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:
SHOP CLOSED FOR SUMMER
RE—OPEN JAN 2
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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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.
2016, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 23.8 x 31.8 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$60.00 - Out of stock
HIPPIES USE SIDE DOOR. THE YEAR 2014 HAS LOST THE PLOT, includes more than 100 works by Cosima von Bonin, ranging from her earliest to completely new works.
This retrospective exhibition also shows how von Bonin’s work has moved more and more in the direction of installations that increasingly come to take possession of the space they are placed in.
Another typical feature of her work is a complex network of relations between the fine arts and music that she has established, including longstanding colleagues and friends in her exhibition projects.
At mumok Vienna, Tocotronic and Phantom Ghost accompany the exhibition with concerts, and two further new formations from von Bonin’s circle of friends and acquaintances, The 3 Ypsilons and The Ypsilon Five, perform at the exhibition. The mumok museum facade gains a new balcony for this exhibition, with a figure standing on it and retching.
Appearances by Isa Genzken, Mike Kelley, Carl Andre, Martin Kippenberger, Christophe Verfaille, Okka-Esther Hungerbühler, Cady Noland, Helmut Baar, Colin de Land, Paul Thek, Michael Krebber...
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cosima von Bonin: HIPPIES USE SIDE DOOR. THE YEAR 2014 HAS LOST THE PLOT at mumok, Vienna, 4 October 2014 – 18 January 2015.
Edited by Karola Kraus
Texts by Clara Drechsler, Diedrich Diederichsen, Manfred Hermes.
2010, English
Hardcover cloth bound w. Audio CD, 320 pages (200 color pages), 23.4 x 18.3 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / As new,
Published by
Kunsthaus Bregenz / Austria
$80.00 - Out of stock
Cosima von Bonin, one of today’s most prominent conceptual artists, uses sculptures, installations, films, paintings, and social relationships in her work. A recurring motif is the textile and dimensional transformation of objects, which she removes from their everyday contexts, thus giving rise to completely new perceptual processes and references. This publication on Cosima von Bonin not only includes the new and already existing work series being shown at the Kunsthaus Bregenz but also compiles the most comprehensive index of Cosima von Bonin’s oeuvre possible to date, with images and data on each piece.
Along with an overview by Yilmaz Dziewior, John Welchman’s contribution puts Bonin’s work in an art historical context. Mark von Schlegell has written a fictional essay that freely associates with and makes reference to aspects of the artist’s work.
A carefully researched appendix rounds off this standard work on Cosima von Bonin.
2016, English
Hardcover, 312 pages, 22 x 29 cm
Published by
Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College / New York
$67.00 - Out of stock
'Invisible Adversaries' was a major exhibition curated by Lauren Cornell and Tom Eccles inspired by the 1976 feature film by the radical Austrian artist Valie Export. The film presents a woman’s struggle to retain her sense of self against hostile alien forces that appear increasingly ubiquitous, colonizing the minds of all those around her. Motifs from the film – among them, architecture’s influence on identity; feminist critique; and the power of political fantasy – operate as filters through which to consider significant pieces from the Marieluise Hessel Collection.
With works by over 50 artists including Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Chantal Akerman, Kai Althoff, Janine Antoni, Ida Applebroog, Phyllida Barlow, Lynda Benglis, Barbara Bloom, Paul Chan, Patty Chang, Anne Collier, Rineke Dijkstra, Trisha Donnelly, VALIE EXPORT, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, K8 Hardy, Rachel Harrison, Mona Hatoum, Roni Horn, Emily Jacir, Annette Kelm, Leigh Ledare, Nikki S. Lee, Sarah Lucas, Tala Madani, Christian Marclay, Helen Marten, Ulrike Müller, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Philippe Parreno, William Pope.L, Seth Price, Magali Reus, Rachel Rose, Thomas Ruff, Ilene Segalove, Cindy Sherman, Stephen Shore, Diane Simpson, Lorna Simpson, Jo Spence, Hito Steyerl, Tunga, Gillian Wearing, Martha Wilson, and Krzysztof Wodiczko, amongst others.
