In 1980, German artist Sigmar Polke (1941–2010) and Britta Zoellner, a close friend of Polke and an artist herself, set off for Southeast Asia from the vibrant art scene in Germany’s Rhineland region. A planned period of quiet work on Bali evolved into a 13-month journey from Indonesia via Singapore to Papua New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania, and back to Malaysia and Thailand. Fascinated by the ancient high cultures, the gamelan music and wayang puppet theatre, they increasingly turned their attention to Indigenous societies and their ways of life, but above all to nature, the tropical fauna and flora.

Based on Zoellner’s diary entries, films and photographs taken during their extensive tour, as well as other unpublished sources, distinguished art historian Katharina Schmidt traces this little-known journey in chronological detail for the first time. She examines how the intense experience of other cultures and grandiose landscapes, including the discovery of cosmic events through meteorites, moved Polke. She explores how rich nuances of colour impressions and a wealth of observations and experiences shaped his future art, his concept of nature, and his ideas of space and time. Empathy for the Indigenous peoples’ fate under colonial rule, and for a nature endangered by exploitation of natural resources such as uranium or gold, reveals the attentive and far-sighted qualities of this quiet, concentrated journey undertaken by Polke and his companion.

Since the practical invention of photography in the 1840s, Scotland has been at the centre of the history and development of the medium. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery – which houses the Scottish National Photography Collection – and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, hold outstanding collections of photographic art spanning three centuries. Included are figures such as D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Annan, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Capa, Bill Brandt, Annie Leibovitz and Andreas Gursky. This book offers a detailed guide to the collections as well as an accessible and informative introduction to photography. This revised edition includes recently commissioned photography and significant new acquisitions, with works by Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Traditional thought fused with modern science when Hiroshima’s nuclear annihilation on August 6, 1945, proved the interdependence of space and time. Since the war, Japanese architects have probed the relativity of spacetime through critical debates, pivotal theories, and consequential buildings. The Hypospace of Japanese Architecture pushes past clichés of an exotic Japan to confront the modernity of an island nation whose habit of importing foreign ideas is less about assimilation than transformation, less a process of indigenisation than one of cultural invention. The realisation that buildings are dynamic events — phenomena of space-in-time, not inert objects outside time — continues to inform Japanese architecture and suggests how we can rethink the history, theory, and practice of architecture more generally.

This delightful new series of colour filled pages with easy, short and fun text makes exploring bugs in the garden an exciting adventure for little ones with soft felt flaps to flip and uncover! This interactive board book with durable felt flaps plays on children’s innate attraction to peekaboo and hide-and-seek.

Ages 3+

Discover the magic of beloved the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood with The Storyteller sound books. This innovative collection offers young children a new way to experience these timeless tales: designed for those who are not yet able to read independently, each book allows children to explore the stories by turning the pages while listening to the corresponding text read aloud at the touch of a button. The book becomes a modern storyteller, presenting the fairy tales with beautiful illustrations and engaging narration that brings the stories to life.

Other titles in the collection include:

9788854421707   The Storyteller: Peter Pan
9788854421714   The Storyteller: Pinocchio
9788854421721   The Storyteller: Snow White

Ages 4 plus.

“Expand your mind and look good doing it with these new boundary-bending works of theoretical exploration by some of the field’s premier thinkers.” — The Architect’s Newspaper
“This jog through the history of physical culture vis-à-vis modern architecture features a series of drawings (beautifully rendered in metallic ink over black paper) and an impressive assortment of archival imagery. Taking the book over the finish line: a collection of somersaulting, weightlifting, and jeté-ing silhouettes that are bound to elicit more than a few smiles.” — Architectural Record
The Advanced School of Collective Feeling explores the advent of radical new conceptions of the body—a phenomenon known in the 1920s and ’30s as “physical culture”—and their impact on the thinking of some of modern architecture’s most influential figures. Using archival photographs, diagrams, and plans, the book reconstructs a constellation of provocative domestic projects by Marcel Breuer, Charlotte Perriand, Richard Neutra, and others. This obscure chapter in the modern movement gestures towards a remarkable synthesis of the individual and the collective, a perspective that holds enormous potential for articulating an architecture of today.

In this book, Joseph Masheck re-examines the spiritual in Mondrian’s art and proposes a parallel between the equilibrium found in his paintings and his writings on theological justification. The artist’s Calvinist Christianity is considered in respect to the balanced, asymmetrical works of his ‘classic’ phase of the 1920s and 1930s, and potential parallels with the writings of an important Dutch theologian of the Neo-Calvinist movement are explored. Finally, the author follows Mondrian’s classic phase into the 1930s and beyond, in this extraordinary and inspiring reassessment of one of the fathers of abstract art.

