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:
THU—SAT 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
info@worldfoodbooks.com
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 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. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or 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.
$.00 - Out of stock
The eternal clean out! New items weekly.
https://worldfoodbooks.com/category/sale
Published by World Food Books / Melbourne
$20.00 - In stock - Add to cart
A World Food Books gift voucher is redeemable in our Melbourne bookshop or via our webshop (here). An e-voucher (printable pdf) will be sent to your purchase email address (please notify us if you wish to have the voucher sent to an alternate address and wish us to fill in the receiver's details on the card).
Gift vouchers can be purchased in increments of $20 (Australian Dollars) and the total amount can simply be added to by increasing the quantity in your shopping cart. eg. A quantity of 5 gift vouchers will result in an item total of $100 - a $100 gift voucher. Simply click "ADD TO CART" 5 times, or update your quantity in the shopping cart.
If you wish to purchase multiple, separate gift vouchers in one go, please just email us and we can personally prepare and email you a payment request.
Please note: Please select Pick-Up on gift voucher purchse to avoid any postage charges. Accidental postage charges will be refunded right away!
Thank you.
For any questions, please don't hesitate to email: info@worldfoodbooks.com
2010, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 21.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
Shinbaku Books / London
$70.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Long out-of-print first 2010 edition.
UKIYO-E ― "images from the floating world" ― were the most popular art-form of 19th century Japan. Like modern-day manga, these prints could be mass-produced and were admired by people from all sectors of society; and as in manga, the art of ukiyo-e included significant sub-genres dealing in violence, erotica and horror.
With unflinching images of weird sex, bloody carnage and grotesque, demonic ghosts and monsters, "Dream Spectres" is a powerful collection of the extremes of ukiyo-e, featuring the work of such artists as Yoshitoshi, Ekin, Kunichika, Yoshiiku, Kunisada, Hokusai, Kuniyoshi, Yoshitsuya, Hiroshige, Kyosai, and Chikanobu.
"Dream Spectres" features over 170 amazing full-colour images, including the complete Eimei Nijuhasshuku ("28 Blood Atrocities") of Yoshitoshi and Yoshiiku, and ranges in content from bondage and bestiality to decapitations, demons and designs for classic irezumi (body tattoos). This is Japanese art not only at its extremes of imagination, but often at its most highly accomplished and innovative.
VG copy
1993, English
Softcover (spiral-bound), 32 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Robert Paredes / Iowa City
$65.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Very rare, private issued publication of "Empty", written in Iowa City, Summer, 1990-Spring 19993 by experimental composer Robert Paredes (1948-2005) at the invitation of American composer and music theorist Benjamin Boretz (b. 1934), and first read at the Birmingham Art Association, Alabama, April, 1993. This publication also published around that time, in 1993. A beautiful meditation on Emptiness.... On music-making, writing, procrastination, aging, distraction, virtuosity, isolation, perfection, immortality, the self, the other, the body, the absolute, the words.... Typeset, signed (in print), illustrated and published by Paredes.
Robert Paredes (1948-2005) was a composer, multi-reed performer (clarinet, saxophone, flute), essayist, multi-media artist and teacher whose output was consistently and consciously experimental. Expressing his deep interest in language, social justice and interpersonal relationships, his work was often a context to investigate the essence of music, its meaning and its role in society.
Very Good—Near Fine copy, light back cover wear.
1976 / ?, English
Softcover, 24 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
David Dunn / California
$65.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Privately issued full colour facsimile of the 1976 graphic score for "String Quartet #2; two violins, viola, cello and 2-channel tape" by Harry Partch's assistant and Harry Partch Ensemble member, Californian experimental composer and researcher David Dunn. Signed and dated (in the print) 4/76.
Composer David Dunn was born in 1953 in San Diego, California. He was an assistant to the American composer Harry Partch and remained active as a performer in the Harry Partch Ensemble for over a decade. He has worked in a wide variety of audio media inclusive of traditional and experimental music, installations for public exhibitions, video and film soundtracks, radio broadcasts, and bioacoustic research. His compositions and soundscape recordings have appeared in many international forums, concerts, broadcasts, and exhibitions. In addition to his multiple books, recordings and soundtracks, he has been anthologized in over 50 books and journals. Much of his current work is focused upon the development of listening strategies and technologies for environmental sound monitoring in both aesthetic and scientific contexts. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Very Good copy, light wear and light rusting to staple.
