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
Art
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2022, English
Flexcover (clothbound), 248 pages, 21 x 26 cm
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$72.00 - In stock -
Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Marc Camille Chaimowicz – Zig Zag and Many Ribbons… at MAMC Saint-Etienne in 2022—2023, this reference monograph revisits the conceptual and sensorial developments pursued by the artist since the 1970s.
Includes a ribbon drawn by the artist as an inserted bookmark. Edited by Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Anna Clifford. Text by Marie Canet. Designed by Zak Kyes.
Born in the aftermath of World War II (in 1947 in Paris) of a Polish father and a French mother, Marc Camille Chaimowicz moved as a child to the United Kingdom. He studied at Ealing, Camberwell, and the Slate School of Art in London. In new artistic times, careful to bring art and life closer, often using performance, the life of Marc Camille Chaimowicz has become a great workshop. Living in the exhibition spaces, he sets up hotels entrances, decorates them with his own artefacts, and serves there some tea to visitors with musical background. When it became an official art practice which was no longer subversive, Chaimowicz abandoned performance art. From 1975 to 1979, he designed the interior of his Approach Road flat. Wallpapers, curtains, videos he made while performing in his own decor: everything had been tailored-imagined, drawn, and conceived to turn his interior into a room conducive to reverie. From the 1980s onwards, decors and furniture set like in a theatre scenography took their place in museums. Since then, hundreds of exhibitions have featured the interiors series of this international artist.
Marie Canet is a French art critic, independent curator and professor of aesthetics at the Villa Arson (Nice).
1970, German / French
Softcover, 118 pages, 21 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft Helmhaus Zürich / Zürich
$200.00 - In stock -
Rare, important exhibition catalogue designed by Walter Diethelm, published on the occasion of the exceptional exhibition Text Buchstabe Bild (Text, Letter, Image), held at the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft Helmhaus Zürich, July 11—August 23, 1970. Preface by Felix Andreas Baumann. "The point is to present this literature, which is located between writing and images, text and graphics and around the tertium comparationis of typography, to an audience that is probably not too familiar with the techniques and variants of “concrete literature”—from the preface. An incredible and varied anthology of the experimental, poetic, graphic interplay of text and image, profusely illustrated in b/w, accompanied by texts in German and French by Stéphane Mallarmé, F.T. Marinetti, Tristan Tzara, Oyvind Fahlström, El Lissitzky, André Breton, Eugen Gomringer, Augusto de Campos, Decio Pignatari, Haroldo de Campos, Jan Hamilton Finlay, Pierre Garnier, Max Bense, Reinhard Döhl, Carlfriedrich Claus, Seiichi Niikuni, Henri Chopin, Franz Mon, Jiri Kolár, and Bob Cobbing.
Artists included: Stéphane Mallarmé, Arno Holz, Christian Morgenstern, F.T. Marinetti, Carlo Carrà, Lacerba, Ardengo Soffici, Hugo Ball, Georges Braque, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Amédée Ozenfant, Guillaume Apollinaire, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, Raoul Hausmann, Fernand Léger, Richard Hülsenbeck, Vincente Huidobro, Francis Picabia, Jean Pougny, Kurt Schwitters, Paul Klee, Bruno Adler, Jean Epstein, Theo Van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, Jozef Peeters, Sonja Delaunay-Terk, Iliazd, Friedrich Kiesler, Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Käthe Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Henryk Berlewi, Farkas Molnár, Zenit, Hendrik Nicolaas Werkmann, Walter Gropius, John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Le Corbusier, and Georges Hugnet.
Very Good ex-NGV library copy, well preserved with only light wear and "National Gallery of Victoria" light stamp to block edge and lower back-cover. No internal stamping/marking.
1967, English
Hardcover, 342 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
edition hansjörg meyer / Düsseldorf
$220.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1967 European hardcover edition of An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, published by the legendary edition hansjörg meyer. The book's editor, Emmett Williams, "as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance." An Anthology of Concrete Poetry was the first anthology on the international movement of Concrete poetry, published subsequently by the legendary Something Else Press in 1967 in America. The movement itself began in the early 1950s, in Germany–through Eugen Gomringer, who borrowed the term “concrete” from the art of his mentor, Max Bill–and in Brazil, through the Noigandres group, which included the de Campos brothers and Decio Pignatari. Over the course of the 1960s it exploded across Europe, America and Japan, as other protagonists of the movement emerged, such as Dieter Roth, Öyvind Fahlström, Ernst Jandl, bpNichol, Mary Ellen Solt, Jackson Mac Low, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bob Cobbing, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Pierre Garnier, Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin and Kitasono Katue. By the late 1960s, poet Jonathan Williams could proclaim: “If there is such a thing as a worldwide movement in the art of poetry, Concrete is it.” The work of the 77 writers collected in this anthology varies greatly in its aims and forms, but all can be said to emphasize the visual dimension of language, manipulating individual letters and minimal semantic units to produce poems that are for contemplating as much as for reading. Emmett Williams, the book’s editor, added explanatory commentary for the poems and biographies of their authors, making this volume–long out of print–the definitive anthology of this movement, which has so influenced artists and writers of subsequent generations.
