World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1977, English
Softcover, 155 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Pan / London
$28.00 - In stock -
1977 Pan edition of Galactic Pot-Healer, a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in 1969. The novel deals with a number of philosophical and political issues such as repressive societies, fatalism, and the search for meaning in life.
The Glimmung wants Joe Fernwright. Fernwright is a pot-healer - a repairer of ceramics - in a drably utilitarian future where such skills have little value. And the Glimmung? The Glimmung is a being that looks something like a gyroscope, something like a teenaged girl, and something like the contents of an ocean. What's more, it may be divine. And, like certain gods of old Earth, it has a bad temper.
What could an omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent entity want with a humble pot-healer? Or with the dozens of other odd creatures it has lured to Plowman's Planet? And if the Glimmung is a god, are its ends positive or malign? Combining quixotic adventure, spine-chilling horror, and deliriously paranoid theology, Galactic Pot-Healer is a uniquely Dickian voyage to alternate worlds of the imagination.
Philip K. Dick (1928—2007) was born in Chicago and lived most of his life in California. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short-story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten of his stories have been adapted into popular films since his death, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series. Philip K. Dick died on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California, of heart failure following a stroke.
Good copy.
1982 , English
Softcover, 320 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Panther / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
1982 Panther edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Dispossessed".
Le Guin called her 1974 novel an “anarchist utopia”, a reaction to the Vietnam war. Originally “a very bad short story” according to Le Guin, “there was a book in it, and I knew it, but the book had to wait for me to learn what I was writing about and how to write about it. I needed to understand my own passionate opposition to the war that we were, endlessly it seemed, waging in Vietnam, and endlessly protesting at home,” she writes in an introduction.
The Dispossessed is set in the fictional universe of the seven novels of the Hainish Cycle, e.g. The Left Hand of Darkness, about anarchist and other societal structures. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1974, won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1975, and received a nomination for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1975. It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction due to its exploration of themes such as anarchism (on a planet called Anarres) and revolutionary societies, capitalism, and individualism and collectivism.
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American author of speculative fiction, realistic fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, librettos, essays, poetry, speeches, translations, literary critiques, chapbooks, and children's fiction. She was primarily known for her works of speculative fiction. These include works set in the fictional world of Earthsea, stories in the Hainish Cycle, and standalone novels and short stories. Though frequently referred to as an author of science fiction, critics have described her work as being difficult to classify.
Very Good copy.
1974, English
Softcover, 156 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Panther / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
1974 Panther edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Lathe of Heaven".
The plot of 1971's The Lathe of Heaven concerns a character whose dreams alter past and present reality. George Orr, a draftsman, has long been abusing drugs to prevent himself from having "effective" dreams, which change reality. After having one of these dreams, the new reality is the only reality for everyone else, but George retains memory of the previous reality. Under threat of being placed in an asylum, Orr is forced to undergo "voluntary" psychiatric care for his drug abuse. George begins attending therapy sessions with an ambitious psychiatrist and sleep researcher named William Haber. Orr claims that he has the power to dream "effectively" and Haber, gradually coming to believe it, seeks to use George's power to change the world. His experiments with a biofeedback/EEG machine, nicknamed the Augmentor, enhance Orr's abilities and produce a series of increasingly intolerable alternative worlds, based on an assortment of utopian (and dystopian) premises. The story was first serialized in the American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. The novel received nominations for the 1972 Hugo and the 1971 Nebula Award, and won the Locus Award for Best Novel in 1972. Theodore Sturgeon, reviewing Lathe for The New York Times, praised Le Guin for "produc[ing] a rare and powerful synthesis of poetry and science, reason and emotion."
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American author of speculative fiction, realistic fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, librettos, essays, poetry, speeches, translations, literary critiques, chapbooks, and children's fiction. She was primarily known for her works of speculative fiction. These include works set in the fictional world of Earthsea, stories in the Hainish Cycle, and standalone novels and short stories. Though frequently referred to as an author of science fiction, critics have described her work as being difficult to classify.
Good copy. General page tanning / cover wear.
1978, English
Softcover, 175 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Panther / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
1978 Panther Granada edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's Orsinian Tales, a collection of eleven short stories, most of them set in the imaginary country of Orsinia.