This new book explores the work of Mahendra Raj, arguably India’s most significant structural engineer. Born in 1924, Raj studied in Lahore and gained first working practice at the Punjab Public Works Department. He completed his education by working with engineering firms in the US and degrees he took from University of Minnesota and Columbia University, New York in 1955-59. He established his independent practice in New Delhi in 1960. Many of Raj’s structures are recognised as monuments narrating the history of energetic nation building in post-independence India. Some of them are unique, such as the Hall of Nations and Industries (New Delhi, 1972) with its large-span concrete space frame, the Hindon River Mill (Ghaziabad, 1973) with a series of bowstring concrete arches. Especially during the 1980s, Raj designed further innovative, groundbreaking structures, most notably the NCDC Office (New Delhi, 1980) and the State Trading Corporation building (New Delhi, 1988). The Structure features twenty-eight of Mahendra Raj’s buildings from all periods of his career in detail and richly illustrated with photographs and colour reproductions of archival plans as well as selected sections and plans. Essays by expert authors, interviews with Mahindra Raj, and an illustrated complete list of works round out this first comprehensive monograph on a pioneer of structural engineering.

These essays by Hahn and West will deal respectively with the formation of the collection and the figure of Bent Juel-Jensen, the seminal Aksumite coin collector in Oxford (as well as a medical doctor, academic, and traveller). They will also discuss recent problems that have emerged regarding the study of this coinage. In its entirety, this publication will make a fundamental contribution to this area of research and be an indispensable acquisition for many institutions and individuals.

This volume contains nearly 1600 coins of the 9th-16th centuries from North Africa to Great Syria. The collections included in the catalogue are those of the Heberden Coin Room and the Shamma Collection. Unlike previous SICA volumes, the coins are arranged by dynasty and ruler because of the large number of distinctive types belonging to each dynasty’s coinage.

The Wellby Bequest, received by the Ashmolean Museum in 2013, consists of some 500 precious and exotic objects, mainly from Continental Europe, from the late medieval to the rococo, and is the most remarkable accession of this kind of material to any museum in the UK since the bequest of Ferdinand de Rothschild to the British Museum in 1898 (the Waddesdon Bequest). The collection was assembled by three generations of the Wellby family with an intention that it should reflect the great princely treasure chambers (Kunstkammer) preserved in Dresden, Vienna, Innsbruck, and elsewhere. Many of these objects have never been previously published. This beautiful and accessible book introduces over sixty of the prime pieces from this astonishing addition to the Ashmolean, presenting material of the type incomparably superior to anything in other UK museums outside London. Both authors are specialists in European decorative arts of the Renaissance and later periods.

Published to coincide with the opening of the new Wellby Bequest Gallery in the Ashmolean Museum September 2015

Contents: Preface and Acknowledgements; Introduction to the Michael Wellby Bequest (by Timothy Wilson); Introductory essay on the Kunstkammer tradition (by Matthew Winterbottom); 50 catalogue entries on highlights of the Wellby Collection; Glossary, Bibliography; Index

The collections of twentieth-century paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, have developed largely through the generosity of individuals. Notable among these in the early decades of the century were Frank Hindley Smith and Mrs W F R Weldon, while since the Second World War the Museum’s collections have been enriched through gifts and requests from Thomas Balston, R A P Bevan, Molly Freeman, Christopher Hewett and others. This book gives the reader a taste of the wide range of the collection, with its representative group of Camden Town and Euston Road School pictures, and important early works by Bonnard, Picasso and Matisse.

This publication is a definitive tribute to the vanishing architectural soul of one of Iran’s most historic districts, the Sang-e-Siah neighbourhood in Shiraz. Author Salman Goorangi and coordinator Hamid Kooros document the transition of traditional decorative arts across the Zand, Qajar, and Pahlavi eras. Central to the work is the mastery of Shiraz seven-colour (Haft Rang) tiles, detailing specialised moulding, firing, and traditional dye-making techniques. The book provides a rare technical record of endangered decorative ceiling craft techniques such as Parvaz-bandi and Marjuvak-kari, in addition to a biography of Master Mirza Abdol Razzoq. Introduced by a moving foreword recounting a familial design inheritance, this publication bridges personal memory and scholarly preservation. It is an essential resource for collectors and historians dedicated to the enduring legacy of Persian craftsmanship and culture.

