Temporary Unit

Now more titles, prints, posters, objects — come browse! Open by appointment (DM us), mostly weekdays and Saturdays.

IDEA no. 413 Fault Lines in Printing History: Risograph and the Future of Bookmaking Directed and edited by @ideatokyo Published by @seibundoshinkosha Designed by LABORATORIES（Kensaku Kato, Sae Kamata, Sakura Koizumi） For a long time printing has advanced along the lines of homogeneity and reproducibility. From letterpress to offset, then digital printing — we can see the collective result of investigations into accurate, efficient print reproduction methods. With the support of this technical infrastructure, Japan’s publishing culture has matured into specialist labor divisions: authors, editors, designers, printers, distributors, and bookstores. In recent years however, the boundaries have quietly begun to blur. The practice of bookmaking has expanded, with disciplines like editing, design, printing, book binding, and distribution now being bridged: small-scale, flexible publishing models are attracting renewed attention. This has resulted in Risograph printing receiving a fresh spotlight. This feature attempts to revisit the relationship between printing and publishing through interviews with Risograph studios and independent publishers both internationally and in Japan, and explore the potential in publishing culture actively distancing itself from efficiency and homogeneity. 50 sgd

Upcoming event: Open Book 9: Sulki and Min 27 Mar (Fri) 2026, 8pm – 9.30pm at Temporary Unit, 22 New Industrial Road, #06-01 Open Book is an ongoing series of talks and conversations around book design and production by designers working closely with print and/or publishing. Co-initiated and organised by Azelia Ng and Temporary Unit, these sessions happen around a large table scattered with books and other printed matter. In this 9th session, we will be joined by Choi Sulki and Choi Sung Min. Also known as Sulki and Min, they are graphic designers who also write and publish books with studio-publisher Workroom Specter and have exhibited widely in South Korea and beyond as individuals, a studio and as part of the collective SMSM with artists Sasa[44] and Park Meena. Sulki teaches at Kaywon School of Art & Design, and Min at the University of Seoul. (@sulki_and_min ) —— Azelia Ng is a (graphic) designer based in Singapore. While working primarily in the field of graphic design, she isn’t defined by it and expresses her expanded vocation as being print in nature and experimental in character. (@azelia_nwz / @theotherworkroom ) Temporary Unit is an adhoc bookshop and exhibition space for graphic design run by gideon-jamie in Singapore since 2021. (@temporaryunit / @gideon_jamie_ ) —— As all sessions are free to attend and do not require registration, the small venue may get crowded and coming slightly earlier would help with getting a better seat.

Railing Codex By @para_railing (Jie Shao, Sixing Xu and Xuecan Ye) Published by @page.bureau Designed by Related Department In English and Chinese Railing Codex is an installation, a community printshop, and a collective dictionary created by Pararailing (Jie Shao, Sixing Xu and Xuecan Ye), their friends, and friends of their friends. This project has now been materialized into an artist’s book in the form of a slanted dictionary, which collects the frst eight volumes of Railing Codex. In each volume, contributors select one word from a designated list and interpret it in their chosen genre and language. Then, contributors each select one word from their respective entry and nominate a writer to participate in the next volume. The nominated writer chooses from this new list of words to continue writing. 55 sgd

Emma cc Cook: MANNERS By @__just__eccc__ Edited and designed by @ryangeraldnelson Published by @eraeditions This artist monograph features the work of LA-based artist Emma cc Cook. The book weaves together select paintings and sculptures by Cook spanning from 2019–2025 along with free verse writings by the artist that invite us to step further into the worlds and narratives cultivating within Cook’s body of work. Cook’s painted worlds are often accompanied by curious and often fuzzy storyboard-like vignettes and overlaid imagery that hover across the paintings. In response, the book’s margins and gutters are activated by their own overlaid images that converse with and offer playful glimpses into Cook’s themes, research, and trove of visual references that she has collected throughout the years. Featured prominently within Cook’s works are the unmistakable depictions of the landscapes and signifiers of a past era of the American agricultural Midwest. Within these vast depictions, acting as a visual archaeology of a nation steeped in expansionist drive, Cook pieces together certain defining myths of America. London-based art gallery Public wrote of Cook’s work for her 2025 solo-exhibition, stating: “Cook explores with systemic precision how accelerated capitalism and industrialization cast shadows across rural America. Her works serve as an archive, or perhaps a tombstone, blending speculative fiction with her Minnesota upbringing, to capture the no man’s land of the American mid-west—a hybridization of its mythical past and forgotten future—while advancing the contemporary genre of landscape painting.” 45 sgd

