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:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
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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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.
2015, English / German
Softcover, 264 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 $15.00 - In stock -
ISSUE NO. 100
DECEMBER 2015
„THE CANON“
“Our 100th issue is dedicated to the question of the “canon.” We take up this theme with an interest in reflecting on the journal’s own role in the field of contemporary art — one that, when first initiated in 1990, was markedly counter-canonical, vigorously contesting certain methods of critique while supporting others. And yet, we pause here to acknowledge that after 25 years, we have also doubtlessly played a crucial part in shaping a particular discourse, even normativizing it to some degree. Could it even be said that TzK has established a canon in its own right? With this issue, we now take stock of what TzK’s relationship to the canon might be, and moreover, what the notion of canonicity in 2015 might now represent.”
ISSUE NO. 100 / DECEMBER 2015 “THE CANON”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
TOM HOLERT IN PRAISE OF PRESUMPTUOUSNESS: “KANON-POLITIK ” (1992) REVISITED
DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN
MIKE KELLEY
SABETH BUCHMANN
MEDIAL (SELF-)MOVEMENT
ISABELLE GRAW
CANON AND CRITIQUE: AN INTERPLAY / Heimo Zobernig
JULIANE REBENTISCH
25 ARTISTS FROM 1990 TO 2015 / And 25 reasons why each belongs in the Texte zur Kunst canon
GERTRUD KOCH
POLYPHONY OR DISSONANCE / Are there artists lost in the canon?
KERSTIN STAKEMEIER
MORE MANNERISM / Ruth May and Jan Molzberger
GUNTER RESKI
EMBEDDED NUDES / Arno Rink
ALEXANDER GARCÍA DÜTTMANN
OLD WOMEN / Maria Lassnig’s “Du oder ich” (You or me), 2005
BEATE SÖNTGEN
ROSEMARIE TROCKEL
NICK MAUSS
IAN WHITE
TESS EDMONSON
DIS
HANNA MAGAUER
POST-INTERNET: THE NEW ORDER
JOSEPHINE PRYDE
THE INDIVIDUAL
CAROLINE BUSTA
BAD CANON
SIMON DENNY
DISRUPT
KEN OKIISHI
CITIZENSHIP
VALENTINA LIERNUR
SELF-REFLECTIVE SUBJECTS
JUTTA KOETHER
FIGURE OF PAINT: ON THE INCONTROVERTIBLE!
ALICE CREISCHER AND ANDREAS SIEKMANN
TUCUMÁN ARDE
PAMELA M. LEE
GROUP MATERIAL
FELIX VOGEL
MARTIN BECK
SVEN BECKSTETTE
STURTEVANT
CLAIRE FONTAINE
TOWARD A CANONIC FREEDOM
SVEN LÜTTICKEN
FALLING APART, TOGETHER
ROBERT KULISEK AND DAVID LIESKE
HUSBANDS HAVE GOT TO DIE! / A conversation about Taryn Simon
BRIGITTE WEINGART
GREAT & SMALL
HELMUT DRAXLER
CANON OF EXISTENCE, ETHICS OF THE BREAK
ROTATION
ELECTROCONVULSIVE LIT / John Kelsey on Sylvère Lotringer’s “Mad Like Artaud”
REVIEWS
VERWISCHTE GRENZEN / Robert Müller über „Radikal Modern. Planen und Bauen im Berlin der 1960er-Jahre“ in der Berlinischen Galerie
AGING INTO NEW WORLDS: DEUTSCH-AMERIKANISCHE FREUNDSCHAFT / Bettina Funcke surveys five fall 2015 shows in New York
ANGEWANDTER HISTOMAT / Ariane Müller über „to expose, to show, to demonstrate, to inform, to offer. Künstlerische Praktiken um 1990“ im Mumok, Wien
ENIGMA IN THE MIRROR / Luis Felipe Fabre on “In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni” at Museo Jumex, Mexico City
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD / Nuit Banai on R. H. Quaytman at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
IST KUNST EIN SEXUALPROBLEM? / Eva Birkenstock über Lea Lublin im Lenbachhaus, München
HERE'S NOT HERE / Damon Sfetsios and Elise Duryee-Browner on Stephan Dillemuth at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York
WEAK LOCAL LINEAMENTS / Gareth James on Sam Lewitt at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco
OBITUARIES
PETER SCHEIFFELE (1971–2015)
by Ilka Becker
CHANTAL AKERMAN (1950–2015)
by Tim Griffin
EDITION
JOHN BALDESSARI
NHU DUONG
PETER FISCHLI/DAVID WEISS
WADE GUYTON
RACHEL HARRISON
SARAH MORRIS
ALBERT OEHLEN
RICHARD PHILLIPS
SETH PRICE
GERHARD RICHTER
ROSEMARIE TROCKEL
2015, English
Softcover, 650 pages, 29.2 x 19 cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
The Artist's Institute / New York
$50.00 - Out of stock
The Artist´s Institute dedicates each six-month season to a single artist, whose work becomes the occasion for a series of exhibitions, public programs, and graduate seminars with leading contemporary thinkers in the fields of art, music, film, literature, science, art history, philosophy, and other creative pursuits. The first six seasons, taking place between 2010 and 2013, were dedicated to Robert Filliou, Jo Baer, Jimmie Durham, Rosemarie Trockel, Haim Steinbach, and Thomas Bayrle. In each context, the Institute convened private and public forums to reflect on each artist by reading relevant texts, displaying artworks, and programming related events, all of which are narrated in this book.