When the Fog Comes Down is a comprehensive exploration of the practice of Belgian artist Chris Meulemans, authored by Koen Leemans. The book delves into Meulemans’ career-long investigation into the human urge to manipulate and control our environment — a theme she navigates through a unique blend of figurative elements and abstract techniques. Her recent paintings centre on botanical motifs, using plants and flowers as a vehicle to evoke the fragility of both nature and the structures of everyday life.

In many of Meulemans’ works, the image seems either to be emerging or dissolving. It is as if one is looking at something that has not yet assumed a fixed form, or whose contours are already disintegrating. This indeterminacy is deliberate. She does not paint to represent something precisely, but to evoke a state: a moment between control and surrender, an in-between phase in which process and form become visible together, and every interpretation remains open.

The publication highlights Meulemans’ characteristic use of grid patterns as a discrete reference to science and the human drive to categorise and study. Through a process of intuitive layering and “visual-poetic” construction, her works create an uncomfortable yet mesmerising context that invites viewers to project their own narratives. Released in conjunction with her exhibition at CC De Werft (Exhibition space de Halle), this book situates Meulemans’ work within the contemporary art landscape, emphasising her movement between various media — including painting, drawing, and collage.

Text in English and Dutch.

In this collection of photographs taken in over 36 countries, Christer Löfgren explores the international art of graffiti and wall paintings. From his base in Stockholm, Sweden, Löfgren travels to places where street art can be found, including places like the Antarctic, Greenland, and Svalbard, where you may not expect to see it. The book addresses the current duality of opinion about street art: it is still viewed as a criminal act in many places, and yet at the same time it is accepted as a valid and important art form. It crosses boundaries to unite communities all around the world. Organised in two sections, the first section of this book explores the methods and motivations behind the work, while the second section focuses on street art in specific countries around the world.

Over the past decade, climate litigation has transformed from a niche legal strategy into one of the most powerful forces shaping global climate action. Turning the Tide charts this extraordinary evolution, telling the story of this David and Goliath struggle through 40 landmark cases that have transformed the landscape of climate justice, redefining accountability, justice, and the role of law in confronting the climate crisis.

Edited by leading climate litigator Sophie Marjanac, this book brings together the most significant legal challenges of the last ten years – from the groundbreaking Urgenda decision in the Netherlands, to Indigenous land rights victories, corporate accountability suits, and youth-led actions that have captured the world’s attention.

Each case reveals how courts are compelling governments and corporations to act – and how communities are using the law to demand a livable future.

With striking imagery and expert commentary, Turning the Tide is both a record of how far the climate justice movement has come and a call to action for what lies ahead. A vital resource for lawyers, policymakers, activists, and anyone who believes that the law can be a tool for change.

“…The perfect introduction and guide to a region that deserves our attention.” — The Irish Sun

“Hughes has done a truly superb job on this detailed winery by winery guide, that also includes an excellent overview of modern Beaujolais and how it got to where it is today. Her intelligence rings clear on every page.” — Telegraph

“This book has its work cut out if it is to gain for good Beaujolais a reputation commensurate with the quality of the wines being produced today. I am pleased to note that it is up to the task.” — World of Fine Wine 

In The Wines of Beaujolais Natasha Hughes MW guides readers expertly to a greater understanding of the diversity of wines made in the region. In the last few years the quality of wines emerging from Beaujolais has risen dramatically, yet many still associate the region with Beaujolais Nouveau. From the 1960s onward the region became best known for these fun, unsophisticated wines, which were released just a few weeks after harvest. Nouveau brought financial security to the region, but the extraordinary level of demand for these wines also led to industrialised methods of farming and wine production. The resulting decline in quality ultimately damaged Beaujolais’s reputation. Most wine lovers were unaware that, in parallel with this, there was a movement in the region to re-establish Beaujolais’s historic reputation as a source of fine wines. The focus was on terroir, respect for the environment and considered winemaking – all things valued by today’s wine lovers. This movement has gained momentum in recent years and Beaujolais is now a region with ambitions to match up to the reputation conferred on its neighbours in Burgundy and the Rhône.

Since its debut nearly 70 years ago, the Berlin International Film Festival – known as the Berlinale – has become one of the world’s leading showcases for cinematic talent and ranks amongst the industry’s best attended events. Every year, photographs from the festival – held every February – capture the attention of the world. This selection of images of the Berlinale from the 1950s to the present in the archives of the Deutsche Kinemathek features highlights from on and off the red carpet. In addition to the stars and directors, it includes images of lively press conferences, parties, fans, award ceremonies, and some rare instances of calm amidst the hustle and bustle of the festival.

