Bookhouse St Kilda

29/07/2022

16/07/2022

from
‘Robert Jacks: Order and Variation’
NGV Catalogue. 2014, 196pp. Large p’back.
*scarce copy
$125 - comment ‘yes’ if you want.
The sixty-year career of Robert Jacks, one of Australia's most significant abstract artists, reveals continued development and change as well as a remarkable consistency of language and form. Jacks charted a distinctive and influential path through late twentieth- and early twenty-first century Australian art, and through his commitment to abstraction established himself as a unique figure in the history and development of art in this country. Robert Jacks: Order and Variation is a handsomely illustrated publication that surveys the artist's work, from his student years in the 1950s and 1960s to his monumental late paintings and sculptures. Featuring insightful essays by National Gallery of Victoria curators Kirsty Grant and Beckett Rozentals and art historian Peter Anderson, it conveys a new understanding of Jacks's exploration of abstraction in painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking.

16/07/2022

‘Bodgie’ South Melbourne circa 1956
from
‘Michael Shannon: Australian Romantic Realist’
Large softcover, 136pp, illustrated, Exhibition catalogue. Art Gallery of Ballarat, 2012.
$40 - comment ‘yes’ if you want.

“Michael Shannon was born near Kapunda, South Australia, in 1927 and after schooling in Adelaide, enrolled at the National Gallery School in Melbourne in 1945 (under William Dargie) – also studying part time with George Bell. Overseas travel took him to London, Paris (studies under Leger) and Florence.
Apart from a spell in Sydney (1960-62) Shannon lived and worked in Melbourne for the rest of his life, exhibiting regularly in Sydney and Melbourne as well as in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. His characteristic vision of the city – usually a roof top or birds eye view of streets, houses and factories earned him a wide following.”

16/07/2022

‘Holiday - 1971’
from
‘Jeffrey Smart: Master of Stillness - Paintings 1940-2011’
Large h’back, 136pp, illustrated. Fine copy.
$50 - comment ‘yes’ if you want.
Illuminates the vision of the most celebrated of Australian expatriate artists, from his beginnings in Adelaide until his last major composition painted in Italy, where he lived for five decades until his death in 2013. Adelaide, where Jeffrey Smart was born in 1921, was where his essential evolution as an artist took shape. His early fascination for its grid-like urban landscape was a perfect basis for an ongoing celebration of the phenomena of highways, traffic signs, trucks, transmitters and brutish modular architecture in post-war Europe; aspects of the modern world others found ugly but which he declared beautiful. Jeffrey Smart's vision curiously searches for an elusive stillness in the midst of industrial change, and this can be seen and appreciated here with a selection of many of his most important masterpieces’

12/07/2022

‘Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Art Centre - architect Glenn Murcutt’
from
GLEN MURCUTT: Buildings + Projects 1962-2003.
Thames & Hudson Large Softcover 24.0 x 21.5cms, 162pp, Colour Ills + plans.
$55
Comment ‘yes’ if you want
‘This book celebrates Murcutt's residential designs as 'a harmonious blend of modernist sensibility, local craftsmanship, indigenous structures and respect for nature'.

12/07/2022

‘Sauna - British Columbia’
from
TINY HOMES: Simple Shelter’
Shelter Books, 2012. 215pp. 100’s of photos + plans.
$40 - comment ‘yes’ if you want.
‘Homeowners, designers, architects (no less), road gypsies, water dwellers, dreamers, people of all ages, all over the world are making do creatively with under-500 sq. ft. shelters. This graphic-heavy book documents the current tiny house movement, showing people who have chosen to scale back in the 21st century.’

12/07/2022

‘Orbino - architect Luc Deleu’ Netherlands
from
Container Atlas: A Practical Guide to Container Architecture
Gestalten 2015, 254pp. Large h’back.
$50
Comment ‘yes’ if you want.

‘Container Atlas features container structures used as pop-up stores and temporary exhibits as well as sophisticated housing and office spaces that provoke and inspire while setting new standards in functionality and aesthetics. But the book is not only visually inspiring. Because it documents plans, describes associated costs, and suggests concrete solutions for common problems, it is a practical reference for architects, planners, and cultural activists as well as event and marketing managers, to guide them in deciding what types of containers are best suited to their upcoming projects.’