This 300-page publication designed by Zak Group with original essays by nine influential writers, scholars and artists: Zach Blas, Johanna Fateman, Nav Haq, Vít Havránek, J. Hoberman, Alex Kitnick, Tavia Nyong’O, Lauren O’Neill-Butler, and Julian Rose. The catalogue also includes original interviews with VALIE EXPORT, Trevor Paglen, and Hito Steyerl.
1975, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket in cardboard slipcase), 231 pages, 29.5 x 28 cm
1st German Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Editions André Sauret / Monte Carlo
$95.00 - Out of stock
The stunning 1975 cloth-hardcover César monograph from Monte Carlo publishing house Éditions André Sauret. With text by the great Pierre Restany and large beautifully printed illustrations of over 200 of César's sculptural works in colour and black and white, including a wealth of his incredible Compressions and Expansions, along with a list of all works, biography, bibliography. Designed by Peter Knapp and Walter Rospert and printed in France. This is the 1975 German edition with dustjacket, original cardboard slipcase.
César Baldaccini (1 January 1921 in Marseille - 6 December 1998 in Paris), usually called César was a noted French sculptor. César was at the forefront of the Nouveau Réalisme movement with his radical compressions (compacted automobiles, discarded metal, or rubbish), expansions (polyurethane foam sculptures), and fantastic representations of animals and insects in bronze. His sculptural vision has heavy influenced the work of many for generations since.
2010, English / French
Hardcover, 552 pages, 20.2 x 26.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$115.00 - Out of stock
The huge reference retrospective monograph: a complete overview of Lynda Benglis' work and life from the late 1960s to the present day, with more than 350 illustrations, about 20 historical or commissioned essays, an interview, famous and unseen archival material (magazine articles, photographs, letters, installation shots), and a complete chronology.
“Seeing Lynda Benglis's ad in Artforum in 1974 was one of the most pivotal moments of my career. I was in college in Buffalo & even the Albright-Knox Art Gallery which was one of the few local places to buy the magazine (and right across from where I went to school), had ripped out that page in the issues they were selling (I must have bought mine in NYC). She kicked ass!” - Cindy Sherman
Since more than 30 years, Lynda Benglis (born in 1941 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, lives and works in New York), one of America's most important artists, a leader of Post Minimalism along with Richard Serra, Eva Hesse and Bruce Nauman, explores in her work a wide range of techniques and mediums, from wax abstract painting, to latex, polyurethane or metal sculpture, through video and performance footage.
This formal diversity expresses a complex and radical thinking about body, gender identity, representation of women and male dominance, beyond her feminist icon status since a series of sulphurous advertisements published with Robert Morris in the 1970s, including the famous and controversial ad in Artforum featuring her aggressively posed with a giant dildo and wearing only a pair of sunglasses.
Texts by Dave Hickey, Cindy Sherman, Robert Pincus-Witten, Richard Meyer, Annette Messager, Elisabeth Lebovici, Judith Tannenbaum, Caroline Hancock, Franck Gautherot, Laura Hoptman, Ron Gorchov, Keith Sonnier, John Baldessari, Diana Franssen.
An incredible book on an artist unlike any other!
2016, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 17 x 23 cm
Published by
Revolver Verlag / Berlin
Secession / Vienna
$44.00 $25.00 - Out of stock
Thea Djordjadze makes expansive installations that she develops in situ and in close interaction with the surrounding spaces. The Georgian-born artist begins by exploring the specific qualities of a given exhibition space and then creates work that subtly transforms the perception and possible readings of the architectonic situation.
Ordinary staples such as fabrics, steel, glass, plaster, foam plastic, wood, and papier-mâché are the materials out of which Djordjadze manufactures sculptural objects. Presented in carefully composed arrangements sometimes complemented by found objects, paintings, and drawings, her installations recall domestic or functional settings. Her idiosyncratically proportioned sculptures suggest pieces of furniture or elements of an exhibition display such as beds, frameworks, pedestals, or showcases. The design vocabulary blends modernist geometric rigor with organic amorphous improvisation. Yet the elements correspond not only to each other, but always also to the given spatial context, building a palpable tension.