Typeset by Scott Ponik.
Due to the weight of this volume, your order will likely incur additional postage costs. We will contact you with the best shipping advice upon your order, or alternatively, please email us in advance. Thank you for understanding.
2005, English / German
Softcover (w. folded poster dust-jacket), 192 pages, 22.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition. Out of print title, as new.,
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$200.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Rosemarie Trockel: Menopause at the Museum Ludwig, Köln, Oct. 29 2005 - Feb. 12 2006, and MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome, 19 May - 6 Aug. 2006.
This wonderful, major book on Rosemarie Trockel seemed to disappear from print rather fast, quickly becoming a collector's item in the mid 2000s. A catalogue raisonné of sorts, collecting Rosemarie Trockel's work from 1980 to 2005 (sculpture, wool works, drawings, publications, garments, photography, video - including very rarely seen objects). Probably the best and most valuable books produced on one of Germany's most incredible artists, 'Post Menopause' was realised in close cooperation with Trockel herself, and features bilingual (English and German) essays by Brigid Doherty, Silvia Eiblmayr, Barbara Engelbach and Gregory Williams.
Very highly recommended!
This copy is in As New condition and features the original folded dust-jacket poster.
Rosemarie Trockel was born in Schwerte, Germany in 1952. She studied in the Werkkunstschule in Cologne until 1978. Trockel’s oeuvre is diverse in themes and mediums, which include works on paper, ‘knitted paintings’ and sculptures. Though it is difficult to associate a particular style with her work, several concurrent themes can be identified within her oeuvre, such as the female role in society, the trademarks and symbols as social signifiers and decorations and finally, her fascination with ethnographic and scientific studies, which are often expressed through her sculptures. Trockel has become best known for her machine-generated ‘knitted paintings’–knitted woolen material placed on a stretcher–in which she challenges traditional notions of painting, feminine roles in society and culture at large, as well as art making itself. Additionally, her incorporation of references to popular culture through logos or symbols and sometimes text is yet another way to comment on the commodification of art and on the subjectivity of language and visual representation.
Rosemarie Trockel has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Recent solo exhibitions of her work have been held in institutions such as MAXXI – Museo Nazionale Delle Arti Del XXI Secolo, in Rome in 2006, The Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt in 2004, and the Dia Foundation for the Arts in New York in 2002. She has also participated in exhibitions in major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fondation Beyeler in Rien and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. Trockel has also participated in several international biennials, and her work has been featured in multiple publications. Her work has been awarded numerous prizes, including the 2011 Kaiserring from the city of Goslar, which is one of the best-known prizes for contemporary art in the world. Rosemarie Trockel lives and works in Cologne.
1998, English
Softcover (die-cut w. flocking), 154 pages, 23 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Nest / New York
$60.00 - Out of stock
Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors was a unique and ground-breaking magazine published from 1997 to 2004, for a total run of 26 issues.