Orsinia ... a land of medieval forests, stonewalled cities, and railways reaching into the mountains where the old gods dwell. A country where life is harsh, dreams are gentle, and people feel torn by powerful forces and fight to remain whole. In this enchanting collection, Ursula K. Le Guin brings to mainstream fiction the same compelling mastery of word and deed, of story and character, of violence and love, that has won her the Pushcart Prize, and the Kafka and National Book Awards.
Very Good copy.
1987, English
Softcover, 246 pages, 17.5 x 10.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ace Books / New York
$35.00 - In stock -
1987 Ace paperback edition. Nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, Count Zero is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It is the second volume of the groundbreaking cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy, which begins with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive.
They set a Slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the colour of his hair.
When the Maas Biolabs and Hosaka zaibatsus fight it out for world domination, computer cowboys like Turner and Count Zero are just foot soldiers in the great game: useful but ultimately expendable.
When Turner wakes up in Mexico - in a new body with a beautiful woman beside him - his corporate masters let him recuperate for a while, then reactivate his memory for a mission even more dangerous than the one that nearly killed him: the head designer from Maas Biolabs says he wants to defect to Hosaka, and it's Turner's job to deliver him safely.
Count Zero is a rustbelt data-hustler totally unprepared for what comes his way when the designer's defection triggers war in cyberspace. With voodoo gods in the Net and angels in the software, he can only hope that the megacorps and the super-rich have their virtual hands too full to notice the amateur hacker with the black market kit trying desperately to stay alive . . .
William Gibson (b. 1948) began writing in 1977 and burst upon the literary world with his acclaimed first novel, Neuromancer, the book that launched the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction, the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards. Although best known for his early cyberpunk novels, Gibson's work has continued to evolve over the ensuing years, always casting an astute critical eye on modern societal trends.
Very Good copy. Scarcer first Ace ed.
1968, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Panther / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
First 1968 Panther paperback edition of English author J.G. Ballard's The Crystal World, featuring the cover artwork of Max Ernst. A science fiction masterpiece, The Crystal World is regarded as the best of Ballard's "catastrophe novels."
J. G. Ballard’s fourth novel tells the story of a physician trying to make his way deep into the jungle to a secluded leprosy treatment facility. While trying to make it to his destination, his chaotic path leads him to try to come to terms with an apocalyptic phenomenon in the jungle that crystallises everything it touches.
Ballard previously used the theme of apocalyptic crystallisation in the 1964 short story "The Illuminated Man" (included in The Terminal Beach), which is also set in the same locations.
Very Good copy of this scarcer edition, with light wear and tanning.
1968, English
Softcover, 172 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$45.00 - In stock -
1968 Penguin British edition with cover design by British graphic designer Richard Hollis.
First published in 1962, British science fiction author J.G. Ballard's mesmerising and ferociously prescient novel "The Drowned World" imagines a terrifying future in which solar radiation and global warming have melted the polar ice caps and Triassic-era jungles have overrun a submerged and tropical London. Set during the year 2145, the novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kerans and his team of scientists as they confront a surreal cityscape populated by giant iguanas, albino alligators, and endless swarms of malarial insects. "The Drowned World" is the second of a series of classic early Ballard novels dealing with scenarios of natural disaster.
James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist who first became associated with the New Wave of science fiction for his post-apocalyptic novels such as The Wind from Nowhere (1961) and The Drowned World (1962). In the late 1960s, he produced a variety of experimental short stories (or "condensed novels"), such as those collected in the controversial The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). In the mid 1970s, Ballard published several novels, among them the highly controversial Crash (1973), a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism, and High-Rise (1975), a depiction of a luxury apartment building's descent into violent chaos.
Good copy with some cover creases and tanning.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 25.4 x 19 cm
Published by
Princeton University Press / New York
$89.00 - Out of stock
How California's counterculture of the 1960s to 1980s profoundly shaped—and was shaped by—West Coast artists.