Thea Djordjadze’s process-based artistic praxis reads as an ongoing process in which existing and new elements, materials and objects are repurposed, reconfigured, and rearranged. Her exhibition project for the Secession implies transferring her studio and literally everything in it to Vienna. Here, the artist will respond to the iconic exhibition space and create a site-specific installation with her studio’s inventory, at once a kind of meta-exhibition, while her studio in Berlin remains empty.
This unique book documents through colour photography the artist's studio, in great detail, prior to it's emptying out into the exhibition space at Secession in late 2016.
Thea Djordjadze was born in Tbilisi in 1971 and lives and works in Berlin.
2013, Swedish / English
Softcover, 104 pages (colour ill.), 20 x 27 cm
Published by
Malmö Konsthall / Malmö
$75.00 - Out of stock
Berlin-based Thea Djordjadze is best known for her sculpture and installations with references to the modernist language. She works with materials like plaster, wood, ceramic and papier mâché to produce almost intuitive assemblages where unformed, premature pieces collide with or rest upon precise architectural or domestic constructions. These hybrid compositions deliberately display the traces of their creation. Besides numerous and detailed installation views from her solo exhibition at Malmö Konsthall, this catalogue documents Djordjadze’s methods and perspectives through several critical texts by Gabriel Lester, Andrew Maerkle, Chris Kraus and others.
1987, English / Japanese
Softcover, 44 pages, 21 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Marlborough Fine Art / Tokyo
$48.00 - Out of stock
Rare Japanese catalogue produced on the occasion of the Kurt Schwitters exhibition held at Marlborough Fine Art in Tokyo, September 8 - December 5, 1987. The exhibition included works ranging from 1918 - 1947, including paintings, drawings, reliefs, sculptures, and collages, all of which are reproduced in this catalogue in colour photography. All texts are in both English and Japanese, including bibliography, biography, exhibition list and work lists. Invitation letter (?) in Japanese from Marlborough also inserted into book from previous owner.
Kurt (Hermann Eduard Karl Julius) Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography, and what came to be known as installation art. He is most famous for his collages, called Merz Pictures.
1973, English
Softcover (stapled), 24 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
The New York Cultural Center / New York
$160.00 - Out of stock
Incredibly scarce exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held March 20 - May 6, 1973 at The New York Cultural Center. Includes the work of Hannah Wilke, Sig Rennels, Gillian Bradshaw-Smith, Jackie Ferr, Françoise Grossen, Harmony Hammond, Anne Healy, Al Loving, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rosemary Mayer, Brenda Miller, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Patricia Oleszco, Robert Rauschenberg, David Secombe, Richard Serra, Alan Shields, William Soghor, Frank Lincoln Viner, Jackie Winsor, and Nina Yankowitz. Includes black & white illustrations throughout, exhibition checklist and selected artist biographies. Introduction by Mario Amaya.
Fantastic, very rarely seen catalogue.
1959, English
Softcover (stapled), 40 pages, 25 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
MoMA / New York
$15.00 - In stock -
Art Bulletin (Vol. XXVI, No.5, 1959)/catalogue published in 1959 by The Museum of Modern Art in New York, showcasing recent American sculpture. Features work by Leonard Baskin, Norman Carlberg, Dorothy Dehner, Mina Harkhavy, Barbara Lekberg, Seymour Lipton, Robert Mallary, Bernhard Rosenthal, Gabriel Kohn and many others, illustrated in black and whit throughout.
1958, English
Softcover (stapled), 24 pages, 19 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
MoMA / New York
$15.00 - Out of stock
Art Bulletin (XXV, No. 4, 1957)/catalogue supplement published to accompany an exhibition in 1957 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, to showcase their recent Painting and Sculpture collection acquisitions. Features work by Fernand Léger, Odilon Redon, Egon Schiele, Robert Motherwell, Robert Delaunay, Arshile Gorky, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Paul Klee, George Grosz, Giorgio de Chirico, David Smith, Gustav Limpt, Otto Dix, and many others, illustrated in black and whit throughout.