Marketed as an interior design magazine, and edited by Joseph Holtzman, Nest generally eschewed the conventionally beautiful luxury interiors showcased in other magazines, and instead featured photographs of nontraditional, exceptional, and unusual environments. Fred A. Bernstein, writing in the New York Times, wrote that Joseph Holtzman "believed that an igloo, a prison cell or a child's attic room (adorned with Farrah Fawcett posters) could be as compelling as a room by a famous designer." During its run, Nest showed the room of a 40-year-old diaper lover, the lair of an Indonesian bird that decorates with coloured stones and vomit, the final resting place of Napoleon’s penis, the quarters of Navy seamen, a barbed-wire-trimmed bed that doubled as a tank, and a Gothic Christmas card from filmmaker John Waters. Noted architect Rem Koolhaas called it "an anti-materialistic, idealistic magazine about the hyperspecific in a world that is undergoing radical leveling, an 'interior design' magazine hostile to the cosmetic." Artist Richard Tuttle was quoted as saying that Mr. Holtzman "channeled the collective unconscious, to give us the pleasure of ornament before we even knew we wanted it."
Nest issue 2, Fall 1998 features, amongst much more: artist Rosemarie Trockel (including a unique flocked cover design by Trockel), Igloo's by photographer Richard Harrington, sculptor Robert Gober on architect Jan Pol, master decorator Renzo Mongiardino, inmates reflect on the decor of a New Mexico Womens Correctional Facility, the temporary lodgings of novelist Muriel Spark, artist Vincent Fecteau an scholar Michael Lobel look at the work of actor-turned-decorator Hasi Hester, the apartment of Pierre et Gilles, and much more... A magazine like no other before or since.
2015, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Published by
Blue Rider Press / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
A highly provocative, mindbending, beautifully designed, and visionary look at the landscape of our rapidly evolving digital era. 50 years after Marshall McLuhan's ground breaking book on the influence of technology on culture in "The Medium is the Massage," Basar, Coupland and Obrist extend the analysis to today, touring the world that's redefined by the Internet, decoding and explaining what they call the 'extreme present'. THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES is a quick-fire paperback, harnessing the images, language and perceptions of our unfurling digital lives. The authors offer five characteristics of the Extreme Present (see below); invent a glossary of new words to describe how we are truly feeling today; and 'mindsource' images and illustrations from over 30 contemporary artists. Wayne Daly's striking graphic design imports the surreal, juxtaposed, mashed mannerisms of screen to page. It's like a culturally prescient, all-knowing email to the reader: possibly the best email they will ever read. Welcome to THE AGE OF EARTHQUAKES, a paper portrait of Now, where the Internet hasn't just changed the structure of our brains these past few years, it's also changing the structure of the planet. This is a new history of the world that fits perfectly in your back pocket. 30+ artists contributions: With contributions from Farah Al Qasimi, Ed Atkins, Alessandro Bavo, Gabriele Basilico, Josh Bitelli, James Bridle, Cao Fei, Alex Mackin Dolan, Thomas Dozol, Constant Dullaart, Cecile B Evans, Rami Farook, Hans-Peter Feldmann, GCC, K-Hole, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Eloise Hawser, Camille Henrot, Hu Fang, K-Hole, Koo Jeong-A, Katja Novitskova, Lara Ogel, Trevor Paglen, Yuri Patterson, Jon Rafman, Bunny Rogers, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Taryn Simon, Hito Steyerl, Michael Stipe, Rosemarie Trockel, Amalia Ulman, David Weir, Trevor Yeung.
2013, English
Softcover, 450 pages, (colour & bw ills.), 23 x 30 cm
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
$33.00 - Out of stock
Purple Fashion S/S 2013 features Bernadette Corporation, Miranda Kerr, Slavoj Zizek, Rosemarie Trockel, Larry Clark, Phoebe Philo, Juergen Teller, Richard Artschwager, a booklet by Ryan McGinley, plus much more.
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2010, Englsih
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 17 x 25.5 cm
Out of print first edition.,
Published by
Christine Burgin / New York
New Directions / New York
$60.00 - Out of stock
Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956) worked as a bank clerk, a butler in a castle, and an inventor's assistant, and produced nine novels and more than a thousand stories. He stopped writing in 1933 when he was hospitalized for mental illness, declaring, "I am not here to write, but to be mad."
Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic, shrunken-down form. These narrow strips of paper (many of them written during his hospitalization in the Waldau sanatorium) covered with tiny ant-like markings only a millimeter or two high, came to light only after the author's death in 1956. At first considered a secret code, the microscripts were eventually discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of a Germanic script: a whole story could fit on the back of a business card. Selected from the six-volume German transcriptions from the original microscripts, these twenty-five short pieces are gathered in this gorgeously illustrated co-publication with the Christine Burgin Gallery. Each microscript is reproduced in full color in its original form: the detached cover of a trashy crime novel, a disappointing letter, a receipt of payment. Sometimes Walser used the pages of small tear-off calendars (but only after cutting them lengthwise and filling up each half with text). Schnapps, rotten husbands, small town life, the radio, pigs (and how none of us can deny being one), jealousy, Van Gogh and marriage proposals are some of Walser's subjects. These texts take strength from Walser's motto: "To be small and to stay small."