Wathéča Records Sourcebook @watheca.records Published by @eraeditions Wathéča Records is a label and archival project focused on highlighting North American Indigenous musicians and artists who have often been overlooked within the canons of rock, folk, and country music. Wathéča Records was founded in 2022 by Justis Brokenrope (Sičháŋǧu Lakȟóta), a musician, DJ, and educator currently residing in Bdé Óta Othúŋwe, Mní Sóta (Minneapolis, Minnesota). Driven by Brokenrope’s dedication for building and sharing his still-growing archive of rare vinyl records, cassette tapes, and even 8-track tapes, Wathéča Records Sourcebook showcases what makes physical media and printed ephemera so memorable and ripe for connection while simultaneously documenting a deep reverence for the Indigenous musicians and artists featured throughout the book. From the likes of Floyd Westerman and Buddy Red Bow, to the Zuni Midnighters and the Navajo Sundowners, and many more, Wathéča Records Sourcebook is guided by the act of breathing energy and pride into the music for readers to connect with and appreciate. Brokenrope describes the underlying aim of his archival project as providing a renewed platform (via live DJ sets, uploads to the Wathéča Records YouTube channel, Internet radio shows, etc.) to these underrepresented musicians and artists where their music can be heard and appreciated by a wider audience, where accessibility becomes a means of building community around the music, and where the virtues of the archive promote our bond with memory and history. The pages of this illustrious book feature in-situ photography of album artwork and printed ephemera directly from Brokenrope’s collection, behind the scenes documentation of the making and curation of Wathéča Records, as well as an array of reprinted comments handpicked from the Wathéča Records YouTube channel. Posted by communities of fans and avid listeners, the inclusion of these joyous and meaningful comments connect readers with the memories and community that exists behind the music. 45 sgd

Gaze Palais By @ryangeraldnelson Published by @eraeditions Part treatise in its adolescence, part foundational slab, part visual lexicon casually unfurled like a roll of film that you just in this exact moment remember is undeveloped and frantically rewind back into the camera, but not before errant light and image imprint their undeniable presence. Gaze Palais presents the artist’s theory of The Image woven through arrangements of the image-relics underpinning this scopic palais. Gaze Palais merges “Displaced Gaze” (a text first published by Ryan Gerald Nelson in 2015) and Nelson’s ongoing project titled Peripheries (2014–present). 35 sgd

275 Pesetas A project by Esther Pérez Published by @handshake.fun 275 pesetas is a photographic project by Esther Pérez that revisits her early days in photography in Madrid in the late 1980s. While studying at university, she supported herself by taking portrait-style photos of students alongside other young photographers. These images were developed in her lab, printed in passport photo format, and used at the university. Drawing from her extensive archive, the project reflects on the social and political challenges of the era (with contents printed within the second fold). 35 sgd

Hair Pieces Edited by Melissa Keys Published by Perimeter Editions @perimeterbooks Few subjects can evoke the entwinement of the corporeal, personal, and political so succinctly as that of hair. Throughout history, hair has been charged with significance and is resonant with meaning, transmitting ideas about gender, mythology, status and power, the body, psychology, feminism, and notions of beauty. At once radiant and repellent, and often richly symbolic, it has always assumed a particular importance in relation to the self, history, and society. Edited by Melissa Keys, Hair Pieces explores the complex significance of hair in contemporary culture through a selection of recent Australian and international works of art. Encompassing a wide range of practices including drawing, painting, performance, photography, installation, text, and more, this collection of works reveals interwoven dialogues tracing identity, spirituality, agency, and resistance. Published by Perimeter Editions, this book – and the 2024 exhibition that preceded it at Heide Museum of Modern Art – examines the myriad ways in which artists utilise hair to investigate and conjure generative and beguiling possibilities encompassing growth, empowerment and transformation. 43 sgd