1990, English
Softcover (single staple-bound), 26 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
David Dunn / California
$35.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Privately issued in 1990 by Harry Partch's assistant and Harry Partch Ensemble member, Californian experimental composer and researcher David Dunn. First book of a series of 4 staple-bound publications that document the work of Dunn's collected works in his own words. With introductions by composers Norman Lowrey and Kenneth Gaburo, this first book entitled "Music, Language and Environment" catalogues Dunn's recording projects with personal texts, performance info and personnel, including fellow artists Chris Mann, Bill Viola, Warren Burt, Phil and Mary Edelstein, Robert Paredes, and many more. Further publications covered Dunn's writings, scores, etc.
"PREFACE:
The materials gathered within this collection reflect a period of thought and investigation roughly spanning two decades. While this research might appear to constitute some sort of linear development, my experience has been more akin to the rotation of a geometric object: I have been examining a set of issues and ideas from various perspectives as facets of some larger process of questioning. Hopefully the individual compositions or essays can be evaluated within an intellectual context of their status as research reports rather than as isolated works of art. This at least has been my intention. Towards this aim I have not statements or concepts which I now reject. My criteria for inclusion of material has been based upon the verity of representation of my investigative process.
Some of the various essays, recordings and scores have been previously published in a variety of journals and anthologies. I wish to thank these publications for their interest and support: The Aerial, Crawl Out Your Window, IS Journal, Interval, Kunstforum, Leonardo, Lingua Press, Music Works, News of Music, Perspectives of New Music, Post Neo, Stereoplay, and Words and Spaces: University Press of America.
—David Dunn 10/90"
Composer David Dunn was born in 1953 in San Diego, California. He was an assistant to the American composer Harry Partch and remained active as a performer in the Harry Partch Ensemble for over a decade. He has worked in a wide variety of audio media inclusive of traditional and experimental music, installations for public exhibitions, video and film soundtracks, radio broadcasts, and bioacoustic research. His compositions and soundscape recordings have appeared in many international forums, concerts, broadcasts, and exhibitions. In addition to his multiple books, recordings and soundtracks, he has been anthologized in over 50 books and journals. Much of his current work is focused upon the development of listening strategies and technologies for environmental sound monitoring in both aesthetic and scientific contexts. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Very Good copy, light wear and light rusting to staple.
1982, English
Softcover, 68 pages, 20 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rigmarole of the Hours / Clifton Hill
$65.00 - Out of stock
Signed copy of the phenomenal first book of writings by Polish-born Australian poet, playwright, prose writer, philosopher and visual artist Ania Walwicz (1951—2020), published in 1982 by Rigmarole Books, Melbourne.
"Ania Walwicz' world is as clear and as fresh as earliest childhood memories. Everything - a glowing red cherry or a cut finger is actively apprehended in her rhythmic prose clusters.
shimmering with energy as bright jewels of identity. In a literary fauvism, her travels through 'cool' perceptions of her native Poland to 'hot' perceptions of Australia, illuminate hunger, conflict, ambition, anger and the need to state oneself as integral within the world. Walwicz successfully weds stylistic sophistication to a sense of language re-invented as it is discovered.
'Walwicz is a most exciting poet at a time when poetry seems all a bit tame.'—ASPECT
Ania Walwicz came to Australia from Poland in 1963. She attended Art School in Melbourne, where she now lives and paints and writes. She shows regularly at the Arts Projects Gallery, Melbourne. Her writing has appeared extensively in a variety of magazines over the past few years and she enjoys a growing reputation as a reader of her own work, both on radio & in public. This is her first book."
Ania Walwicz (1951—2020) was an Australian poet, playwright, prose writer, philosopher and visual artist. Walwicz’ works explore complex political, social, cultural and personal issues, with surrealism, dream narratives, and psychoanalysis as some of her many influences. Walwicz states—‘[i]t appears that I am producing this dismembered language, but in fact I am producing language which is actual and closer to the actual process of feeling and thinking. My motto is: notation and enactment of states of feeling/being’ Many of her prose poems in the collections Writing (1982), Boat (1989), Elegant (2013) and Palace of Culture (2014), for example, address questions of identity. As a Polish immigrant to Australia in 1963 (aged 12), Walwicz frequently touches on themes of alienation, subordination, dislocation and loss of language.