W.G. Sebald called Robert Walser "a clairvoyant of the small," and nowhere is the phrase more apt than in his "microscripts."
“The incredible shrinking writer is a major twentieth-century prose artist who, for all that the modern world seems to have passed him by, fulfills the modern criterion: he sounds like nobody else.” — Benjamin Kunkel, The New Yorker
“One of the profoundest products of modern literature.” - Walter Benjamin
Translated by Susan Bernofsky. Contributions by Walter Benjamin.
Prize-winning translator Susan Bernofsky has translated numerous works by Robert Walser including The Microscripts, The Tanners, and The Assistant. She is currently at work on a biography of Robert Walser
Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama.
2012, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 170 pages (50 colour ill.), 17 x 25.5 cm
Published by
Christine Burgin / New York
Donald Young Gallery / New York
New Directions / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
Contemporary artists respond to the work of Robert Walser.
A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser was initiated by the gallerist Donald Young, who saw in Robert Walser an exemplary figure through whom connections between art and literature could be discussed anew. He invited a group of artists to create and exhibit work in response to the writings of Robert Walser. This book is a result of that collaboration.
A Little Ramble is a Walser reader of material chosen by the artists. There are Walser love stories discovered by Thomas Schütte in the 70s appearing here for the first time in English, translated by Susan Bernofsky; the poem Snow which inspired Rosemarie Trockel also newly translated for this edition by Christopher Middleton; the little known Walser story A Painter's Life illustrated by Josiah McElheny; Pantoums by Rodney Graham based on the first line of Walser's Berlin stories and excerpts from Wandering with Walser, conversations with Walser recorded by his guardian, Carl Seelig, chosen by Moyra Davey to name only a few. Also included in the book is an afterword by Lynne Cooke and an introduction by Donald Young.
Robert Walser (1878–1956) was born in Switzerland. He left school at fourteen and led a wandering and precarious existence working as a bank clerk, a butler in a castle, and an inventor's assistant while producing essays, stories, and novels. In 1933 he abandoned writing and entered a sanatorium—where he remained for the rest of his life. "I am not here to write," Walser said, "but to be mad."
Distinguished poet and translator Christopher Middleton lives in Austin, Texas. His awards include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Schegel-Tieck Translation Prize.
Prize-winning translator Susan Bernofsky has translated numerous works by Robert Walser including The Microscripts, The Tanners, and The Assistant. She is currently at work on a biography of Robert Walser
2012, English
Softcover, 544 pages (225 colour ill.), 18 x 23 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$55.00 - Out of stock
Helen Molesworth; With essays by Johanna Burton, William Horrigan, Elisabeth Lebovici, Kobena Mercer, Sarah Schulman, and Frazer Ward.
Art of the 1980s oscillated between radical and conservative, capricious and political, socially engaged and art historically aware. Published in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, this fascinating book chronicles canonical as well as nearly forgotten works of the 1980s, arguing that what has often been dismissed as cynical or ironic should be viewed as a struggle on the part of artists to articulate their needs and desires in an increasingly commodified world. The major developments of the decade—the rise of the commercial art market, the politicization of the AIDS crisis, the increased visibility of women and gay artists and artists of color, and the ascension of new media—are illuminated in works by Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Jeff Koons, Lorna Simpson, Leigh Bowery, Jimmy De Sana, Carroll Dunham, Jimmie Durham, Alex Garry, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Annette Messager, Cady Noland, Albert Oehlen, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Rosemarie Trockel, Jeff Wall, Charlie Ahearn, Gretchen Bender, Black Audio Film Collective, Jennifer Bolande, Gregg Bordowitz, Eugenio Dittborn, Gran Fury, Group Material, Guerrilla Girls, Hans Haacke, David Hammons, Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Donald Moffett, Lorraine O’Grady, Paper Tiger Television, Adrian Piper, Lari Pittman, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Christy Rupp, Doris Salcedo, Juan Sánchez, Tseng Kwong Chi and Keith Haring, Carrie Mae Weems, Christopher Williams, Krzystof Wodiczko, Judith Barry, Ashley Bickerton, Deborah Bright, Marlene Dumas, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Peter Hujar, G. B. Jones, Isaac Julian, Rotimi Fani Kayode, Mary Kelly, Silvia Kolbowski, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Jack Leirner, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Prince, Marlon Riggs, David Robbins, Laurie Simmons, Haim Steinbach, David Wojnarowicz, Dotty Attie, Robert Colescott, General Idea, Robert Gober, Jack Goldstein, Pater Halley, Mary Heilmann, Candy Jernigan, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Christian Marclay, Allan McCollum, Peter Nagy, Raymond Pettibon, Stephen Prina, Martin Puryear, Gerhard Richter, David Salle, Doug + Mike Starn, Tony Tasset, James Welling, and Christopher Wool, among others. Essays by leading scholars provide unique perspectives on the decade's competing factions and seemingly contradictory elements, from counterculture to the mainstream, radicalism to democracy and historical awareness, conservatism to feminist politics.