Writers and artists included: Friedrich Achleitner, Alain Arias-Misson, H. C. Artmann, Ronaldo Azeredo, Stephen Bann, Carlo Belloli, Max Bense, Edgard Braga, Claus Bremer, Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Henri Chopin, Carl Friedrich Claus, Bob Cobbing, Paul de Vree, Reinhard Döhl, Torsten Ekbom, Öyvind Fahlström, Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Larry Freifeld, John Furnival, Heinz Gappmayr, Ilse and Pierre Garnier, Matthias Goeritz, Eugen Gomringer, Ludwig Gosewitz, Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hiršal, José Lino Grünewald, Brion Gysin, Al Hansen, Václav Havel, Helmut Heissenbüttel, Åke Hodell, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Ernst Jandl, Bengt Emil Johnson, Ronald Johnson, Hiro Kamimura, Kitasono Katue, Jiri Kolar, Ferdinand Kriwet, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Jackson Mac Low, Hansjörg Mayer, Cavan McCarthy, Franz Mon, Edwin Morgan, Maurizio Nannucci, bp Nichol, Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, Seiichi Niikuni, Ladislav Novák, Yuksel Pazarkaya, Décio Pignatari, Vlademir Dias Pino, Luiz Angelo Pinto, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Diter Rot, Gerhard Rühm, Aram Saroyan, John J. Sharkey, Edward Lucie Smith, Mary Ellen Solt, Adriano Spatola, Daniel Spoerri, Vagn Steen, Andre Thomkins, Enrique Uribe Valdivielso, Franz Van Der Linde, Franco Verdi, Emmett Williams, Jonathan Williams, Pedro Xisto and Fujitomi Yasuo.
"Emmett Williams, as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance. However it is far too soon to regard any anthology of Concrete Poetry as being definitive since the movement is extremely active and major new works have yet to appear in this most interesting of current poetry movements." -- from interior flap. Printed in black-and-white.
Very Good copy with some light edge wear to thick covers, general light age/tanning.
2015, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 592 pages, 24 x 18.5 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$89.00 - In stock -
Essays spanning three decades by one of the most rigorous art thinkers of our time grapple with formal and historical paradigms in twentieth century art.
These influential essays by the noted critic and art historian Benjamin Buchloh have had a significant impact on the theory and practice of art history. Written over the course of three decades and now collected in one volume, they trace a history of crucial artistic transitions, iterations, and paradigmatic shifts in the twentieth century, considering both the evolution and emergence of artistic forms and the specific historical moment in which they occurred.
Buchloh's subject matter ranges through various moments in the history of twentieth-century American and European art, from the moment of the retour à l'ordre of 1915 to developments in the Soviet Union in the 1920s to the beginnings of Conceptual art in the late 1960s to the appropriation artists of the 1980s. He discusses conflicts resulting from historical repetitions (such as the monochrome and collage/montage aesthetics in the 1910s, 1950s, and 1980s), the emergence of crucial neo-avantgarde typologies, and the resuscitation of obsolete genres (including the portrait and landscape, revived by 1980s photography). Although these essays are less monographic than those in Buchloh's earlier collection, Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry, two essays in this volume are devoted to Marcel Broodthaers, whose work remains central to Buchloh's theoretical concerns. Engaging with both formal and historical paradigms, Buchloh situates himself productively between the force fields of formal theory and historical narrative, embracing the discrepancies and contradictions between them and within individual artistic trajectories.
Contents
Formalism and Historicity (1977) • Marcel Broodthaers: Allegories of the Avant-Garde (1980) • Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Painting (1981) • Allegorical Procedures: Appropriations and Montage in Contemporary Art (1982) • The Museum Fictions of Marcel Broodthaers (1983) • From Faktura to Factography (1984) • Readymade, Objet Trouvé, Idée Reçue (1985) • The Primary Colors for the Second Time: A Paradigm Repetition of the Neo-Avantgarde (1986) • Cold War Constructivism (1986) • Conceptual Art 1962–1969: From the Aesthetics of Administration to the Critique of Institutions (1989) • Residual Resemblance: Three Notes on the Ends of Portraiture (1994) • Sculpture: Publicity and the Poverty of Experience (1996)
1989, English / German / French
Softcover (w. flexi-disc), 280 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Daadgalerie / Berlin
Gelbe Musik / Berlin
$350.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1989 edition of Broken Music, an essential compendium for records created by visual artists. Complete with original flexi-disc. The publication was edited by Ursula Block and Michael Glasmeier and published in 1989 by DAAD and Gelbe Musik, Berlin. Broken Music focuses on recordings, record-objects, artwork for records, and record installations made by thousands of artists between WWII and 1989.
It also includes essays by both editors as well as Theodor W. Adorno, René Block, Jean Dubuffet, Milan Knizak, László Moholy-Nagy, Christiane Seiffert, and Hans Rudolf Zeller, as well as a flexi disc of the Arditti Quartet performing Knizak’s “Broken Music.” The centerpiece of the publication is a nearly 200-page bibliography of artists’ records.
Works chosen for the publication revolved around four criteria: (1) record covers created as original work by visual artists; (2) record or sound-producing objects (multiples/editions/sculptures); (3) books and publications that contain a record or recorded-media object; and (4) records or recorded media that have sound by visual artists.
Artists documented in the volume include Vito Acconci, albrecht/d., Laurie Anderson, Guillaume Apollinaire, Karel Appel, Arman, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, John Baldessari, Hugo Ball, Claus van Bebber, John Bender, Harry Bertoia, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Claus Böhmler, Christian Boltanski, KP Brehmer, William Burroughs, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Henning Christiansen, Jean Cocteau, William Copley, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Hanne Darboven, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fischli and Weiss, R. Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Jack Goldstein, Peter Gordon, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Bernard Heidsieck, Holger Hiller, Richard Huelsenbeck, Isidore Isou, Marcel Janco, Servie Janssen, Jasper Johns, Joe Jones, Thomas Kapielski, Allan Kaprow, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Cheri Knight, Milan Knizak, Richard Kriesche, Christina Kubisch, Laibach, John Lennon, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Annea Lockwood, Paul McCarthy, Meredith Monk, Josef Felix Müller, Piotr Nathan, Hermann Nitsch, Albert Oehlen, Frank O’Hara, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, A.R. Penck, Tom Phillips, Robert Rauschenberg, The Red Crayola, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Gerhard Richter, Jim Rosenquist, Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Robert Rutman, Sarkis, Thomas Schmit, Conrad Schnitzler, Kurt Schwitters, Selten Gehörte Musik, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Strafe für Rebellion, Jean Tinguely, Moniek Toebosch, Tristan Tzara, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, Emmett Walsh, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner.