2016, English
Softcover (staple-bound, w. two stickers), 44 pages, 19.5 x 25.5 cm
Ed. of 500 (250 white cover / 250 black cover),
Published by
Canyon Rats / Los Angeles
$32.00 - In stock -
Following his solo exhibition /SKEWS/ at David Kordansky in Los Angeles, late 2015, Australian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Ricky Swallow has produced "SKEWS +". Published under new Califonian imprint Canyon Rats, this fine publication presents 29 of Swallow's new sculptural works, and comes wrapped in either white or black covers, editioned to 250 of each.
Ricky Swallow uses humble, ordinary materials to create precisely rendered objects that he then casts in bronze. The unique works that result are expressions not only of the objects’ constructed forms, but also of the process of transformation by which an otherwise inert grouping of forms becomes a sculpture.
Design by Nicholas Gottlund. Photography by Fredrik Nilsen. Printed at Typecraft in Pasadena, California.
Includes two Canyon Rats bumper stickers!
Edition of 500 (250 white cover / 250 black cover)
2016, English
Softcover (staple-bound, w. two stickers), 44 pages, 19.5 x 25.5 cm
Ed. of 500 (250 white cover / 250 black cover),
Published by
Canyon Rats / Los Angeles
$32.00 - In stock -
Following his solo exhibition /SKEWS/ at David Kordansky in Los Angeles, late 2015, Australian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Ricky Swallow has produced "SKEWS +". Published under new Califonian imprint Canyon Rats, this fine publication presents 29 of Swallow's new sculptural works, and comes wrapped in either white or black covers, editioned to 250 of each.
Ricky Swallow uses humble, ordinary materials to create precisely rendered objects that he then casts in bronze. The unique works that result are expressions not only of the objects’ constructed forms, but also of the process of transformation by which an otherwise inert grouping of forms becomes a sculpture.
Design by Nicholas Gottlund. Photography by Fredrik Nilsen. Printed at Typecraft in Pasadena, California.
Includes two Canyon Rats bumper stickers!
Edition of 500 (250 white cover / 250 black cover)
1986, English / French
Softcover, 74 pages, 15 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
ARC / Paris
$85.00 - Out of stock
Rare catalogue on the work of American artist Richard Tuttle, published by ARC, Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris in 1986. Features his drawing, painting and sculptural work, with texts in French and English.
2015, English
Softcover (w. insert booklet and fold-out cover), 88 pages, 19.3 x 26.3 cm
Published by
Bergen Kunsthall / Norway
Walther König / Köln
$50.00 - Out of stock
Making Silver is a beautiful new book conceived by Richard Tuttle and published by Bergen Kunsthall, published in 2015.
Featuring new texts and comprehensive installation photos from his exhibition Slide (2012), it documents the sculptural works Richard Tuttle made on site in Bergen, as well as including full colour reproductions of 121 drawings.
These 'notebook drawings' cover the artist's entire artistic output of a single year (2010).
The unique concept for the book includes an inserted 'book within a book' pop-out details, and an extensive fold out cover.
Published retrospectively after the exhibition Richard Tuttle: Slides at Bergen Kunsthall, 3 November – 16 December 2012.
1977, Japanese / French
Softcover, 55 pages, 23 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Galerie Tokoro / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
Scarce Constantin Brâncuși catalogue published in 1977 for an exhibition at Tokyo's Galerie Tokoro, October 15-November 19. Features colour reproductions of works from the exhibition, then a large section of black and white photography of Brâncuși and his studio, a chronology, and bibliography. Texts throughout in Japanese and French by Kazuo Anazawa, Natalia Dumitresco, Alexandre Istrati.
Constantin Brâncuși (February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer who made his career in France. Considered a pioneer of modernism, one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture.
2016, English / German
Softcover, 540 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$70.00 - Out of stock
Having represented Beuys, Richter and Polke, German gallery owner , art publisher, art collector and curator René Block (born 1942) ranks among the central figures of the 1960s avant-garde. This publication collects writings by and interviews with Block, scanned from their original publications and organized chronologically, as well as an illustrated published history, artist portraits (taken by Block), performance ephemera, bibliography, and more. An enormous book that, via Block, encompasses the work of so many important movements and figures of 1960s - 1990s art.