Very Good copy with some cover damage from sticker and light tanning. Signed by Ania Walwicz w. dedication to title page.
1984, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 100 pages, 22 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bard College / New York
$35.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Rare 1984 issue of the small press photocopied contemporary music magazine issued by the Music Department of Bard College, edited by Sarah Johnson. Each issue with wraparound covers listing a calendar of events (films, concerts, theatre), the contents packed with essays, transcribed lectures, conversations, historical articles, record reviews, reading lists, compositions, visual scores, text art, sound poetry, and various artworks, facsimiles and reproductions.
G—VG copy with general tanning, wear and foxing.
1984, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 100 pages, 22 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bard College / New York
$35.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Rare 1984 issue of the small press photocopied contemporary music magazine issued by the Music Department of Bard College, edited by Sarah Johnson. Each issue with wraparound covers listing a calendar of events (films, concerts, theatre), the contents packed with essays, transcribed lectures, conversations, historical articles, record reviews, reading lists, compositions, visual scores, text art, sound poetry, and various artworks, facsimiles and reproductions.
VG copy with general tanning, wear and foxing.
1992, English
Softcover (loose-leaf w. paperclip), unpaginated, 23 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Mercurial Editions
Elwood
$55.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Rare first edition of Australian text artist and performer Berni Janssen's 1992 work, Mangon, published by Mercurial Editions in Elwood, Melbourne, a private press "specialising in publishing new work which explores, poetic form, imaginal philosophy and psychology and non realist approaches to art and image." Edition of only 250 copies, hand-bound with a single large paper-clip. In 1992, the publication was launched with speaking voice and found object sounds in collaboration with experimental composer Warren Burt.
"One of Australia’s treasures, berni janssen, a pioneering sound poet, is fully focused on the auditory as a means of experiencing the world. The voice of berni is loud and clear. She takes us with her into the auditory world as it is changing and asks us to reconsider "the strange echo chamber we live in."—Dr Ros Bandt, International Environmental Sound Artist
Berni Janssen is a text artist who works with words in all their forms, printed, spoken, performed. She has a collaborative multidisciplinary practice spanning over thirty-five years, working with composers, performers, visual artists and community members to make word inspired art. She is renowned for her evocative and captivating performances. Her publications include Possessives and Plurals (Fillia Press. 1985); Xstatic (Post Neo. 1988); mangon (Mercurial Editions. 1992) and Lake & Vale (PressPress. 2010). Poems have been published in magazines including Cordite, Heat, Meanjin, Overland, Extra and performed on radio and at festivals around the world. She lives in Dja Dja Wurrung Country in the Central Highlands of Victoria.
Good copy with rusted paper-clip, rubbing to frot cover, wear to extremities.
2013, English
Softcover, 20 pages, 24 x 15.5 cm
Hand numbered edition of 70,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Kowhai Press / Christchurch
$200.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Gorgeous and exceptionally rare limited edition, letter-pressed collection of lyrics by New Zealand musician Peter Stapleton (1954–2020) of The Terminals, Vacuum, The Pin Group, Dadamah, Flies Inside the Sun, Eye, and Scorched Earth Policy. Hand-set and hand-printed nocturnally on an Albion press by Peter Vangioni at the Kowhai Press, St Albans, Christchurch, N.Z., during the autumn and winter months of 2013. Monoprint frontispiece by New Zealand artist Jason Greig. Faux leather card covers, metallic print and thread-bound.
Collects the lyrics spanning the record releases of the Terminals, plus Vacuum, Victor Dimisich Band, Dadamah, etc. (Flying Nun, Siltbreeze, Xpressway, Majora, Raffmond...), plus previously unpublished lyrics.
Printed in an edition of 70 of which this is no. 29. Hand-numbered.
Perfect copy. As New.