The 1960s exert a special fascination in modern art. But most accounts miss the defining impact of the period's youth culture, largely incubated in California, on artists who came of age in that decade. As their prime exemplar, Bruce Conner, reminisced, "I did everything that everybody did in 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury. . . . I would take peyote and walk out in the streets." And he vividly channeled those experiences into his art, while making his mark on every facet of the psychedelic movement—from the mountains of Mexico with Timothy Leary to the rock ballrooms of San Francisco to the gilded excesses of the New Hollywood. In The Artist in the Counterculture, Thomas Crow tells the story of California art from the 1960s to the 1980s—some of the strongest being made anywhere at the time—and why it cannot be understood apart from the new possibilities of thinking and feeling unleashed by the rebels of the counterculture.
Crow reevaluates Conner and other key figures—from Catholic activist Corita Kent to Black Panther Emory Douglas to ecological witness Bonnie Ora Sherk—as part of a generational cohort galvanized by resistance to war, racial oppression, and environmental degradation. Younger practitioners of performance and installation carried the mindset of rebellion into the 1970s and 1980s, as previously excluded artists of color moved to the forefront in Los Angeles. Mike Kelley, their contemporary, remained unwaveringly true to the late countercultural flowering he had witnessed at the dawn of his career.
The result is a major new account of the counterculture's enduring influence on modern art.
1992, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 15.6 x 23.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
$18.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Employing an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the complexities of contemporary urban culture, this work examines a diverse range of cultural expressions that may be considered typical of the 1980s, from retro fashion, to Latinization, to the recycling of religious imagery as kitsch. The topics Olalquiaga explores are shown to be exemplary condensations of different cultural currents, and she establishes reception as a vantage point from which to think about city life. "Megalopolis" sees in 1950s and 1960s retro fashion a re-enactment of space-age fears of technological dehumanization, in the resurfacing of kitsch an attempt at recovering emotional intensity, in an aesthetics of death and ruins a lament for the loss of a concrete and organic reality. Consumption is the basis of an unavoidable postmodernity in which the traditional ways of looking at the world have become so many icons; technology is the new language through - or against - which experience is articulated.
Very Good copy with some cover marks, otherwise as new.
2015, English
Softcover, 450 pages, 18 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Station Hill Press / Barrytown
$72.00 - In stock -
Bernadette Mayer is among the most influential American poets of the late 20th century and the present, and much of that influence is based on her early books, previously available only in fragmentary form. As a Brooklyn high school student at the beginning of the 1960s, Mayer began writing with an embodied directness and resource belying her youth. Over the next two decades, this precocious start would culminate in a body of writing extraordinary in its range and impact. Even in a New York milieu given to radical practice—as evidenced in the journal 0 TO 9 that she co-edited in the late '60s—these books in their collective force represent an explosion of poetic forms and investigation as profound and sustained as any in contemporary poetry.
Eating the Colors is a sprawling collection of these early works from the 1960s and 70s, including selections from seven out-of-print texts, and one previously unpublished book. The collection holds a vast body of work, work which often broke “every rule about well-made poems”. Mayer’s early books originally found audience among second-generation New School poets, precluding her later success and influence in avant-garde circles. Eating the Colors gives new life to Mayer’s early poetry, which, in the words of Anne Waldman, “changed and challenged the landscape of what was possible with the word, the sentence, the book, and daily consciousness.”
This collection includes poems from: Ceremony Latin (1964), Red Book in Three Parts, Story, The Old Style Is Finding Out Something About A Whole New Set of Possibilities, Moving, Poetry, Eruditio Ex Memoria, and The Golden Book of Words.
1980, English
Fifty looseleaf lithographs in softcover (w. dust jacket) in slipcase, 32 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Estate of Harry Bertoia / Pennsylvania
$1500.00 - In stock -
Magnificent, rare, complete portfolio of fifty unbound plates of drawings by Harry Bertoia (1915–1978), privately published in a limited edition of 500 numbered copies by the Estate of Harry Bertoia, Bally, Pennsylvania, 1980. This work is number 69 from the only edition of 500, printed by A. Colish Inc., of Mount Vernon, New York, under the supervision of Bert Clarke. Fifty offset lithographs printed on Mohawk Superfine Softwhite uncut, untrimmed cover stock, wrapped in original brown heavy handmade paper dust jacket with gilt lettering, housed in original brown cardboard slipcase. The letterpress sections were set in Aldine Bembo and printed on Rives heavy weight mould made paper. The plates were printed by offset on Mohawk Superfine Softwhite cover stock. Designed by Quentin Fiore. Frontispiece photograph of Bertoia by Joseph Seraphin.