Ursula Block is a curator living in Berlin, Germany. From 1981 until 2014, she ran gelbe Musik, a gallery and record shop in Berlin that featured work by artists at the crossroads between music and art. She was married to curator René Block.
Michael Glasmeier is a professor, writer, and editor living in Berlin, Germany. Since the early 1980s, he has curated dozens of shows that explore the intersection between the visual arts, music, film, and language.
Very Good copy all-round, light cover/corner wear.
1972, German / English / French
Vinyl ring-binder (screen printed w. design by E. Ruscha), 650 pages +, 32 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
documenta / Kassel
$500.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of the only edition of the most elaborately designed, and lowest circulated Documenta catalogue, conceived by curator Harald Szeemann to accompany the fifth edition of Documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany.
Subtitled "100 Days of Inquiry into Reality -- Today's Imagery," curated by the team of Harald Szeemann, Jean-Christophe Ammann and Arnold Bode, Documenta 5 followed a lineage of comprehensive shows documenting conceptually and minimally charged artworks curated by Szeemann including Live in Your Head (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969), and Happenings and Fluxus (Kunstverein, Köln), 1970. The largest, most expensive and most diverse of any exhibition anywhere, Documenta 5 was criticized in 1972 as being “bizarre…vulgar…sadistic” by art critic and essayist Hilton Kramer and “monstrous… overtly deranged” by art historian and art critic Barbara Rose, yet it still resonates today as one of the most important exhibitions in history. Featuring the works of over 170 artists and an equally expansive variety of materials and subjects drawn from popular cultural materials, architecture, science fiction, kitsch objects, film, advertising, children's art, etc. in addition to the more anticipated international survey of new painting and sculpture - Documenta 5 valiantly attempted to bridge the gap between art, culture, science and the broader society. This massive tome is housed in the iconic orange vinyl-covered, two-ring binder screen printed with the famous ant design by Edward Ruscha. The binder holds a tabbed index of illustrated artist's pages and associated texts and material, largely in German, but also many in English. All registers are present apart from the usual missing 19-25 which were not directly integrated into the catalogue and had to be ordered by the visitor separately to become their own contribution. This very complete copy also includes the additional 80 page, hole-punched Documenta 5 guide book, with floor plans, complete listing of exhibited artworks, list of exhibitions, bibliography, and many gallery, museum and other related advertisements. More than a catalogue, this publication is a piece of art history in itself.
Includes artists: Vito Acconci, Vincenzo Agnetti, Peter Alexander, John de Andrea, Giovanni Anselmo, Arbeitszeit, Archigram, Chuck Arnoldi, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Ashkin, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Georg Baselitz, Lothar Baumgarten, Robert Bechtle, Gottfried Bechtold, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Karl Oskar Blase, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Christian Boltanski, Claudio Bravo, George Brecht, K.P. Brehmer, Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brouwn, Günter Brus, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Castelli, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chuck Close, Tony Conrad, Ron Cooper, Bill Copley, Joseph Cornell, Robert Cottingham, Paul Cotton, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, David Deutsch, Jan Dibbets, Herbert Distel, Gino de Dominicis, Marcel Duchamp, John Dugger, Don Eddy, Franz Eggenschwiler, Ger van Elk, Richard Estes, Luciano Fabro, John C. Fernie, Robert Filliou, Jud Fine, Joel Fisher, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Hamish Fulton, Franz Gertsch, Gilbert & George, Ralph Goings, Hubert Gojowczyk, Dan Graham, Walter Grasskamp, Nancy Graves, Hans Haacke, Duane Hanson, Guy Harloff, Michael Harvey, Haus-Rucker-Co, Auguste Herbin, Eva Hesse, Rebecca Horn, Jean Olivier Hucleux, Douglas Huebler, Jörg Immendorff, Will Insley, Rolf Iseli, Ken Jacobs, Neil Jenney, Alfred Jensen, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Max G. Kaminski, Howard Kanovitz, Edward Kienholz, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhofer, Jannis Kounellis, Tom Kovachevich, Piotr Kowalski, David Lamelas, Barry Le Va, Jean LeGac, Alfred Leslie, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Ingeborg Luscher, Inge Mahn, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Etienne Martin, Richard McLean, David Medalla, Fernando Melani, Jim Melchert, Mario Merz, Gustav Metzger, Bernd Minnich, Malcolm Morley, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, Hermann Nitsch, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Blinky Palermo, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, A.R. Penck, Giuseppe Penone, Vettor Pisani, Sigmar Polke, Stephen Posen, Markus Raetz, Arnulf Rainer, Gerhard Richter, Klaus Rinke, Dorothea Rockburne, Peter Roehr, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ulrich Ruckriem, Robert Ryman, John Salt, Salvo, Lucas Samaras, Paul Sarkisian, Jean-Frederic Schnyder, Ben Schonzeit, Werner Schroeter, HA Schult, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Fritz Schwegler, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Allan Shields, Katharina Sieverding, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Klaus Staeck, Paul Staiger, Jorge Stever, Robert Strubin, Paul Thek, Wayne Thiebaud, Andre Thomkins, David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Ben Vautier, W + B Hein, Franz Erhard Walther, Robert Watts, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, John Wesley, H.C. Westermann, William Wiley, Rolf Winnewisser, Tom Wudl, Klaus Wyborny, La Monte Young, Peter Young, Gilberto Zorio.