From a historical perspective, the collection draws attention to the development of Berlin itself and the transformations within the film industry. These are revealed by images of interiors, by the fluctuations of fashion, and by the way, changing over time, that people interacted with photographers and journalists.

Contents: 1. 50 Photographs; 2. Fans; 3. Movie Theaters; 4. Parties; 5. Fashion; 6. Press 7; Politics; 8. Portraits; 9. Couples; 10. City; 11. Stars; 12. Bears.

Text in English and German

Every four years, during the summer, the whole world comes together to celebrate and support the best athletes from each country. The Olympic Games are a worldwide event, and their roots can be found in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea: Greece. Starting from the origins in Ancient Greece to the modern times games – including the Winter Games – children will discover every fun fact, sport, and champion of the games. Filled with information, easy texts and funny illustrations, this book will also help children to think on the deepest meaning of sport and to consider what it takes to become a champion. A selection of the most inspirational profiles of champions of all time, from every country, with also a special list of the most winning of all. Ages: 7 plus

The CARE Principles – Leadership Playbook leads us into the new era of leadership. This book shows us how to bridge the gap between different and diverse generations in our teams using the CARE Principles: Collaboration, Agility, Reliability, and Empathy. Through an easy 20 step process, practical tips and real-life stories from leaders like you, it breaks down how CARE can transform your team, making them perform better and feel truly engaged with your organisation. The time for new leadership action is now.

The grotesques that adorn the Gallery of Statues and Paintings, the original name for the Uffizi’s corridors, belong to different periods. The most imaginative and most artistically admirable, however, are the earliest ones, contrasting with the classical severity of the antique statues in the Medici collection there displayed. Commissioned by Francesco I de’ Medici in 1581, they occupy the 46 bays of the eastern corridor (about 150 metres), then a simple loggia, but closed the following year probably to protect the new frescoes.

The cycle celebrates the marriage between Francesco I and Bianca Cappello, which took place in 1579. The celebration of the Grand Ducal couple and the wish for offsprings explains the abundance of erotic themes, often depicted through ingenious iconography. The playful aspect, the pursuit of the marvellous and the monstrous prevail. The figurations move between great fantasy and allusiveness, originality and licentiousness, according to typical grotesque canons.

Spirit of the Amazon is the work of photojournalist Sue Cunningham and writer Patrick Cunningham. It is a celebration of cultural difference and a call for better stewardship of the world. Sue’s stunning photographs demonstrate the spiritual and material value of the Xingu tribes to all mankind; they keep the forest alive and they protect the climate of South America and the rest of the world. Their spiritual connection to their environment and the wider Earth shows us an alternative way to connect to the natural richness of the planet, built on foundations completely different from those of global materialism. During their expedition by boat, the authors followed the course of the Xingu river, a tributary of the Amazon, travelling 2,500 km through the heart of Brazil. They visited forty-eight tribal villages in this remote part of the Amazon, accessible only by small plane or by negotiating the rapids of the Xingu. This is the story of the tribal communities they met; their daily lives, their connection to the land and to the rivers, the threats which pervade each day of their lives. It is also a validation of their importance to the rest of the world; why these small, remote and often secretive indigenous communities are so important to our own lives and to our shared planet. It is a celebration of their vibrant cultures, their rituals and their rites of passage, of cultures very different from each other, but with a shared spiritual basis which respects the trees, the rivers and the rain. And it is a call for the world to protect them, their lands and their forests and rivers from the destruction which our avaricious greed for natural resources drives ever closer and deeper into their realm.

With the dawn of the modern age, the conquest of the third dimension—the aerial domain—set in motion a spatial revolution that irrevocably transformed humanity’s relationship with the city, with territory, and with the planet itself. The view from above introduced an unprecedented form of spatial knowledge, one from the outset charged with profound practical implications: the command of space, large-scale planning, control and surveillance, and aerial warfare. At the same time, aerial—or aero-spatial—vision gave rise to fundamental ethical and political experiences, including the emergence of an early global consciousness and the first stirrings of ecological awareness. Through a historical and philosophical lens, this book investigates the impact of the aerial revolution on both fronts, tracing the continuities and ruptures that have shaped humanity’s gradual conquest of the skies.