"Thirty five years ago in a small beach house by the Pacific Ocean on the Coast of California, this book began to take its form. It was my intent to explore a technical means that would permit me to work with great rapidity. I had done a considerable amount of experimentation with materials that were on hand and processes that would evolve in the course of action. All this points to a technical development needed to permit the fluidity of thought to evolve from page to page without disruption or discontinuity. Speed of execution being essential, it became possible by drawing in the back side of paper using fingers, thumb, palm and various tools made of wood or metal. The ink was rolled on glass. Pressure picked up the ink in a granular way, which I liked. Technique and image were developing along parallel lines, interacting and transmogrifying no end. The whole sequence of fifty pages came into being, in about twenty-four hours of uninterrupted work."—Bertoia
Harry Bertoia (1915—1978) was an Italian-born American artist, sound art sculptor, and modern furniture designer, best known for his iconic Bertoia "Diamond" Chair and monumental architectural sculptures. Born in San Lorenzo, Pordenone, Italy, Bertoia, at age 15, was given the opportunity to move to Detroit with his brother, where he enrolled in technical High School and learned the skill of handmade jewellery making (ca.1930-1936). Harry Bertoia’s oeuvre encompasses sound sculptures, furniture, and jewellery design. A successful designer at the mid-century furniture company Knoll, Bertoia famously designed their “Diamond chair”, a delicate and airy steel-framed chair introduced in 1952 and still sold today. He would later devote his artistic energy towards innovative sculpture, finding ways to bend and stretch metal so that when crossed with wind or touch, it would create different sounds. Many of Bertoia's “tonal sculptures” were commissioned for established institutions and as public art displays. He has also performed concerts with these pieces, even recording a series of albums known as “Sonambient” music. From a young age Bertoia was friends with other prominent designers such as Walter Gropius and Ray and Charles Eames, and he regularly designed jewellery for his friends.
As New copy, only single mark to bottom-right of front dust wrapper that could be intrinsic to the stock, otherwise As New. All contents As New and complete, unhandled, slipcase VG—Near Fine with only one tear to single top edge from shelf handling, otherwise only the lightest wear. "69" neatly penned by marker to slipcase bottom spine. "69" numbered inside the edition, also. A stunning copy.
1984, German
Softcover, 116 pages, 21 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
ABC Verlag / Zürich
$140.00 - Out of stock
The original first Swiss German edition of H.R. Giger's Retrospektive 1964-1984, published by ABC Verlag, Zürich, printed and bound in Switzerland in 1984. H.R. Giger — Retrospektive 1964-1984 presents over 150 artworks, spanning 20 years in the career of the world's most renowned fantasy artist, are gathered chronologically in this one rich and detailed volume. Carefully rendered reproductions of Giger's paintings, drawings, designs, videos, sculptures, costumes and furniture are accompanied by his own commentary and portraits of the artist at work and with Dali, Fuchs, Harry and other colleagues.
Fantastic Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger was born in 1940, the son of a chemist. He spoke of a father who viewed art as a "breadless profession", and strongly encouraged his son to enter into pharmaceutics. Despite this, in 1962, he moved to Zürich, where he studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970. Giger's style and thematic execution have been hugely influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence. Giger is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums. His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, he described as "biomechanical". His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. He was also a personal friend of Timothy Leary. Giger suffered from night terrors and his paintings are all to some extent inspired by his experiences with that particular sleep disorder, making his first paintings as a means of art therapy. In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H. R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.
Good—Very Good copy of the original Swiss edition with light cover creasing/corner bump to top-right.
2009, English / French
Softcover (+ audio CD), 320 pages, 22.5 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$45.00 - In stock -
This publication is the first monograph on the artist, musician, performer, organiser, attempting to disclose the complex articulations between multiples activities and to introduce sound and contextual art problematic.
The texts present various approaches and activities of Paul Panhuysen, a general introduction, archives, music installations, paintings, in situ installations, games, Het Apolohuis activities and theoretical positions. The pictures illustrate different projects of Panhuysen's work (in situ installations, technical plan, exhibitions views), collected in different classifications: sound installation with long fine wire, installation with bird, game, painting... and the graphic design couch with different colour and form.