1998 / 2009, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 72 pages, 32 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Morpheus International / US
$150.00 - In stock - Add to cart
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen"—H.R. Giger
Wonderful, scarce and collectible monograph capturing 30 years of the work of the great Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński, published by Galerie Morpheus in Las Vegas. First issued in 1998, this lavishly illustrated hardcover monograph reproduces Beksiński's surreal dystopian paintings spanning his entire career, alongside an introduction by James Cowen, texts by Tadeusz Nyczek, and great quotes and reflections throughout by Beksiński himself.
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
Very Good—Fine copy of the later expanded edition, now long out-of-print. With VG—Fine dust jacket.
1997, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 104 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$150.00 - In stock - Add to cart
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" — H.R. Giger
First Edition of the collected works of Zdzisław Beksiński, published originally in hardcover in 1997 by Editions Treville in Tokyo.
"Death, putrefaction, destruction. A time-space continuum that converts everything into eternal ruins
that are dominated by inexplicable loneliness and fear, causing the spirit of eroticism to echo hollowly across his canvases." This is an anthology of the Polish master of introvert fantasy. Chronology of paintings reproduced in colour with bio, exhibition history and essay (in Japanese).
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket and Obi, with only light age/wear.
2017, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$130.00 - In stock - Add to cart
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" — H.R. Giger
Comprehensive collection Zdzisław Beksiński's apocalyptic fantastic paintings and photographs, many never published before with many full-bleed painting details, issued in Japan as part of Treville's series of volumes on the Polish master of introvert fantasy. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w, accompanied by texts in English and Japanese. This is the first volume in the series.
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
As New copy of the first 2017 edition.
2022, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock - Add to cart
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" — H.R. Giger
Comprehensive collection Zdzisław Beksiński's apocalyptic fantastic paintings, sculptures and reliefs, mostly never published before, issued in Japan as part of Treville's series of volumes on the Polish master of introvert fantasy. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w, accompanied by texts in English and Japanese.
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
As New copy of the revised 2020 edition.
2017, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock - Add to cart
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" — H.R. Giger
Comprehensive collection Zdzisław Beksiński's sadomasochistic, biomorphic drawings from the 1960s—1970s, mostly never published before, issued in Japan as part of Treville's series of volumes on the Polish master of introvert fantasy. 140 works accompanied by interviews with Beksinski, essays and other texts in English and Japanese.
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
As New copy of the revised 2017 edition.
1988, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Tasmania Centre for the Arts / Hobart
$45.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Catalogue published on the occasion of the play and installation by Australian artist Peter Cripps at University of Tasmania, AGNSW and ACCA, curated by Bob Jenyns, 1988—1989. Namelessness was a play in 7 acts and 18 scenes. This new performance by Peter Cripps was commissioned by the University of Tasmania Centre for the Arts as part of their artist-in-residence program. The play was written by Cripps, Ruth Gall Bucher and Bob Lingard, performed by Jane Burton, Katarina Cobanovich, Bruce Hay and Scott Blacklow, with sound by David Hirst and video by Leigh Hobba. Illustrated throughout alongside an extensive essay by Lingard and an introduction by Tony Bond.
Very Good copy with exhibition invite inserted. Image sample only.
2025, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 19 x 14 cm
Published by
Impatient Press / US
$38.00 - In stock - Add to cart
A chance encounter with two older fellows at the movie theater has the young vagabond Ligie on his way to Lot-8, a trailer park down the road with an unconventional local reputation. There, Ligie meets Big Joe and his extended Lot-8-family: a tight-knit community of freaks all sectioned together by the landlord at the outskirts of town.
Weaving together colourful characters and outright carnal debauchery, BIG JOE is a radical pastoral of community, desire, and the strangeness of knowing one another.
Featuring colour illustrations by Drake Carr and Sabrina Bockler.
Cover illustration by Drake Carr
Samuel R. Delany is the author of numerous books and novels, including the Nebula Award-winning Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection, as well as Nova (now in a Library of America anthology) and Dhalgren. His 2007 novel Dark Reflections won the Stonewall Book Award. Other erotic novels include Equinox, Hogg, The Mad Man, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, and Shoat Rumblin. Delany was the subject of a 2007 documentary, The Polymath, by Fred Barney Taylor, and he has written a popular creative writing textbook, About Writing. He is the author of the widely taught Times Square Red/Times Square Blue and numerous books of essays; his book-length autobiographical essay, The Motion of Light in Water, won a Hugo Award in 1989.
