other carriers for the paint, worked and unworked surfaces, and constructions to shape the surfaces. At the same time, sculptural volume, plays a prominent role. He shows flat, unworked sheets of hardboard, or stretchers for canvasses, in piles, moving between disciplines and binding together the two- and three-dimensional. The style and formal concerns of his painting and sculpture have drawn comparisons with the high modernist principles of both Kazimir Malevich and the Bauhaus.
This lavishly illustrated monograph shows all work phases from Knoebel's career to-date, including stunning work and installation documentation, alongside many drawings, accompanied by texts (in German) from Rudi Fuchs, Max Wechsler, Johannes Stüttgen, Hubertus Gassner, Marja Bloem and Carmen Knoebel, a detailed bibliography and a biography, including so many original citations. This beautiful book an important resource on the work of an artist who, in his rigorous attitude, has remained pure, but at the same time poetic, as the touching "Kinderstern" from 1988 exemplarily shows.
Fine copy of this now long out of print book.
1973, English
Softcover (denim-bound, stitched and silk-screened), 96 pages, 24 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$150.00 - In stock -
The art catalogue wearing denim! Fantastic, scarce exhibition catalogue from 1973 for "Some Recent American Art", a major contemporary survey exhibition that toured Australia and New Zealand, organised under the auspices of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art New York with the assistance of Graeme Sturgeon, David Sampietro, and Peter Cripps. Wrapped in jeans denim covers (screen-printed and stitched), and profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with the work of exhibiting artists Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Mel Bochner, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Robery Irwin, Donald Judd, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner. Each artist section includes a list of works, biographical information and text(s) from the artist. Opening text by curator Jennifer Licht, acknowledgments by NGV director Gordon Thomson, with further sections on exhibited Video Tapes, bibliography and artist index.
Good copy, with tanning/fading to spine and some light fraying to cover edges.
1971, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 25 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The Specialty Press Ltd. / Melbourne
$45.00 - Out of stock
Published in approximately 1971 by The Specialty Press Ltd., this scarce glossy colour booklet catalogues the Art collection of Melbourne's BHP House in the early 1970's. Features the work of Australian painters John Coburn, David Aspden, Fred Williams, Asher Bilu, Sydney Ball, Martin Collocott, W. Delafield-Cook, John Olsen, Lawrence Daws, Louis James, Stanislaus Rapotec, Ian Chandler, Jeremy Barrett, Col Jordan, Robert Boynes, Stephen Earle, Clifton Pugh, Albert Tucker, Jeremy Gordon, Alun Leach-Jones, Michael Shannon, plus a full catalogue of their paintings and prints at that time.
1984, English
Softcover, 60 pages, 29 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Meat Market Craft Center / Melbourne
$35.00 - Out of stock
Exhibition catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition "Sculptors As Craftsmen", November 19 1984 — January 13 1985, Meat Market Craft Center, Melbourne. Selected, edited, and designed by Michael Young, this exhibition and catalogue includes the works of Augustine Dall'Ava, Bruce Armstrong, Robin Blau, Cliff Burt, Tanija and Graham Carr, John Corbett, John Davis, Elwyn Dennis, James Draper, Garry Greenwood, Bill Gregory, Deborah Halpern, Diane Haskings, Lorraine Jenyns, Christopher Langton, Clifford Last, Barry Mills, Julie Montgarrett, Trefor Prest, Anthony Pryor, Mitsuo Shoji, John Teschendorff, Mark Thompson, Peter Travis, Greg Wain, Stephen Wickham. Each artist spread includes work documentation, portrait, biography and list of exhibited pieces. Introduction text by Michael Young.
Good copy. Some marking to covers and stain to lower spine otherwise Very Good copy throughout, internally clean.
1982, English
Softcover, 24 pages, 21.5 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Renaissance Society / Chicago
$20.00 - In stock -
"To consume in America is not to buy; it is to dream. Advertising is the suggestion that the dream of entering the third person singular might possibly be fulfilled." — Don DeLillo
These are the artists who put the load-bearing post in postmodern, making the visual politics of media, marketplace and patriarchy the crucial issues for the 1980s: Sarah Charlesworth, Eric Bogosian, Nancy Dwyer, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Robert Longo, Richard Prince, David Salle, Cindy Sherman. A Fatal Attraction brought these and other artists who share these concerns together at a seminal point in this movement. This exhibition catalogue is a valuable reference for scholarship of this period of contemporary art, not to mention a cultural relic from an important moment in recent art history. Tom Lawson's essay links the artists within a set of shared concerns-deconstruction of institutionalized pleasure, demystification of representation-that follow from the discourse of 1960s and 70s conceptual art, but takes this critique of ideology from the insulated art world out into the streets and living rooms of America.
1960, English
Hardcover, 48 pages, 29.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The World Publishing Company / Cleveland
$48.00 - Out of stock
First World Library Binding illustrated hardcover edition of Bruno Munari's ABC, published in English in 1960 by The World Publishing Company, Cleveland. One of his most celebrated and reprinted children's books, there is nothing like the first editions of these beautiful illustrated books from this period. In this classic imaginative ABC, acclaimed Italian artist, designer and children's author Bruno Munari brings the joy of letters to life - from an Ant on an Apple to a Blue Butterfly to a Cat in a Cage, Munari pairs words in whimsical ways until Fly frees itself from its page, lands on the Hat, buzzes near the Ice Cream and provides the final sound for Zzzzz.
Bruno Munari (October 24, 1907, Milan – September 30, 1998, Milan) was an Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in modernism, futurism, and concrete art, and in non visual arts (literature, poetry) with his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning, and creativity.
Good ex-library copy w. associated markings and wear.
Various copies of similar condition — may not be same copy as pictured.
1963, English
Hardcover, 52 pages, 29.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The World Publishing Company / Cleveland
$48.00 - Out of stock
First 1963 World Library Binding illustrated hardcover edition of Bruno Munari's Zoo, published in English by The World Publishing Company, Cleveland. One of his most celebrated and reprinted children's books, there is nothing like the first editions of these beautiful illustrated books from this period. Bruno Munari's books have been hailed as "among the most original, inventive and beautiful ever created", and Zoo is without doubt among his most graphically stunning book works. Young readers will enjoy Munari's bright, bold illustrations as they are introduced to a host of animals; older readers will appreciate his wry humour throughout.
Bruno Munari (October 24, 1907, Milan – September 30, 1998, Milan) was an Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in modernism, futurism, and concrete art, and in non visual arts (literature, poetry) with his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning, and creativity.
Average-Good ex-library copy w. associated markings w/o dust jacket. Tight throughout with general wear, light markings and small closed tears to some pages (no content missing). Boards handsomely well worn with age.
1970, English
Hardcover, 48 pages, 20.6 x 20.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Adam & Charles Black / London
$200.00 - In stock -
First English hardcover edition of The Apple and the Butterfly by Iela Mari and Enzo Mari, published by Adam & Charles Black in 1970. One of the absolutely timeless and classic wordless picture books created by artist/writer Iela Mari in collaboration with her husband designer Enzo Mari. First published as La Mela e la Farfalla in Italian in 1969. First editions of these beautiful books in their original spare offset colour prints are very rare to come by.
Good copy, some light general wear, light rounding to corners, chipping to top of spine.