The audio CD Small Samples, Many Pieces is made up of small samples and a variety of sound art works. It presents sounds produced by musicians, animals and objects, composed music and improvisations, acoustical, amplified and electronic sounds. There are pieces based on calculus, but on intuition as well. In many works image and sound go together. This multitude and variety of impulses are typical for the artist Paul Panhuysen.
"A beautiful looking and sounding survey of a key European art and music figure."—Alan Licht, The Wire
Artist, musician, performer, organizer, Paul Panhuysen (1934, Borgharen—2015), after having studied painting and monumental design at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, and art sociology at the University of Utrecht, was, successively, the director of the Fine Arts Academy in Leeuwarden, and a curator and head of education and public relations for the Den Haag City Museum and for the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven. In addition, he continued to paint and make collages. In 1965 he founded the artist group “De Bende van de Blauwe Hand.” This group, which was closely related to Fluxus, presented exhibitions, environments and happenings in museums and galleries. Starting in 1965, he presented “situations” meant to involve the audience, and in 1968, he started the Maciunas Quartet, who are still making experimental music as the Maciunas Ensemble. In the early seventies, Panhuysen worked as an advisory artist with urban development teams (o.a. in Zoetermeer, Lunetten, Maaspoort) and developed systematic ordering systems and mathematical series that he has continued to use in his work as an artist. In addition, Panhuysen's work shows a predilection for found objects and the element of chance. To an increasing degree, Panhuysen has been concentrating on sound art, which has come to occupy an important place in his visual art work. He has presented his Long String Installations, which are played in concerts personally and in exhibitions as automats, worldwide in festivals since 1982 . These installations are set-up in indoor or outdoor spaces for anywhere from 1 to 40 days, using specific properties and architectural prospects of the location. Since 1989 Panhuysen developed artworks in which he confronts the audience with the creativity, intelligence and communicational skills of animals, especially of birds.
In 1980, Panhuysen founded Het Apollohuis, and since then till 1997, he has been the director of this internationally oriented podium where artists from divergent disciplines did present their work. In 1996 he received the Cultural Award of Noord-Brabant and in1998 he became Companion of the Order of the Dutch Lion. In 2004 Panhuysen received in the category Digital Musics from PrixArs Electronica an Honory Mention for the composition A Magic Square of 5 to Look at / A Magic Square of 5 to Listen to.
Edited by Yvan Etienne.
Texts by Paul Panhuysen, Jaap Bremer, Yvan Etienne, Michel Giroud, Rahma Khazam, Paul Kuypers, Helga de la Motte-Haber, Rene van Peer, Rolf Sachsse, Louis Ucciani.
2002, English / German
Softcover w. audio cd, 208 pages, 21.2 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Schirn Kunsthalle / Frankfurt
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$30.00 - Out of stock
The fast out-of-print hardcover catalogue with CD published to accompany the unique exhibition Frequenzen (Hz) / Frequencies (Hz): Audiovisuelle Raume / Audio-Visual Spaces, at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/Main February 8—March 28, 2002. Edited by Max Hollein and Jesper N. Jørgensen, with texts by Daniel Birnbaum, Nicolas Bourriaud, Will Bradley, Diedrich Diederichsen, Jesper N. Jørgensen, Blazenka Perica, and Martin Pesch.
Frequencies [Hz] presents current positions of contemporary artists who work with sound within the context of visual art. The publication features works of sculptural and visual art alongside specific, often "minimalistic" installations and interventions in which employ sounds or electronic experiments with sound that impact upon the perception of architecture or otherwise influence the social components of individual experience. Beyond the scope of the defining non-material characteristics of sound, sound becomes a formal material, a kind of audible sculpture accompanied by discourse on its constructive, societal, philosophical, and emotional aspects. The use of sound in visual art is closely linked with the development of strategies involved in sculpture, installations, and interdisciplinary art forms. It profits from the technology of the new media. Thus the participating artists reflect not only upon the influence of new technological media on visual art and culture but upon the institutional context and the situation that evolves between the work of art and the viewer.