Catalogue also includes Bob Projansky and Seth Siegelaub's "The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement." This "Agreement form has been drafted by Bob Projansky, a New York lawyer, after my [Siegelaub] extensive discussions and correspondence with over 500 artists, dealers, lawyers, collectors, museum people, critics and other concerned people involved in the day-to-day workings of the international art world. The Agreement has been designed to remedy some generally acknowledged inequities in the art world, particularly artists' lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it. The Agreement for has been written with special awareness of the current ordinary practices and economic realitites of the art world, particularly its private, cash and informal nature, with careful regard for the interests and motives of all concerned. It is expected to be the standard form for the transfer and sale of all contemporary art, and has been made as fair, simple and useful as possible. It can be used either as presented here or slightly altered to fit your specific situation. If the following information does not answer all your questions consult your attorney." -- from Agreement's cover. Copies of the contract are individually included in English, Germany, and French editions.
Very Good, complete (as issued) copy. Very minor wear.
2020, English
Hardcover, 368 pages, 17.8 x 24.8 cm
Published by
Siglio Press / Los Angeles
$82.00 - In stock -
In July 1971, Bernadette Mayer embarked on an experiment: For one month she exposed a roll of 35mm film and kept a daily journal. The result was a conceptual work that investigates the nature of memory, its surfaces, textures and material. Memory is both monumental in scope (over 1100 photographs, two hundred pages of text and six hours of audio recording) and a groundbreaking work by a poet who is widely regarded as one of the most innovative writers of her generation. Presaging Mayer’s durational and constraint-based diaristic works of poetry, it also evinces her extraordinary—and unheralded—contribution to conceptual art.
Mayer has called Memory “an emotional science project,” but it is far from confessional. Rather, this boldly experimental record follows the poet’s eye as she traverses early morning into night, as quotidian minutiae metamorphose into the lyrical, as her stream of consciousness becomes incantatory. The space of memory in Mayer’s work is hyper-precise but also evanescent and expansive. In both text and image, Mayer constructs the mercurial, fleeting consciousness of the present moment from which memory is—as she says—“always there, to be entered, like the world of dreams or an ongoing TV show.”
This publication brings together the full sequence of images and text for the first time in book form, making space for a work that has been legendary but mostly invisible. Originally exhibited in 1972 by pioneering gallerist Holly Solomon, it was not shown again in its entirety until 2016. The text was published without the photographs in 1975 and has been long out of print.
ABOUT BERNADETTE MAYER
Bernadette Mayer (b. 1945, Brooklyn, NY) is the author of over thirty books including the acclaimed Midwinter Day (1982), a book-length poem written during a single day in Lenox, Massachusetts, as well as the The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994), and most recently Works and Days (2016) which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Associated with the New York School as well as the Language poets, Mayer has also been an influential teacher and editor. In the art world, she is best known for her collaboration with Vito Acconci as editors of the influential mimeographed magazine 0 TO 9.
2023, English / Dutch
Softcover, 512 pages, 21 × 29.7 cm
Published by
Nai010 Publishers / Rotterdam
$160.00 - In stock -
A comprehensive volume on the influential Dutch gallery that united American and European conceptualism For more than 33 years, the Amsterdam gallery Art & Project (1968-2001) played a pivotal role in the development of contemporary art within the Netherlands and beyond. Founders Adriaan van Ravesteijn (1938-2015) and Geert van Beijeren (1933-2005) presented a pioneering program of work by both national and international artists, including Marinus Boezem, Stanley Brouwn, Jan Dibbets, Charlotte Posenenske, Gilbert & George, Lawrence Weiner and Sol LeWitt, among many others. The cofounders published a total of 156 bulletins to draw attention to their exhibitions, and the bulletins quickly evolved into an experimental medium—from carriers of conceptual artists' ideas to conceptual artworks themselves.
Art & Project: A History examines the gallery's exhibitions, bulletins, social networks and international legacy. Replete with extensive research and previously unpublished visual material, this massive book provides an indispensable overview of the history of conceptual art in the Netherlands.
Text by Jip Hinten, Isabelle Bisseling, Ton Geerts, Regine Ehleither.
Already out-of-print at source.
2021, Japanese / English
Hardcover (with obi), 368 pages, 20 x 30 cm
Published by
Toyota Municipal Museum of Art / Aichi
$130.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful hardcover catalogue published in Japan to the exhibition Beuys + Palermo touring three venues across Japan in 2021.
Joseph Beuys and Blinky Palermo were from different generations, but both experienced WWII and the postwar reconstruction, as teacher and pupil. One of the most important artists since World War II, Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) asserted that true capital lies in the creativity of human beings, and viewing the whole of society as sculpture, set out to change it. Beuys is also known for his role in nurturing numerous artists in his capacity as an educator. One such pupil was Blinky Palermo (1943–1977). The modest abstract works that form the legacy of this painter active for just a short few years from the mid-1960s up to his early demise, were an attempt to quietly overturn our perceptions, and social systems, via the visceral experience of color and form, all the while reconstructing the compositional elements of painting. The works of these two superficially contrasting German artists were alike in that both Beuys and Palermo endeavored to restore art to the status of a raw, live endeavor, Beuys indeed later acknowledging his former student to be the artist closest to himself. Composed primarily of works from the 1960s and ‘70s, documentation from the period and detailed texts, “Beuys + Palermo” explores the features of each of these two artists, while simultaneously searching for the latent power of their praxis in their involvement and overlap with each other.