1995, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. obi strip), 80 pages, 21.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
Pan-Exotica / Tokyo
$140.00 - Out of stock
First 1995 hardcover edition of Hans Bellmer's surrealist masterpiece, The Doll, a beautiful photo book published only in Japan, comprised entirely of all of the known photographic images of "La Poupee" — Hans Bellmer's articulated, anatomically amorphous Surrealist doll, reconfigured and captured through Bellmer's intimate hand-painted photographic images. "La Poupee" acquired iconic status as perhaps the purest exemplification of the Surrealist ideal of "convulsive beauty." Bellmer constructed his first doll in the early 1930s. André Breton and Paul Eluard described it as "the first and only Surrealist object with a universal, provocative power". Wordless, this lovely volume is photographs-only, reproduced in colour and black and white. Designed by Jun Takechi.
German artist Hans Bellmer (1902—1975) was one of the most subversive artists associated with Surrealism, famous—notorious, even—for his erotic engravings, objects and photographs. Many of Bellmer's works were inspired by the literary works of Comte de Lautréamont and Georges Bataille, amongst others.
VG—Fine copy with obi.
1982, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and plastic sleeve), 126 pages, 33 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bijutsu Shuppansha / Japan
$140.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Published in 1982 and long out-of-print, Masquerade is one of the finest artist books of Japanese illustrator and graphic artist Aquirax Uno. Lavishly illustrated and elaborately designed and directed by the artist himself, this beautiful album collects Uno's most stunning fantastical illustration and painting throughout the 1960s—1980s, alongside texts and photography of Uno in his atelier. Masquerade collates a cross-section of Uno's graphic work spanning his entire career, his iconic and innovative print, book, and theatre works, including many new, unpublished works and illustrations printed in large format across many full-colour fold-outs — a wonderful way to capture his decadent, provocative, stream of consciousness line work in intimate detail. Highly recommended!
Aquirax Uno, also known as Akira Uno (b. 1934) is a Japanese graphic artist, illustrator and painter who was very influential in the 1960s and 1970s. His incredibly unique work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and psychedelic bright colours. Uno was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of the 1960s–1970s, and is particularly notable for his frequent collaborations with Shuji Terayama and his experimental theater Tenjo Sajiki.
Aquirax Uno, also known as Akira Uno (b. 1934) is a Japanese graphic artist, illustrator and painter who was very influential in the 1960s–1970s. His incredibly unique work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and psychedelic bright colours. Uno was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of the 1960s–1970s, and is particularly notable for his frequent collaborations with Shuji Terayama and his experimental theater Tenjo Sajiki.
Good copy with heavy foxing to cover edges and end pages, original publisher's textured plastic protector sleeve with usual slight shrinkage from age, edge wear. Sample images only.
2025, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 17.8 x 11.4 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$34.00 - In stock - Add to cart
In following the tales of these magicians of madness, Swiss author Hermann Burger offers unique confessional accounts of linguistic self-destruction. Chief among them is prestidigitator Grazio Diabelli, who refuses an invitation to perform and instead discourses on the history of escapology as he contemplates his own final and permanent disappearing act. Added to this first English edition is Burger’s tale “The Laughter Artist,” an account of a nameless professional artist of cachinnation.
Also waiting in the wings is August Stramm, “pianistic abortion” applying for the post of orchestra minion despite being hard of hearing; and Anatol Zentgraf, private scholar and maniacal reader who is the alleged epicenter of an earthquake.
Hermann Burger was a Swiss author, critic and professor. He first achieved fame with his novel Schilten, the story of a mad village schoolteacher who teaches his students to prepare for death. At the end of his life, he was working on the autobiographical tetralogy Brenner, one of the high points of 20th-century German prose.
1989-1993, English
Softcover, approx. 96 pages, each, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
American Craft Council / US
$100.00 - In stock - Add to cart
Lot of 26 issues of American Craft magazine spanning 1989-1993. Packed with portfolios, profiles, essays, interviews, reviews, news, exhibition announcements, and an abundance of illustrations in colour and b/w that you would never find anywhere else (the time-capsule nature of magazines), documenting new developments in avant-garde and post-modern furniture, textiles, ceramics, metalware, glassware, jewellery, alongside traditional practices and historical articles (expressionist ceramics, new primitivism, funk sculpture, black mountain modernism...). Founded by Aileen Osborn Webb in 1941 as Craft Horizons, the magazine has been published by the nonprofit American Craft Council under the title American Craft since November 1979.