Although primarily a German language publication, many of the original articles are in English. Regardless of language, the valuable historical listings translate.
2005, English / Croatian
Softcover, 120 pages, 16.5 x 23.5 cm
$35.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Branka Stipančić and Alenka Gregorič, Mladen Stilinović - Artist at Work 1973-1983, published in 2005 looks in depth this period of works exhibited in the artists work rooms, including texts about the exhibits, all the works reproduced in colour throughout the bulk of the book (paintings, collages, text works, sculptures, photographs), a worklist, interview and biography.
Mladen Stilinović (April 10, 1947 - July 18, 2016) was one of the leading figures of the so-called "New Art Practice" in Croatia and a founding member of the informal neo-avantgarde, Group of Six Artists (1975-1979), together with Vladimir Martek, Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović and Fedomir Vučemilović. He lived and worked in Zagreb, Croatia.
2016, English
Softcover (leporello-fold illustrated card wraps), 16 pages, 21 x 29.5 cm
Published by
Self-Published / Melbourne
$5.00 - In stock -
Catalogue of Janenne Eaton's solo exhibition FENCES B/ORDERS WALLS, exhibited at TCB, Melbourne, in March 2016. The catalogue is designed by Simon McGlinn with an accompanying text by Georgina Criddle.
All proceeds go to RISE (Refugees Survivors and Ex-detainees).
link: http://riserefugee.org/
1984, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 342 pages, 270 x 280 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
U.M.I. Research Press / Michigan
$150.00 - Out of stock
First, hardcover edition of "LOOKING CRITICALLY: 21 YEARS OF ARTFORUM MAGAZINE", the heavy 342 page volume anthology of the first 21 years of the world's most important modern and art journal. An incredibly valuable collection of art theory.
Edited by Amy Baker Sandback, designed by Roger Gorman and Mary Beath and published in 1984 by U.M.I. Research Press, this dense volume, bound in hardcover to the dimensions of a copy of ARTFORUM, begins with an Ed Kienholz review at the Ferus Gallery from ARTFORUM's June 1962 inaugural issue, and ends with Barbara Kruger reviewing the film "TRON" for the November 1982 issue. An amazing compendium of articles and reviews from the magazine's important first 21 years, featuring contributions by the likes of John Cage, Robert Morris, Kate Steinitz, Henry T. Hopkins, Don Factor, Robert Pincus-Witten, Dennis Adrian, John Coplans, Hilton Kramer, Harold Rosenberg, Henry Geldzahler, John Cage, Walter Hopps, Ed Ruscha, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rosenblum, Dan Flavin, Boris Groys, Sam Wagstaff, Billy Kluver, Lucy R. Lippard, Robert Rosenblum, Roger Shattuck, Ad Reinhardt, Mel Bochner, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Rose, Manny Farber, Michael Fried, Robert Morris, Philip Leider, Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Lawrence Alloway, Barbara Kruger, Jane Livingston, Lizzie Borden, Kenneth Baker, Laurie Anderson, Agnes Martin, Cindy Nemser, Sidney Tillim, Annette Michelson, Rosalind Krauss, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Roberta Smith, Peter Plagens, Peter Schjeldahl, J. Hoberman, Hal Foster, Richard Flood, Carter Ratcliff, Stuart Morgan, Max Kozloff, Donald Kuspit, Dan Graham, Walter De Maria, Komar & Melamid, Edit De Ak, Lawrence Weiner, Kathy Acker, Robert Mapplethorpe, Anselm Kiefer, Thomas McEvilley, Louise Bourgeois, Ingrid Sischy, and too many more to list. Artists featured include: Josef Albers, Richard Tuttle, Jo Baer, Carl Andre, Ant Farm, Hans Arp, Max Bill, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Lee Bontecou, Constantin Brancusi, Bertholt Brecht, Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Diane Arbus, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Lynda Beglis, Larry Bell, Terry Fox, James Byers, Rober Barry, Marcel Breuer, AA