2022, English
Softcover, 116 pages, 12 x 17 cm
Published by
Floating Opera Press / Berlin
$38.00 - In stock -
Within the history of contemporary visual art, the canon of Institutional Critique has emerged as a response to the institution and how it embeds itself in society. After Institutions expands the definition of Institutional Critique to develop a broader understanding of contemporary art’s sociopolitical entanglements, looking beyond what cultural institutions were to what they are and what they might become.
1974, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 21 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$30.00 - In stock -
Environments and Happenings by painter and poet Adrian Henri, published by Thames & Hudson in 1974, forms one of the first mainstream book surveys to trace the phenomenon of environmental/performative/total living artworks that became prevalent in the 1960s/70s. This historical study is profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with many international works from Fluxus to Zero to Dolle Mina to Nouveau Réalisme to Provo to Gutai to The Situationists and much more. Includes the works of Joseph Beuys, Clarence Schmidt, Ray Johnson, Öyvind Fahlström, Paul Thek, Yves Klein, Allan Kaprow, Hans Haacke, Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, Guerllia Art Action Group, Daniel Spoerri, Wolf Vostell, Gustav Metzger, Peter Kuttner, Jackson Pollock, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, Robert Morris, Situationist International, Ferdinand Kriwet, Klaus Rinke, Duane Hanson, A-Yo, Meret Oppenheim, Space Structure Workshop, Ferdinand Cheval, Dolle Mina (Mad Mina), Robert Smithson, Jeff Nuttall, Stefan Wewerka, Christo, Dennis Oppenheim, Vladimir Tatlin, Provo, Barry Flanagan, Andy Warhol, Meredith Monk, Atsuko Tanaka, Kazuo Shiraga, Ed Keinholz, Yayoi Kusama, Piero Gilardi, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Claes Oldenburg, Les Levine, James Rosenquist, Red Grooms, Tom Wesselmann, George Segal, Eduardo Paolozzi, and many many more. Includes reproductions of performance scripts, partial chronology, etc.
Very Good copy, previous owner name to front endpaper.
1991, English
Softcover, 156 pages, 25 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Whitney Museum of American Art / New York
$50.00 - Out of stock
Great catalogue published in 1991 on the occasion of the exhibition Mind over Matter: Concept and Object, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, October 3, 1990 - January 6, 1991. Curated by Richard Armstrong the exhibition showcased the work of Ashley Bickerton, Ronald Jones, Nayland Blake, Liz Larner, Tishan Hsu, and Annette Lemieux. These young artists use objects and materials to create idea-oriented painting and sculpture. Representatives of a third generation of conceptual artists, they have turned from the self-conscious absorption of formalist art, addressing instead social as well as aesthetic issues. This articulate generation, conversant with art historical precedents, explores larger fields of knowledge, in a conscious rejection of Modernism and post-Modernism.
Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with extensive sections devoted to each artist, including interviews and statements, alongside curator's essay and a full list of exhibited works.
Good copy with some wear to cover and spine. Very Good throughout interior.
1985, German
Softcover, 736 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Nationalgalerie / Berlin
$40.00 - In stock -
Enormous 700+ page volume about "Art in the Federal Republic of Germany 1945—1985", published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, September 27, 1985—January 21, 1986. Profusely illustrated in colour with many works by Vostell, Baselitz, Beuys, Polke, Richter, Palermo, Klapheck, Darboven, Schultze, Uecker, Horn, Lüpertz, Haacke, Ruthenbeck, Antes, the Bechers, Rinke, Gerz, Erhard Walther, Penck, Knowles, Higgins, June Paik, Maciunas, Christiansen, Filliou, Brecht, Kriwet, Roth, Ulrichs, and many more, accompanied by texts in German, bibliography and index.
Good copy, some rubbing to the cover boards, light wear, bumping with age/size.
2023, Japanese
Softcover, 168 pages, 20.5 x 20.5 cm
Published by
Ribonsha / Japan
$70.00 - In stock -
Photo book of works by Japanese avant-garde artist and writer, Genpei Akasegawa (1937—2014), refreshing his legacy as an artist who pioneered ways of thinking about art under capitalism that still feel like trenchant critiques decades later.
Genpei Akasegawa was not only an artist who successfully transitioned from the avant-garde to the broader realm of popular culture but also an award-winning writer and photographer. He emerged in the Japanese art scene in the 1960s. Best known internationally as a member of the influential, anti-art collective Hi-Red Center (1963–64), Genpei Akasegawa is one of the all-time trickster figures of Japanese art history. The famous Model 1,000-Yen Note Incident (1963), which involved a real-life police investigation and trial, solidified his reputation as an inspired conceptualist. In 1986, Akasegawa, and his collaborators, including the Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori, formed a new group called the Rojō Kansatsu Gakkai (Street Observation Society). Within this group, Akasegawa showcased a series of photographs featuring Tokyo's bizarre and overlooked architectural features. These structures, referred to by Akasegawa as 'Thommasons', were often disregarded by society but were repurposed by Akasegawa as objects of artistic value.
Keiko Toyoda, of Shiseido Gallery, invited six midcareer artists to select photographs from 40,000 unexhibited 35mm reversal film prints, shot between 1985 and 2006, which Akasegawa kept carefully filed in his study. Shuta Hasunuma, Zon Ito, Sachiko Kazama, Yuko Mohri, Yuta Nakamura and Yasuhiro Suzuki each chose around 20 prints each, presented in this first survey book of Akasegawa's photography, from his ‘Hyperart Thomasson’ project of the 1970s onward: photographs of functionless objects embedded and preserved in everyday spaces despite their lack of utility, to capturing everything from odd lines scored into a patch of green asphalt to table settings and cat portraits (in pre-meme-era 1993).