All copies Good—Very Good with varying degrees of light wear from age, reading or sun tanning/spine discolouration.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi strip),
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Shincho Sha / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock - Add to cart
First 1994 edition of Hair by Kishin Shinoyama, his glossy full-colour photo collection of elegant nudes where the focal point is women's pubic hair, the forbidden fruit of Japanese censorship laws.
Kishin Shinoyama was born in Tokyo in 1940. He began shooting award-winning advertising photography while still a student at Nihon University. After several years with the advertising agency Light Publicity, Shinoyama began working as an independent photographer in 1968. In the decades since, he has taken portraits of some of the most recognized people of our time, including Yukio Mishima, Momoe Yamaguchi, Rie Miyazawa, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In his Gekisha and Shinorama series, Shinoyama has used the latest technologies to create new modes of expression. His recent digital multimedia project digi KISHIN brings a new perspective to both photography and cinema He has dedicated his practice to exploring intimacy and the human body, as well as documenting his home place of Tokyo. His sensual photographs often depict the body within the architecture of the city or conversely, the inherent sculptural qualities of the naked human form.
Near Fine copy with good obi strip.
1981, English
Softcover, 84 pages, 29.3 x 29.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Wild & Woolley / Sydney
$150.00 - In stock - Add to cart
First 1981 edition of this large-format, full-colour monograph on the inimmitable American–Australian illustrator, artist and concept designer Ron Cobb (1937—2020), published by Wild & Woolley in Glebe, Sydney. Profusely illustrated, Colorvision is a chronological survey of the diverse artwork of Ron Cobb, from his early days in Los Angeles, where he was born, to Sydney, where he moved in 1972 and spent most of his life. With accompanying bio and texts and anecdotes from Cobb's collaborators, the book comprehensively surveys his earliest work in Hollywood, his Monsters covers, his radical political cartoon work for the 1960's Underground Press, through to the dominant focus of the book — his groundbreaking 1970's concept art for major films including Dark Star (1974), Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Conan the Barbarian (1982).
By the age of 18, Cobb, with no formal training in graphic illustration, was working as an animation "inbetweener" artist for Disney Studios in Burbank, California. He progressed to becoming a breakdown artist on the animation feature Sleeping Beauty (1959), the last Disney film to have cels inked by hand. After Sleeping Beauty was completed in 1957, Cobb was laid off by Disney and worked assorted jobs, painted covers for the legendary Monsters magazine, before being drafted and sent to Vietnam. After his discharge, Cobb began contributing to one of the first underground newspapers of the 1960s, New Age esotericist and editor Art Kunkin's Los Angeles Free Press, noted for its radical politics, as well as the Mother Earth News and other counterculture magazines. Cobb became regarded as one of the finest political cartoonists of the mid-1960s—early 1970s, outspoken on topics of war, ecology, and injustice. Cobb also created a symbol which was later featured on the Ecology Flag. Disenfranchise, Cobb moved to Sydney in 1972, and began contributing to the Australian alternative press, magazines such as The Digger, and published art books with Wild & Woolley. Cobb returned to cinema work when he worked with Dan O'Bannon to design the eponymous spaceship for the 1973 cult film, Dark Star (he drew the original design for the exterior of the Dark Star spaceship on a Pancake House napkin). After contributing designs for Alejandro Jodorowsky's uncompleted film adaption of Frank Herbert's novel Dune, Cobb was engaged by Lucasfilm to produce conceptual artwork for the space fantasy film Star Wars (1977). Working alongside artists John Mollo and Ralph McQuarrie, he created the designs for a number of exotic alien creatures for the Mos Eisley cantina scene. His incredible concept work continued with Alien (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Back to the Future (1985), The Abyss (1989), Total Recall (1990), and Southland Tales (2006), and directed the Australian comedy film Garbo in 1992. During the 1990s, Cobb developed characters and designs for Rocket Science Games, becoming an influential figure in video game design just as he had become in film.
Very Good copy with light handling wear only, light tanning, edge wear to covers.