Lumina: The Photic Atlas By Izabela Pluta Published by Perimeter Editions @perimeterbooks The work of Izabela Pluta may enlist the optical, chemical, and technical processes of the camera and darkroom as its central pillar, but to describe her practice in terms of photography would seem insufficient. Over a career stretching the best part of two decades, the Polish-born Australian-based artist has forged a rigorous body of work that critically excavates the underpinnings of the photographic process, its modes of presentation, its fallibilities, and its broader implications. Her work is expressly photographic, but its bearings stretch far beyond the lens. Lumina: The Photic Atlas – Pluta’s third book for Perimeter Editions – works to map and expand upon the artist’s site-responsive project, Lumina, at Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne, which explores the intersection of photography with concepts of time, memory, notions of impermanence, and questions of place. Made over the course of a year, and aligned with each change of season, Pluta worked in situ with curator Melissa Keys at Heide Modern, exposing lengths of silver gelatin photographic paper to the changing natural light. Laid out across the terrazzo floor, the artist used the modernist building as a type of camera and an unwitting collaborator, registering subtle shifts of shadows and streams of light as they passed through the glass walls and windows. Other similarly unconventional approaches to recording and spatial intervention unfold throughout the former home, engaging the senses and drawing our eye to things often unseen. Extending from the exhibition, the book takes on the role of a compendium or workbook, gathering the peripheral and actual processes of the project. In this way, it functions both as a continuation of the exhibition and a critical ledger of its conditions of possibility. 50 sgd

Unmanageable Space By Shingo Itou Edited by Yukie Suetsugu Published by @neutral_colors_magazine Designed by @disk.kn This publication documents the interior of the antique shop itou, located in Sakyo Ward, Kyoto, together with the words of its owner, Shingo Ito. The photographs were taken by the painter qp, who recorded the space through a fixed-point, longitudinal approach. Once a month, itou completely renews its display, including the fixtures. Through the overlapping factors of object selection, the placement and form of fixtures, and the actions of visitors—handling, moving, and purchasing objects—the shop repeatedly arrives at moments of “completion.” By observing the shop from a fixed viewpoint as it takes on a different appearance each month, one gradually becomes aware of the ambiguous layers woven together by space, objects, and fixtures. This book explores itou’s spatial practice through a wide range of elements—images, plinths, space, grounding, object placement, organization, and pricing—and presents this three-dimensional environment in a way that can be sensed through both design and text. The square binding based on a grid, the design that shuffles a pre-laid-out sequence to create random pagination for each copy, and the visual interference between recto and verso pages caused by ink show-through are all modeled after the interior of itou. Just as one circulates through the shop—crouching, standing, and turning back—the book invites readers to experience similar movements as they turn its pages. The book is printed primarily in monochrome gray using risograph printing. By stripping away color information and fine details from the original photographs, the silhouettes and spatial arrangement of the subjects—objects and fixtures—are brought into sharper focus. 38 sgd

PLATES 1: Manifesto vs Manifest Published by @page.bureau PLATES: an editorial and curatorial response to contemporary design practice and criticism. Each issue dives into a specific topic that is pertinent to the design reality we live in, presented and archived in a series of image and textual plates in an organic, iterative and evolving format. Iteration 1 presents collective voices of practitioners situated along overlaps or cracks between disciplines to rethink the subject “Manifesto vs. Manifest” in relation to their practice through this iterative lens. Contributors: Can Yang, Catherine Griffiths, Dinamo, Draw Down Books, Gabriel Melcher, Hezin O, Jack Self, John Provencher, Lamm & Kirch, Lukas Eigler-Harding, Nat Pyper, Related Department, Secret Riso Club, Sulki & Min, Tetsuya Goto, Toru Kase, Velvetyne, Vrints-Kolsteren 38 sgd