Bronson, Luis Buñel, Daniel Buren, Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Anthony Caro, Marcel Broodthaers, John Chamberlain, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Merce Cunningham, Sonia Delauney, Walter de Maria, Bruce Connor, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Walker Evans, Dan Flavin, Marcel Duchamp, Albrecht Dürer, Lucio Fontana, Hollis Frampton, Alberto Giacometti, Eva Hesse, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, John Cage, Nancy Graves, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Nancy Grossman, Walter Gropius, Hans Haacke, Hairy Who, David Hockney, Douglas Huebler, Jorg Immendorff, Donald Judd, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Keinholz, Paul Klee, Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Barbara Kruger, Jannis Kounellis, Markus Lüpertz, El Lissitzky, Rene Magritte, Robert Mapplethorpe, John McCracken, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Ree Morton, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzio, A. R. Penck, Irving Penn, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Larry Poons, Ken Price, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Roman Polanski, Jackson Pollock, Steve Reich, Gerrit Rietveld, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Dorothae Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Lucas Samaras, Kurt Schwitters, Oscar Schlemmer, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, David Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Robert Venturi, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Saul Steinberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Taut, Jean Tinguely, Anne Truitt, Paul Wunderlich, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Bourgeois, Alfred Hitchcock, and so many more.
Very uncommon hardcover edition, with dust jacket.
1984, English
Softcover, 170 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Art & Text / Beverley Hills
Art & Text / Prahran
$65.00 - Out of stock
First printing of "Anything Goes : Art in Australia 1970-1980", published by Art & Text in 1984. Edited by Paul Taylor, founder of Art & Text, this large, valuable volume of essays by leading writers of those years - covering all aspects of painting, sculpture, photography and experimental art forms since 1970 - features contributions by Janine Burks, Mary Eagle, Christine Godden, Robert Lindsay, Ian Burn, Julie Ewington, Memory Holloway, Terry Smith, Ann Stephen, Margaret Plant, Patrick McCaughey, Daniel Thomas.
"The 1970s were years of unprecedented change in Australian art and culture, and Anything Goes is the first book about that decade's remarkable variety of art."
Includes the work of: →↑→, Mike Parr, Howard Arkley, Jenny Watson, Donald Judd, Ian Burn, John Lethbridge, John Davis, Mel Bochner, Joseph Beuys, Mel Ramsden, Women's Domestic Needlework Group, Andy Warhol, Tim Johnson, Nigel Lendon, Artsworkers Union, Robert Rooney, Clive Murray-White, Tony McGillick, Fred Williams, John Firth-Smith, George Haynes, Donald Laycock, Michael Taylor, Fred Cress, Ron Robertson-Swann, David Aspden, Sydney Ball, Roger Kemp, Paul Partos, Trevor Vickors, Robert Hunter, Robert Jacks, Vivienne Binns, Bonita Ely, Marie McMahon, Virginia Cuppaidge, Imants Tillers, Les Kossatz, Ti Parks, Peter Cripps, Ken Searle, Jan Senbergs, George Baldessin, John Armstrong, Janet Dawson, Dale Hickey, Tony Coleing, Marr Grounds, Chips Mackinolty, Ann Newmarch, Colin Little, Jan Mackay, Toni Robertson, Jenny Hill, Christo, Ross Grounds, Ken Unsworth, Kevin Mortensen, Stelarc, Jillian Orr, Hossein Valamanesh, W. Thomas Arthur, Ewa Pachucka, Vicki Varvaressos, Carol Jerrems, Elizabeth Gower, Geoff Hogg, Ann Newmarch, Peter Kennedy, Jon Rhodes, Bill Henson, Stephen Lojewski, Robert Owen, Mark Johnson, Peter Booth, John Dunkley-Smith
, Ron Robertson-Swann, Alun Leach-Jones, Michael Johnson, Lesley Dumbrell, Fred Cross, John Walker, David Aspden, and many more.