In addition to his artistic work, Akasegawa was also a prolific writer and critic, having authored over 20 publications on art and culture.
2023, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 21.6 x 13.9 cm
Published by
Divided Publishing / London
$32.00 - In stock -
"Few artists dig deep into themselves like this: an extraordinary insight into the process of producing art."—Cosey Fanni Tutti
To make art is to understand how you are, to notice your prejudices and assumptions about value, to acknowledge your hand in an unequal world, and to recognise how you institute yourself – all while letting go of the outcome of work. Bosses replaces strategies of high performance with acts of trust. It is a book about doubt, about maintaining that condition and its untenable faith. About becoming a parent. Where individualism dissolves into dependence, ‘like when you get into a bath that’s the same temperature as your body, or when the summer comes and the wind touches your skin’.
"I would call Bosses auto-factual. Leung accounts for work and life co-authored with facts, conjuring a prosaic and beautiful sociality. Her negations are profound, they hold and express the social apophatically. What is not here almost feels like a choice, and the thing convulses."—Ed Atkins
"Some events you can never correct. One of them is childbirth. If you want to know, here it is."—Fanny Howe
1979, English
Softcover, 366 pages, 30 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Frauenliteratur Verlag Hermine Fees / Germany
$440.00 - In stock -
Very rare first 1979 English edition of one the finest artist's books and photographic projects of the 1970's, Let's Take Back Our Space (“Female” and “Male” Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures / with 2037 photographs / In the second part of the book: Man's stuggle against womanpower and the effects upon body language throughout the course of history.)
The German artist Marianne Wex started out as a painter before producing her encyclopaedic photographic project "Let’s Take Back Our Space", one of the great unsung works of 1970s feminist history and cultural analysis. Marianne Wex bases her work on the assumption that body language is a result of sex-based, patriarchal socialization, affecting all of our other "feminine" and "masculine" role behavior. Born in Hamburg in 1937, Wex studied at the city’s University of Fine Arts, where she later taught for seventeen years. In 1979, she published Let’s Take Back Our Space as a book in both a German and English edition, to accompany an exhibition in the Neue Gesellschaft fair Bildende Kiinste in Berlin, in connection with the show Women Artists International, 1877 to 1977. It is an in-depth visual survey comprised of 5,000 to 6,000 photographs of body postures, taken between 1974 and 1977, assembled into dozens of thematic grids: Seated persons—leg and feet; arm and hand positions; standing persons—leg and feet; arm and hand positions; people sitting and laying on the ground; arm and leg positions; and so on. The images were culled from a huge range of sources—re-photographed advertisements, reportage, fashion magazines, pornography, studio portraits, the history of art—and many were taken on the streets of Hamburg by Wex, who proposes that our smallest, most unconscious gestures speak volumes about the power relations of gender in daily life. The work was expanded to include an extensive historical section for the book, where Marianne Wex investigates the body language shown in sculptures of the last 3,000 to 4,000 years, and comes to the conclusion that the ideals of body language and body forms have never been so different between the sexes as they are today.
Very Good copy. General light wear/ageing, tanning to cover, but a most lovely copy of the rare first edition from 1979. A more common reprint edition was published in 1984.
2022, English
Softcover (thread-bound), 28 pages + A3 insert, 29.7 x 21 cm
Ed. of 100, hand-initialed and numbered.,
Published by
Rose Nolan / Melbourne
$50.00 - In stock -
Working Models For / From Someone's Life is a new artist's book by Melbourne-based artist Rose Nolan, published in a limited edition of 100 copies, each hand-numbered and initialed by Nolan, designed by the artist with Warren Taylor. The volume comprises photographic documentation by Christian Capurro of Nolan's "models", accompanied by text by Ingrid Periz. "Rose Nolan calls the constructions pictured here working models, taking the name of similar objects used in the architectural design process where they are used to check proportion, volume and shape. Occasionally this process of checking prompts a rethink, and a drawing is corrected. Unlike their namesakes, Nolan's models won't prompt any design rethink or correction.Theirs may be a harder task.As she tells me, electronically: "My small models don't have to function (in Real Life) in anyway, other than to stand up for themselves:""—from text by Periz.
"We can think of the models as Cubist "portraits" of fictitious buildings; they are additionally self-portraits of Rose Nolan, Rose Nolan the architect of the buildings and Rose Nolan the consumer, buyer of Apple products, fine French candles, Chanel, Marimekko and Fab, the laundry detergent."
Includes A3 insert of all models as folded poster / catalogue.
Rose Nolan (b. 1959) is an Australian visual artist based in Melbourne working across painting, installation, sculpture, photography, prints and book production. Her practice regularly oscillates between the discrete and the monumental and is informed by a strong interest in architecture, interior and graphic design – combining formal concerns with the legacies of modernism. Nolan’s practice is known for its investigation of the formal and linguistic qualities of words, directly using language to transform the architectural space they inhabit. By making language concrete in this way meaning is allowed to be approached differently.
Nolan employs a radically reduced palette of red and white, and simple utilitarian materials and methods, in an exploration of personal, playful and often self-effacing narratives. Each work describes a concern for economy; a desire to be responsive to site; an interest in seriality and repetition; and the importance of language, interactivity, and the experience of the viewer.