The artists: Knut Åsdam, Mark Bain, Angela Bulloch, Farmersmanual, Tommi Grönlund, Petteri Nisunen, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Ryoji Ikeda, Ann Lislegaard, Carsten Nicolai, Daniel Pflumm, Franz Pomassl, Ultra-red, Mika Vainio.
Texts in English and German.
1985, Japanese
Softcover, 64 pages, 25 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Okanoyama Museum of Art / Nishiwaki
$140.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce publication produced to accompany the exhibition "ISSEY MIYAKE BY TADANORI YOKOO" at Okanoyama Museum of Art in 1985. First and only 1985 edition, this excellent catalogue details the history of iconic collaborations between Japanese graphic artist Tadanori Yokoo and Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, spanning the 1970s and 1980s. It's all here, all of the incredible textile designs, posters, invitations, greeting cards, advertisements, garments, along with drawings and photographs, biographies, portrait, a full catalogue of the works... An invaluable resource for fans of either artist, boldly detailed and designed by Tadanori Yokoo Studio!
Very Good copy.
2014, English
Softcover, 122 pages, 14.2 x 21.3 cm
Published by
Tender Buttons Press / US
$38.00 - In stock -
Poetry. Edited by Lee Ann Brown. SONNETS, first published in 1989 as Tender Buttons Number 1 is widely considered to be one of the most generative and innovative works of contemporary American poetry, radically rethinking the traditional sonnet form. This expanded 25th Anniversary edition includes a new preface by Bernadette Mayer, an editor's note by Tender Buttons Press publisher Lee Ann Brown, and a selection of previously unpublished archival material including the Skinny Sonnets, described as Hypnogogic Word Playing in Reporters' Notebooks which further expand our map of Bernadette Mayer's ground- breaking works of writing consciousness.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 608 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Published by
Knopf / New York
$68.00 - Out of stock
A sensational new novel from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city.
Bret Easton Ellis's masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.
Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret's obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them--and Bret in particular--with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends--or his own mind--to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.
Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero L.A., The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at seventeen--sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting, and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.
2022, English
Hardcover, 352 pages, 22 x 28 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
Barbican Art Gallery / London
$80.00 - Out of stock
Traces the feminist icon Carolee Schneemann's prolific six-decade output, spanning her remarkably diverse, transgressive, and interdisciplinary expression.
Edited by Lotte Johnson and Chris Bayley.
Contributions by Jo Applin, Karen Di Franco, Jennifer Doyle, Elena Gorfinkel, Alison Green, Emily LaBarge, Thomas (T.) Jean Lax, Eileen Myles, Melissa Ragona, Amy Sillman and Kenneth White
Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) was one of the most experimental artists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book traces six decades of the feminist icon's diverse, transgressive and interdisciplinary expression through Schneemann's experimental early paintings, sculptural assemblages and kinetic works; rarely seen photographs of her radical performances; her pioneering films; and groundbreaking multi-media installations. Contributors shed new light on Schneemann's work, which addressed urgent topics from sexual expression and the objectification of women to human suffering and the violence of war. An artist who was concerned with the precarious lived experience of both humans and animals, this book positions Schneemann as one of the most relevant, provocative and inspiring artists in recent years.
Published by Yale in association with Barbican Art Gallery.
2022, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 96 pages, 20 x 25 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$58.00 - Out of stock
Carol Rama is one of the most exciting artistic rediscoveries of the 20th century. Her creative period spanned more than 70 years - tirelessly testing different materials, styles, and media. Among other things, the artist created a body of graphic works and unique watercolors that will be presented at Berlin's Gutshaus Steglitz. This overview publication on the work of the self-taught artist is being published at the same time. The Italian artist received attention for her unique oeuvre only at an advanced age and posthumously. In the 1940s, Rama caused a sensation with the permissive and, at the time, progressive portrayal of her protagonists. In her late work she returned to the depictions of her youth.
2009, English
Hardcover, 550 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$420.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the scarce, highly sought after, and most comprehensive book ever published on American artist Paul Thek, published in 2009 by MIT Press. Edited by Harald Falckenberg and Peter Weibel, this enormous 550 page monograph contains more than 300 works by this groundbreaking artist, documenting his journey from legendary outsider to central figure in many contemporary art movements.