Paul Taylor (Melbourne, 1957–7 September 1992) was an Australian art critic, curator, editor and publisher. In 1981, he founded Art & Text, the contemporary art journal considered to be responsible for generating and promoting postmodernist discourse in Australian art.
1972, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 29 pages, 25 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Mullaya / Canterbury
$30.00 - Out of stock
Ola Cohn (1892 - 1964) was a pioneer of modernist sculpture in Australia and a founding member of the Australian Sculptors Society, herself working across bronze, stone, wood and also an author of children's books.
"For just on three years Bendigo-born sculptor Ola Cohn spent long hours each day lovingly creating a community of fairies and animals in the iron-hard wood of a gnarled 500-year-old red gum tree which stands in Melbourne's Fitzroy Gardens. In May 1934 her task was completed. She dedicated the tree to the children of Melbourne with these simple words:
'I have carved a tree in the Fitzroy Gardens for you and the fairies; but mostly for the fairies, and those who believe in them, for they will understand how necessary it is to have a Fairy Sanctuary - a place that is sacred and safe as a home should be to all living creatures.'
Sonja Delander has told the story of Ola Cohn and her Fairies' Tree in a manner which will delight both young and old. Her text, with the photography of Rick Buckingham, brings to life all the characters which inhabit the tree. There is Stoutheart on his gallant bullfrog; the Energetic Emu who wants to lose weight; the Weeping Imp who scraped his knee while dancing and the Reading Mother, well protected from the weather in a niche in the tree, with the young fairies grouped around her knee intently listening to her story...."
2013, English
Softcover, 124 pages, 23.5 x 29.7 cm
Published by
Ruthin Craft Centre / Denbighshire
$120.00 - Out of stock
Gillian Lowndes (1936–2010) was one of the ceramic world’s most daring, radical and original artists of the post-war generation. Operating on the border territory between fine art and craft, she is renowned for her sensitive investigations of material and process, of serendipity and sculptural form. In view of her avant-garde position, it is surprising that in her lifetime she had notably few solo exhibitions, and that her art is not more widely known and appreciated beyond a network of ceramists, curators, gallerists, critics, collectors and enthusiasts engaged with the crafts and applied arts.
Published on the occasion of a large retrospective exhibition held at Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales, in 2013, curated by Amanda Fielding, this is the first major publication dedicated to the work of Lowndes, which is beautifully illustrated with photography of her incredible sculptural works across 124 pages with accompanying texts, biography, exhibition list, and more.
Very highly recommended!
About Gillian Lowndes:
Gillian Lowndes (1936 – 2 October 2010) was an English ceramics sculptor.
Born in Cheshire in 1936, she spent much of her childhood in British India. She studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts beginning in 1957 and spent a year at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1960. In the early 1970s she traveled to Nigeria with her husband, Ian Auld, a trip that would prove to be influential in her subsequent work. From 1975 until the early 1990s, she taught part-time at Camberwell College of Arts and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
Since the early 1960s and 70s her work has challenged the traditional notions surrounding the form of a vessel and fine art. Through her non-traditional experimental methods of incorporating found objects and materials such as wire and various objects from found in everyday life into her ceramic work, she continually challenges the orthodox world of pure ceramics.
Her mixed-media sculptures have been referred to as bricolage, or sculptures that utilize found objects to construct new meaning. "Bricolage sculpture converts the inertia and exhaustion of found materials into new conduits of meaning…the idea of a Bricolage image…depends on the use of the found object wrenched from its original context, used as visual or tactile element but stripped of all but residual meaning". “Lowndes is keenly aware of the periodically changing objects that have furnished [her house] over time, and admits to a particular fondness for the usually taken for granted things that surround us in contemporary life: bulldog clips, can openers, forks, and pliers.”