2023, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 16.6 x 23 cm
Published by
Memo Review / Naarm
$35.00 - In stock -
Issue 1 of Memo’s first glossy annual magazine features an extended artist focus on Archie Moore, the 2024 Venice Biennale Australian Representative, with essays by Rex Butler, Tara Heffernan, Tristen Harwood, and Hilary Thurlow.
Audrey Schmidt unveils a covetous history of tall-poppy takedowns in the Melbourne art world. Philip Brophy rips into Hollywood’s shallow art-world playbook, while Cameron Hurst checks-in with the once-celebrated Spike magazine cultural critic, Dean Kissick, in his post-zenith era. The Manhattan Art Review’s Sean Tatol visits the Dutch artist group, KIRAC, reporting on their legal woes with French literature’s ageing enfant terrible, Michel Houellebecq.
We also have essays and reviews on art from all around Australia and the world. Amelia Winata turns up the heat on Melbourne’s public museums as Callum McGrath uncovers a typically Eurocentric failure at the heart of British art historian Claire Bishop’s recent Artforum essay on research-based art. Helen Hughes writes on Helen Johnson’s The Birth of an Institution (2022) and Chelsea Hopper and Shaune Lakin on Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993). Stars like Isa Genzken, Royal Academy graduates like Anna Higgins, cult-favourites like Jas H. Duke — Memo features all this and more.
Texts by Adam Ford, Aimee Dodds, Amelia Winata, Anastasia Murney, Andrew Harper, Audrey Schmidt, Callum McGrath, Cameron Hurst, Camille Orel, Chelsea Hopper, Darren Jorgensen, Gemma Topliss, Giles Fielke, Helen Hughes, Hilary Thurlow, Lévi McLean, Loren Kronemyer, Maraya Takoniatis, Paris Lettau, Philip Brophy, Rayleen Forester, Rebecca Edwards, Rex Butler, Sam Beard, Sean Tatol, Shaune Lakin, Susie Russell, Tara Heffernan, Tristen Harwood, Verónica Tello, Victoria Perin.
1996, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Power Plant / Canada
$240.00 - Out of stock
The rare, excellent and infamous catalogue documenting the 1996 Canadian exhibition entitled "The American Trip". Organized by curator Philip Monk, "The American Trip looks at the continuing fascination of artists with the margins of American society. The exhibition is devoted to the persistence of the “theme of the outlaw” in the works of the contemporary artists Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Cady Noland, and Richard Prince." This very substantial four person show was particularly notable as it represents one of Cady Noland's final authorized exhibitions before calculatedly withdrawing from the gallery and Museum system at the turn of the Century. Despite the fact that Cady Noland is increasingly seen as one of the most influential American artists of the period, there are no monographs on her work. This catalogue is one of the few books to include a critical text specific to Noland or to reproduce a significant number of works at the time, including her iconic contribution to the exhibition of nine free standing ink-on-aluminum pieces featuring imagery of Lee Harvey Oswald, Patty "Tanya" Hearst, and The Charles Manson Family. Additionally notable about the publication is that due to potential legal issues surrounding some of the Larry Clark photographs, the Power Plant was forced to obscure them by permanently glueing facing pages 20 and 21 together as an alternative to destroying the entire print run. A publisher's slip inserted declares: Due to legal issues, pages 20-21 have been permanently sealed. Profusely illustrated throughout with the works of all the artists (many unsealed, uncensored Clark photographs, Richard Prince's biker chicks series, Goldin's NY transgender photographs, et al) along with accompanying essay by Monk on American culture's fascination with the outlaw, outcasts, and margins of society. It recognizes the role artists have played in the dialogue between the mainstream and margins in normalizing the image of the outcast. The title refers to a constant theme in American cultural dynamics of the rejection of family and reformation of community, now expressed in the subcultures of the margins. What starts as a celebration by artists, is appropriated by the mainstream media and ends as a panic in the press. Nowhere is the fear greater than in the heart of the American family that the enemy is within and that the kids are not "alright." The images of individuals in the exhibition show them not to be traditional outlaws. They are, as the artists celebrate, the girl-or boy-next door.
Very Good copy.
2023, English
Softcover, 180 pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Uh Books / Amsterdam
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin
$25.00 - In stock -
Riffing off the title, this volume includes Catherine Damman interviewing Carolyn Lazard – an artist whose conceptual and often spare videos, sculptures, installations, and performances explore the full amplitude of relation, in addition a feature on contemporary artist Tishan Hsu, whose practice examines the “embodiment of technology”, plus contributions by time-based media artist Silvia Kolbowski, for whom political resistance, the unconscious, and structures of spectatorship are a central concern of all her projects; choreographer and dancer Yvonne Rainer; and science fiction author Octavia Butler. [...] Lee Lozano, Sturtevant, Margarethe Raspé, Jef Geys, Martin Wong, Bernadette Mayer, Louise Lawler, Sarah Rapson, Ketty La Rocca, Stanley Brouwn, Lutz Bacher, Hanne Darboven, Pope L., Silvia Kolbowski, Ilmari Kalkkinen, Henrik Olesen, Otto Wagner...
1977, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 19 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
George Paton Gallery / Parkville
$35.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published in 1977 on the occasion of the exhibition Videotapes by Women from the Los Angeles Women's Video Centre, October 26—November 3, George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne, Parkville. Texts on each video work, screening program, with introduction by Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers, essay by Candace Compton. Works by Martha Roler, Candace Compton, Nancy Angelo, Anne Prutzman, Eileen Griffin, Jennifer Kotter, Holly O'Konski, Suzanne Lacy, Barbara Smith, Leslie Carslon, Claudia Queen, Adele Shaules, Linda Henry, Ilene Segalove Linda Montana, Nancy Heath Angelo, Marge Dean, Sandra Tabori, Susan Roberta Mogul, Sheila Ruth, Jan Zimmerman.