Paul Thek occupied a place between high art and low art, between the epic and the everyday. During his brief life (1933-1988), he went against the grain of art world trends, humanizing the institutional spaces of art with the force of his humor, spirituality, and character. Twenty years after Thek's death from AIDS, we can now recognize his influence on contemporary artists ranging from Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman to Matthew Barney, Mike Kelley, and Paul McCarthy, as well as Kai Althoff, Jonathan Meese, and Thomas Hirschhorn. This book brings together more than 300 of Thek's works—many of which are published here for the first time—to offer the most comprehensive display of his work yet seen. The book, which accompanies an exhibition at ZKM ? Museum of Contemporary Art presenting Thek's work in dialogue with contemporary art by young artists, includes painting, sculpture, drawing, and installation work, as well as photographs documenting the room-size environments into which Thek incorporated elements from art, literature, theater, and religion. These works chart Thek's journey from legendary outsider to foundational figure in contemporary art. In their antiheroic diversity, Thek's works embody the art revolution of the 1960s; indeed, Susan Sontag dedicated her classic Against Interpretation to him. Thek's treatment of the body in such works as “Technological Reliquaries,” with their castings and replicas of human body parts, tissue, and bones, both evoke the aura of Christian relics and anticipate the work of Damien Hirst. The book, with more than 500 images (300 in colour) and nineteen essays by art historians, curators, collectors, and artists, investigates Thek's work on its own terms, and as a starting point for understanding the work of the many younger artists Thek has influenced.
Essays by Jean-Christophe Ammann, Margrit Brehm, Bazon Brock, Suzanne Delehanty, Harald Falckenberg, Marietta Franke, Stefan Germer, Kim Gordon, Roland Groenenboom, Axel Heil, Gregor Jansen, Mike Kelley, John Miller, Susanne Neubauer, Kenny Schachter, Harald Szeemann, Annette Tietenberg, Peter Weibel, Ann Wilson.
Good copy with tanning to spine, some bumping and waving from storage. Clean throughout.
2013, Japanese
Softcover, 255 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Million Publishing / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
"Videoshop of Horrors, Violence and Disgusting!! Welcome To A World Without Value!"
An Introduction to Bad Taste Video Studies in the 80's! is a labor of VHS love committed to publication by editor Keiji Yamazaki and a group of movie fans/critics in 2013, in Japan only, of course. During the 1980's VHS explosion, when the movie rental business was booming, so too was a demand for what is considered "bad taste" video. Splatter! Thriller! Rape and Revenge! Gore! Budget Sci-Fi! Ero Guro! Mondo! Exploitation! This in-depth compendium collects a unique moment in movie culture, celebrating the true identity of the long-lost, straight-to-video independent genre movies of the 1980's, from misunderstood director masterpieces to neighbourhood camcorder legends. "Revive the trauma-class film that should have disappeared from the bottom of hell without being recommended by anyone." (rough translation)... Illustrated throughout with posters and video cover art, this book documents the rarely documented, presenting many criminally overlooked works given serious reflection across many genres from the vantage point of Japan's unparalleled licensing and distribution of all things esoteric, cult, even prohibited, from the wildest recesses of the VHS imagination.
A graveyard of over 90 VHS corpses, re-animating hard-to-find productions from all over the globe (Italy, Britain, China, Australia, US...), spanning early, lesser-known examples of the "so bad it's good" from the 1970s into the 80's V-Zone... Baby Blood (1990), The Milpitas Monster (1975), Slithis (1978), Evil Clutch (1980), Copkiller (1983), Bodymelt (1993), The Pit (1981), Nail-Gun Massacre (1985), Doctor Gore (1975), Fight for Your Life (1977), Neon Maniacs (1986), Scalps (1983), Without Warning (1979), The Prey (1977), Sleepaway Camp (1983), Edge of the Axe (1989), True Gore (1988), Being Different (1981), Britannia Hospital (1982), to name but a few. Thematic chapters are punctuated by small articles on British Video, Horror magazines of the period, a roundtable between directors discussing the "golden age", and much more.
Warning — all texts in Japanese, so this comes with an extra layer of translation detective work. But, the most essential titles and dates are in English, making it a valuable guide whichever way you slice it.
