12 Art Books to buy for Christmas

1 Bailey's East End (Steidl)

Bloody hell this three volume book of photos is incredible. These city shots paint an entirely different image of Bailey. For anyone interested in cities, the documentation of gentrification, London in any way and the photographic medium at all - buy this book.

2 Mike Nelson: An INVOCATION (Focal Point)

Five Hundred and Thirty Books from Southend Central Library

There are only 1000 copies of this artwork cum book and my god its good. Hundreds of juxtaposed images from book sleeves, back covers, title pages, inserts. Its an approach Nelson has done before in print form but never to this level. Long live the library.

3 Constructing Worlds by Alona Pardo and Elias Redstone (Prestel) 

Constructing Worlds at the Barbican is an incredible show and Prestel's catalogue captures these images of the changing photographic approach to architecture perfectly - but as a companion it would be silly not to get co-curator Elias Redstone's Phaidon tome Shooting Space. Why choose? Get both.

4 Branding Terror (Merrell)

This is obviously a deeply disturbing book and its fascinating. The kind of book that you know will become a huge collectors item. A serious and thorough examination of the meaning, design and iconography of terrorist group's logos. Each are reproduced and dissected in depth. 

5 Cee Cee Berlin (Distanz Verlag)

This brilliant hard back guidebook to places in the city is based on a great city based newsletter. (Autocenter gets a namecheck). It gives me faith that my second favourite city still has some kind of creative innovation and desirable spots that havent been ruined by the onslaught of start up dicks.

6 Shit and Die

My love for the tumblr of this show in Turin never ceases and the show itself in Turin which launched to coincide with Artissima (and runs until January) was very well done with work  Sarah Lucas  and Carol Rama. The catalogue with its repro Olivetti ad cover should start popping up at an art book shop near you. Buy it.

7 'Jim's Terrible City: JG Ballard and Shanghai' by James H Bollen

The best independent photo book to pop up on my shelf from this photographer who followed Ballard's footsteps in Shanghai. The images are really a brilliant ode to the changing face of the city, the absence of history and Ballard's own lingering ghost.

8 The Hidden World by Jim Shaw (Walter Konig)

Jim Shaw collects the weirdest crap and it is utterly fascinating. Aside from providing a brilliant insight into his own work, his collections of Alien obsessive memorabilia, weird Christian crap and general odd kitsch freakdown is brilliant. It is printed to resemble a small very warped bible.

9 Art and Politics Now by Anthony Downey (Thames & Hudson)

Ah Christmas. The time of pure consumption. If you want to give a gift if protest and dissent this seems like a good place to start - a visual book focusing on current manifestations of the political in art (often in public space).

10 Shinro Ohtake by Ziba Ardalan (Parasol Unit) 

This Japanese genius artist has recently had his first big show in London EVER - which is insane considering the amazing projects he has shown at Documenta and the Venice Biennale in the past few years. This book is a great introduction to his collage approach to sketchbooks, sculpture and everything else.

11 The Folly Acres Cook Book by Sue Webster (Other Criteria)

If you know someone that likes art and food Webster (without Noble) has put together this diary like punk scrawled cookbook interspersed with drawings that is rather brilliant. Road kill roast is not the norm. Generally the food if quite good for vegetarians.

12 The Book of Hearts by Francesca Gavin (Laurence King)
Because its a lovely little gift obviously, there are hundreds of hearts in it and its a way of giving emotion without words. And you get to read a little texts about Emblemata books, weird cults and the history of Mexican visual culture.

Bookish Londoners should also head to the seedy side streets of soho for the pop up Antenna Books, 8 Walkers Court, Soho W1 and if you buy one new magazine this year it should be SPACE.

Top 10 from Documenta 13

The trouble with Documenta is the best things were completely impossible for me to share in any way but words. Totally experiential. This is art you have to be there to be in not just see.

1 Janet Cardiff and George Miller
Their video walk in the old Hauptbanhopf (pictured above) was so good I could barely speak afterwards. You are given an iPod touch and some damn good headphones in exchange for your passport. The piece is a video work which takes you around a functioning railway station - you're looking at the screen and comparing it where you are the whole time. Layers of sound, history, meaning, experience and amazing dance elements thrown in and the horrifying realisation you are standing on the platform where Jews were transported to concentration camps. Art does not get better than this. (Equally as amazing was sitting on tree stumps in the woods listening to their environmental audio installation 'for a thousand years' where war seems to take place around ever physical corner.)

2 Pierre Huyghe's Untitled
Totally unique. You stumble into a swamp in the middle of an art filled garden. There are piles of concrete bricks around. Some plants amongst them - which smell and look like weed...Around the corner beyond some muddy ditches, a small brown puppy and an older dog with one pink leg are basking in the sun playing with whoever comes by. In the centre of the space is a place you can't reach surrounded by muddy hills. In the centre is a reclining nude sculpture with a swarm of live bees on its head. And that's it. The plants turned out to be psychoactive. The result was one of the strangest, most memorable, weird takes on the cycle of life I have ever seen. Can't get the thing out of my head.

3 Tino Sehgal
So good I had to go twice. You stumble into a complete black shed. You cannot see a thing. There are human voices around but you can't work out if they are live or recorded. You are literally frozen unaware how close people are. After about five minutes I realised they were real then left. Hours later someone says to me - did you see the dancing?? I went back the next day - after about 15 minutes your eyes finally adjust to the blackness and you can see! People are doing this strange voice and jagged dance routine. It was insane and pushed all the boundaries of your senses.

4 Haris Epaminonda
A whole house turned into an architectural installation filled with her neo-classicist framed found images, atmospheric film works and a dose of architecture. I wanted to move in.

5 Shinro Ohtake: MON CHERI: A Self Portrait
A 3D collage work. Boast went all the way up to the top of the tree next door - like the Japanese earthquake in art form. The building was amazing - filled with paper collage, video pieces, kinetic instruments. And the letter F. (below)

6 Sanja Ivekovic's The Disobediant installation
Inspired by a vile image of a nazi illustrating the relationship between Jews and lazy asses, Ivekovic reinvents the idea of the ass as a symbol for political dissonance and rebellion. Fascinating in particular was the biographical texts of the these rebels to accompany the room (below)

7 Rabih Moure
Lebanese artist with an inspired depiction of war included flip books of film clips of gunfire and some really interesting stills and video pieces about the relationship between cellphones and war (below)

8 Masood Kamandy
Artist working with photography and computer programmer who set up courses to teach people art skills in Kabul's University. A collaborative and political project with beautiful results. (below)

9 Wael Shawky 'Cabaret Crusades:The Horror Show File'
A puppet show version of middle Eastern moments in history. Wish I had had time to watch it all. (still below) but there's a great feature in Kaleidoscope about the artist

10 Erkki Kurenniermi 
Apart from his experimental musical devices, a wall of TVs showing his collected lifelong archive of images, films, computer animations and god knows what else (below)