10/07/2022

‘Servizi e Assistenza Sociale di Fabbrica / Factory Social Services and Assistance’
Olivetti History
Ing C Olivetti & Co., Ivrea. 1953. Hardcover 1st Edition 123pp.+ 62 pages of photos and tables.
Text in Italian
The original and very scarce 1st edition of this book, setting out the history and function of the Olivetti industrial city at Ivrea, now a heritage Unesco site.

$170 - comment ‘yes’ if you want.
“In 1933, 32-year-old Adriano Olivetti took over as general manager of the typewriter factory his father had founded outside of the picturesque Italian town of Ivrea, in the foothills of the Alps. In the next 30 years under Adriano, the Olivetti company would become a global phenomenon, and Ivrea the focus of ambitious experiments in how to build what he called a more “human” industrial city.
But instead of large tower blocks and grey industrial estates, Ivrea was filled with bright, avant-garde architecture. Hiring some of the country’s leading architects, Olivetti built new neighbourhoods for its workers, carefully planned with abundant green space and small blocks of flats with just three or four storeys.
New factory buildings were erected almost entirely of glass, because workers inside “had to be able to see the mountains, the valleys, where they come from ... and also so that people outside the factory could see what was happening inside”.’

10/07/2022

‘Utopica’
is a cultural project born in Venice, spring 1986. Utopica is also a European magazine of architecture: it’s aim is the creation of a cultural net connecting all the European universities to arise a common debate gathering contributions coming from the different editorial national staffs on specific subjects.
1st issue, Venice 1986. 88pp.
$45 - comment ‘yes’ if you want.
A scarce copy of this short lived publication.
“Utopic is our will to express what is marginal, what is unexpressed, beyond our cultural borders; as we trust in its capacity to critic reality as it is, in order to image reality as it can be; not thinking present as the only possibility but as an object of our desires.
Being students and architects, first of all, we must learn how to wish more than how to do; as there is no hope in architectures without desires, only the risk of being just a formalisation of an existing institution. If we believe in this, Utopica can be also a washing machine.”

10/07/2022

‘Hannes Meyer, Arkadij Mordvinov, Bela Scheffler, at the opening of the Bauhaus Exhibition in Moscow’s Architectural Institute, 1931’
from
‘Collective for Socialist Architecture / Kollektive fur sozialistisches Bauen’
Spector Books, 2015. 176pp. German/English text.
$45 - comment ‘yes’ if you want.
“ In January 1931, an initiative of revolutionary architects, construction workers, and students joined forces in Berlin to form the Working Group for Socialist Architecture. Their objective was to develop a Marxist theory of building science, to employ architecture as a ‘weapon in the class struggle’ and ‘to take a leading role in putting an end to the old world and building a new one’.”

06/07/2022

‘Poster - Leonard Cusden, 1940’s’
from
‘Modern British Posters: Art, Design & Communication’
London: Black Dog Publishing, Date: 2010. 1st. Hardcover.
$40 - comment ‘yes’ if you want.
“Modern British Posters features the work of artists such as John Minton, Paul Nash, Hubert Williams, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Leonard Cusden, Edward Wadsworth and Tom Eckersley, amongst many others. These images speak broadly of people, landscape, technology and identity and cover themes such as transport, architecture, the seaside, accident prevention and popular culture.

In Britain, the graphic archive is dispersed amongst various institutions. This fragmentation means that, for practical purposes, the general story of British poster design remains to be told. As such Modern British Posters provides an important addition to the history of visual culture in Britain during the twentieth century.” #

06/07/2022

‘Promotional poster - Waterproofing insulation’
from
‘Posters by Members of the Alliance Graphique Internationale 1960-1985’
New York, Rizzoli, 1986. Hardcover Very good condition in very good dust jacket. 200p. Illus.
$38 - comment ‘yes’ if you want.
"The graphic designer's work centers on visual communication, a process of problem solving that embraces aesthetics. Among the many forms this takes are books, record covers, brochures, postage stamps, billboards, corporate identity programs, and posters. But of all these, there is no richer or more exciting medium than the poster to express the creative personality of the designer.” from the intro.