Very Good, almost As New copy.
2022, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 160 pages, 21.5 x 15 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Tatsumi / Tokyo
$70.00 - Out of stock
An unprecedented book documenting the world of eccentric B-grade video works ("Tondemo VHS") that proliferated in the Japanese market at the height of the video boom during the Shōwa era!
Once upon a time there were video rental shops in every city, but amongst the famous Hollywood blockbusters and popular cinema, mysterious videos were lined up like mountains ready for the more adventurous viewer. These videos came to define an era. An era of crazed killers, cyborgs, mystics, ninjas, biker gangs, and demented libido. The V-Zone! This book is devoted to this new wild unknown of the video era and a unique aspect of popular culture in Shōwa era Japan, the "Tondemu VHS". "Tondemu" is a Japanese expression derived from the term "dangerous," referring to things that deviate from reality and common sense. This encyclopaedic study celebrates these VHS deviations — the B-grade, the shocking, the trashy, the cheap, the vulgar, the unexplainable, the sleazy, the unintelligible, the incomprehensible, and the laughable — horror, sci-fi, action, exploitation, comedy, erotic, Japanese V cinema...
Profusely illustrated with hundreds of video cover artworks from the Japanese editions of films such as Microwave Massacre (1979), Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985), Driller Killer (1979), Guzoo: The Thing Forsaken by God - Part I (1986), Body Melt (1993), Prey (1977), Vampire's Kiss (1988), Monster Dog (1984), The Nail Gun Massacre (1985), The Park Is Mine (1986), Alapaap (1984), Body Count (1986), The New York Ripper (1982), Trancers (1984), Parasite (1981), The Keep (1983), Edge of The Axe (1987), 2019: After the Fall of New York (1983), Futurekill (1984), Coolie Killer (1982), The Missionary (1982), Polyester (1981), "Hungry Ghosts" (1985), Robowar (1988), TC 2000 (1993), Bad Taste (1987), Igor and the Lunatics (1985), Endgame (1983), Mutanthunt (1987), The Glove (1979), Picasso Trigger (1988), Project Shadowchaser (1992), Run and Kill (1993), Don't Go In The Woods... Alone (1981), Evil Heart (1985)... accompanied by commentary, plus chapters of features on everything from Hong Kong Noir, crazy pink movies, Troma films, the Emmanuelle film franchise, animal attack movies, director Toru Muranishi, Kazuo Umezu, cyber videos, video collections, Japanese video stores and mags, profiles, interviews, and much more. An must for any die-hard VHS head.
As New.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 86 pages, 30 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
First Japanese edition of the official companion book to the 1995 American sci-fi horror film Species (directed by Roger Donaldson and written by Dennis Feldman) and the film's artistic designer H.R. Giger, famous for his creations for the Alien film. This profusely illustrated "Making of" book is packed with reproductions of Giger's incredible conceptual drawings and models as well as photographs of special effects processes, Giger's set-design, animatronics, and creature fabrication, detailing all the work involved in bringing the science fiction creature Sil to the screen. Includes fold-out illustration of the famous "Ghost Train" and much more.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1998, English
Softcover, 385 pages, 15.24 x 22.86 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$35.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the definitive published account of Black Metal, published by Feral House in 1998. The Bloody Rise of the Black Metal Mafia Murder, suicide, occult sacrifices, church-burnings and fascism terrorism preoccupy the musicians and followers of Black Metal: a dark and psychotic version of heavy metal music. This extraordinary book penetrates the inner circle of the Black Metal leaders, reveals the truth behind the stories, and includes an interview with Varg Vikerness of the group Burzum, currently imprisoned for the murder of another Black Metal musician.
"With Lords of Chaos Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind paint a portrait of a fantastic realm where Satanism, neo-paganism and National Socialism energized a musical scene in which fantasy was actualized in the burning of medieval churches in Norway ...a uniquely valuable history of Black Metal music in general and of the Norwegian scene in particular as it is viewed by the participants themselves. Lords of Chaos is a compelling work deserving of a wide readership on both sides of the Atlantic." -- Dr. Jeffrey Kaplan, author of Radical Religion in America.
Average—Good copy with considerable wear, creasing.