Complete with critical texts on each work, This Will Have Been brings into focus the full impact of the art, artists, and political and cultural ruptures of this paradigm-shifting decade. More than 200 full-color reproductions of works in a range of media, including drawing, painting, photography, and sculpture, illustrate this ambitious guide to a period of artistic transformation.
2010, English
Softcover, 15.6 x 24 cm, 256 pages (256 color ill.)
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
With contributions by Agency, Irene Albers, Oksana Bulgakowa, Edwin Carels, Bart De Baere, Didier Demorcy, Brigid Doherty, Sergei Eisenstein, Anselm Franke, Masato Fukushima, Avery F. Gordon, Richard William Hill, Darius James, Gertrud Koch, Joachim Koester, Bruno Latour, Maurizio Lazzarato and Angela Melitopoulos, Vivian Liska, Henri Michaux, Santu Mofokeng, Philippe Pirotte, Florian Schneider, Erhard Schüttpelz, Michael Taussig, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Martin Zillinger What is the role of aesthetic processes in the drawing of the boundaries between nature and culture, humans and things, the animate and inanimate? Structured around the aesthetic processes and effects of animation and mummification, Animism—a companion publication to the long-term exhibition of the same title, which premiered at Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen in January 2010—brings together artistic and theoretical perspectives that reflect on the boundary between subjects and objects, and the modern anxiety that accompanies the relation between “persons” and “things.” With works by Agency, Art & Language, Christian W. Braune & Otto Fischer, Marcel Broodthaers, Paul Chan, Tony Conrad, Didier Demorcy, Walt Disney, Lili Dujourie, Jimmie Durham, Eric Duvivier, Harun Farocki, León Ferrari, Christopher Glembotzky, Victor Grippo, Brion Gysin, Luis Jacob, Ken Jacobs, Darius James, Joachim Koester, Zacharias Kunuk, Louise Lawler, Len Lye, Étienne-Jules Marey, Daria Martin, Angela Melitopoulos & Maurizio Lazzarato, Wesley Meuris, Henri Michaux, Santu Mofokeng, Vincent Monnikendam, Tom Nicholson, Otobong Nkanga, Reto Pulfer, Félix-Louis Regnault, Józef Robakowski, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Paul Sharits, Yutaka Sone, Jan Švankmajer, David G. Tretiakoff, Rosemarie Trockel, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Dziga Vertov, Klaus Weber, Apichatpong Weerasethakul Co-published with Extra City – Kunsthal Antwerpen and M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp Design by NODE Berlin Oslo
Paperback (w. plastic wrap cover and full-colour artist card set), 176 pages, 21.6 x 34.5 cm
Published by
CAM / St. Louis
$55.00 - Out of stock
This title is now out of print.
Curated by Anthony Huberman at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the group exhibition and catalogue For the Blind Man in the Dark Room Looking for the Black Cat That Isn't There explores the speculative nature of knowledge and insists on the importance of curiosity and the things we don't understand. Arranged around the premise that the world--and art--is not a code that needs cracking, the works in the exhibition center on the fruitfulness of not-knowing, un-learning, and productive confusion. David Hullfish Bailey, Marcel Broodthaers, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Fischli & Weiss, Rachel Harrison, Giorgio Morandi, Matt Mullican, Rosalind Nashashibi & Lucy Skaer, Frances Stark, Rosemarie Trockel and others present explanations that playfully don't explain. Dedicated to the inquisitive mind, For The Blind Man celebrates our ability to get lost and the stories we use to find our way in the dark. The book is edited, arranged and designed by London-based writer Will Holder and includes a new essay by curator Anthony Huberman.