Los Angeles Women's Video Center founded in 1976 by Nancy Angelo, Candace Compton, and Annette Hunt in 1976 and joined by Jerri Allyn in 1977, was committed making video production accessible to women artists. Through its productions about socially concerned video art, documentation of WB programs, the LAWVC was active in informing the public about women's issues and concerns.
Very Good copy, light pinching to spine.
1971, Dutch / English
Softcover (2 volumes), 232 pages + 96 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sonsbeek / Arnhem
$180.00 - In stock -
Scarce Sonsbeek '71 complete 2 volume catalogue set, published in conjunction with exhibition held at Sonsbeek Park, Arnhem, June 19 - August 15, 1971. Sonsbeek Park had been the site of international sculpture exhibitions periodically from 1949. The concept of sonsbeek '71, which was described in the catalogue as an adventure and a dynamic manifestation, was both revolutionary and controversial. It made a radical departure from the usual format by expanding the conceptual and physical territory "beyond the boundaries" and commissioning site-specific works that appeared throughout all of Holland. Along with sculpture, installation, environmental works, and performances, the exhibition aimed to make visitors aware of the influence of (new) communication technologies, such as the telephone and the telex machine, on the perception of space, distance and time. An on-site film and audio studio produced new video works and an offset printing press where artists' plans could be printed was installed, with new artists' publications being sponsored by the exhibition (such as Ruscha's Dutch Details; the artist's book statement reproduced herein). This catalogue itself becomes a vital element of the conceptual activity, reproducing documentation of the works, statements, drawings, instructions, and many artist page-works created specifically for the publications. Edited by Geert van Beijeren and Coosje Kapteyn, with texts (in English and Dutch) by art historian Willem A. L. Beeren and others.
Participating artists include Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Carl Andre, Ben d`Armagnac, Richard Artschwager, Bruce Baillie, Douwe Jan Bakker, Joseph Beuys, Ronald Bladen, Boezem, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Javacheff Christo, Tony Conrad, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Ad Dekkers, Jan Dibbets, Ger van Elk, Pieter Engels, Groep Enschede, E. R. G., Hans Eykelboom, Barry Flanagan, Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Ken Jacobs, joepat, Donald Judd, On Kawara, W. Knoebel, Hans Koetsier, Axel van der Kraan, Peter Kubelka, George Landlow, Standish Dyer Lawder, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Moving Mass, Yutaka Matsuzawa, Mario Merz, Moore, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Robert Nelson, Groep Noord-Brabant, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Panamarenko, Egbert Philips, Emilio Prini, Klaus Rinke, Peter Roehr, Ulrich Rückriem, Edward Ruscha, Fred Sandback, Jean-Michel Sanejouand, Wim T. Schippers, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Eric Siegel, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Kenneth Snelson, Michael Snow, Ellen Edinoff, Koert Stuyf, Shinkichi Tajiri, Sajiki and Yokoyama Tenjo, Carel Visser, Andre Volten, Hans de Vries, Lex Wechgelaar, Lawrence Weiner, Joyce Wieland.
Very Good copies each, with light wear/tanning/creasing, otherwise tight and well preserved.
1972, English / Dutch
3 books, softcover, approx 360 photo cards, 13.5 x 17 cm
Ed of 700 copies,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sonsbeek / Arnhem
$280.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce, incredible Sonsbeek '72 complete 3 volume catalogue set, published in a limited edition of 700 copies by Sonsbeek, Arnhem, 1972. The tripartite catalogue arose from the notes and photos made of an important group exhibition where artists submitted installation or performance pieces, executed during the period November '71 - June '72. Each volume forms an alphabetical index of artist photographic cards (#1 A-H, #2 I-R, #3 S-Z), totalling approx. 360, each with the data of their artwork on the front and photographic documentation on the verso. Very beautifully executed.
Participating artists include Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Joseph Beuys, Marinus Boezem, Daniel Buren, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets, Ad Dekkers, Ger van Elk, Hans Eykelboom, Barry Flanagan, Hollis Frampton, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Panamarenko, Edward Ruscha, Wim T. Schippers, Lawrence Weiner, Tenjo Sajiki, Michael Snow, Kenneth Snelson, Eric Siegel, Paul Sharits, Wim Crouwel, Yokoyama, Claes Oldenburg, Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Jack Moore, Yutaka Mutsuzawa, Peter Kubelka, Hans Koetsier, Ken Jacobs, Walter de Maria, Dan Graham, Hanne Darboven, Marinus Boezem.
Very Good copies each, with light wear, spine tanning/creasing, otherwise tight and well preserved.
1968, English
Softcover (stapled), 20 pages, 20.4 x 20.2 cm
Edition of 1000,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Seth Siegelaub / New York
$360.00 - In stock -
Very rare artist book by Douglas Huebler, published in 1968 by Seth Siegelaub, New York. This important historical catalog is the 1st for a show in which the catalog was the show itself.
First and only printing, in an edition of 1000 copies.
“The existence of each sculpture is documented by it’s documentation.
The documentation takes the form of photographs, maps, drawings and descriptive language.
The marker “material“ and the shape described by the location of the markers have no special significance, other than tot o demark the limits of the piece.
The permanence and destiny oft he markers have no special significance.
The duration pieces exist only in the documentation of the marker’s destiny within a selected period of time.
The proposed projects do not differ from the other pieces as idea, but do differ to he extent of their material substance." - from introduction by Douglas Huebler.
Very Good copy with light wear to covers, rubbing to bottom right corner.