Lowndes' affinity and approach to basic, used materials and their inherent materiality calls to mind Arte Povera. “The found materials [Lowndes employs] are poor, low-status ones – old bricks, clinker, granite clippings, mild steel strip, cheap industrially made cups and tiles.” Povera artists explore the relationship between art and life through the use of such everyday materials in contrast to “quasi-precious” ones like oil paint or marble that are traditionally used in “fine art.” These materials also imply issues pertaining to class and the differentiation between “high” and “low” art. However, Arte Povera “denotes not an impoverished art, but an art made without restraints, a laboratory situation in which a theoretical basis was rejected in favor of a complete openness towards materials and processes.”
Lowndes' approach and experimentation with form and materials is much like that of the Process Artists of the 1960s as well. Lowndes believes that "materials are the source of the ideas as well as their expression." Lowndes said of her own work that “...it is the methods and materials that produce the ideas, not the other way round. The choice of materials and the assemblage of pieces lead her towards the object and this process gives her work a strangeness that is visually rich, yet her work is still rooted with the ceramic process and material."
Lowndes used many different combinations and amalgamations of clay from fiberglass dipped in liquid porcelain slip to Egyptian paste in her work. Lowndes would often bury work made of Egyptian paste in sand during the firing using a saggar. After the initial firing she would then smash the pieces with a hammer and reassemble them with ceramic mortar or Nichrome wire. Cups and tiles are added with extra glaze and act as “an affectionate backward glance at the pottery traditions (that of the Leach tradition) of form and technique from which Lowndes emerged.” Through the firing process, her work goes through odd, curious metamorphosis. When the work is finished, the fusion of the disparate parts rarely resembles the original piece with which she began.
Previously, Lowndes had already possessed an affinity towards ethnographic objects. Ethnography is an anthropologic description of individual cultures and “human social phenomena”. Her visit to Nigeria codified her curiosity in the ethnographic aspects surrounding certain objects. However, she wasn't particularly drawn to the Nigerian pots, but to the non-ceramic materials they used. The seeming haphazard nature with which the materials were juxtaposed was broad and diverse. Nigeria's influence is seen through Lowndes' own use of diverse materials. The speed in which they worked was influential as well. "African expediency and improvisation appealed to her…[as well as] the poetic content of the artifacts." Specifically, the Yoruba, who live in southwestern Nigeria near Ife University where Lowndes' husband worked during their time there, are known for their new styles and approaches to art. Yoruba artwork, which takes numerous forms, is deeply imbedded in a philosophical discourse pertaining to “deep talk”. This conversation includes resemblance, balance, clarity, completeness, insight, aliveness, and durability. "Yoruba art might be defined summarily as ‘evocative form’ that is meant to be generative and transformative…at the core of Yoruba aesthetics is the saying ‘character (or essence) is beauty’. This refers to the essential nature of a thing or person. When art captures the essential nature of something, the work will be deemed 'beautiful'."
Upon her return from Africa, Lowndes' “impatience with clay” and the so-called “craftsmanly side of her art” is apparent through her combination of “mainstream” sculpture materials “…that put the concept before the material.” As a result of Lowndes’ open approach to working, leaving room for reworking and rediscovery, her work vacillates between and perhaps challenges the “undefined space between craft and fine art.” Her materially based experimentation and intuitive approach to making with a material that is traditionally seen as a purveyor of craft defines Lowndes' work as art that “…occupies an undefined space between the craft and fine artworlds.”
2015, English / German
Softcover, 96 pages, 13 x 19.5 cm
Published by
Kunsthalle Wien / Vienna
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$22.00 - In stock -
Edited by Gareth Long, Nicolaus Schafhausen
Texts by Jonathan Walley, Tony Conrad, Diedrich Diederichsen
Tony Conrad, who can be described as an artist, composer, musician, filmmaker, and performer, might be considered the first true “crossover artist.” Two Degrees of Separation accompanies the eponymous exhibition by Tony Conrad at Kunsthalle Wien. In his essay “A Show That’s Almost Invisible,” the critic Jonathan Walley discusses how the main works in this exhibition relate to Conrad’s interest in the subgenre referred to as the woman-in-prison film, silent music, and the idea of perspective developed during the Italian Renaissance. A conversation between Tony Conrad and Diedrich Diederichsen provides insight into the thinking of the multitalented artist and his unique position in the field of contemporary art.
Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien