Africa’s No 1 Arts Bookstore and Publisher

October 2008 is the month of book fairs for David Krut Publishing and we are excited to participate in two international Artist Book fairs taking place simultaneously in Paris and New York City:

Artist Book International hosted by the famous George Pompidou Centre in Paris, the largest contemporary art museum in Europe, from the 24th - 26th October, and the NY Art Book Fair, this year taking place in Philips de Pury Auction House, Chelsea, New York City from the 23rd to the 26th October.

The New York fair was founded in 2006 by Printed Matter, the world’s largest nonprofit organization devoted to artists’ publications, now in its 31st year. Last year’s fair was installed on two floors of the old Dia Arts Centre on West 22nd Street, with on hundred and twenty exhibitors from as far as Japan and as local as Williamsburg, the other side of New York’s East River. This is not the place to expect glossy museum catalogues, and the emphasis is placed on books as art, rather than books on art.

Saying this, publishers as respected as MIT Press, and the giant art book distributor that holds a monopoly on the market, D.A.P, are present alongside Taschen and PowerHouse Books. But you will also find collective, small organisations such as Ugly Duckling Presse, who mine the archives of older publications to rescue them from oblivion, or Purgatory Pie Press. Ugly Duckling recently reprinted the entire two-year run of  “0 to 9″, one of the mimeographed magazines of the late 1960s, hardly a commercial venture. This fair also reserves a space for tiny independent publishers, many of them artists publishing home-made books, T-shirts and dvds resulting in a lively atmosphere with affordable objects for all visitors.

The French fair has many peripheral events circulating around the books, including film screenings, and artist performances. The exhibitors are mainly European, and it has a much longer history. This fair also has a peripatetic nature, jumping between Paris, Cologne and New York in previous years. This is the first year David Krut Publishing will take a booth.

David Krut Publishing is the only arts book publisher in the fair from Africa, setting us apart and bringing in lots of interest for the strong book publishing programme steered by Managing Editor, Bronwyn Law-Viljoen from Johannesburg. For 2008, we will be premiering new publications on Diane Victor, Taxi  -  013, Stephen Antonakos: 151 Images and an Essay, and Art and Justice, a study of the South African Constitutional Court’s art collection and the sister publication to 2006’s Light on a Hill.

Please do visit us in either Paris or new York, and enjoy the informal, browsing atmosphere of these fairs - far from the slick, monied monster art fairs we have become accustomed to in the the contemporary art world of today.

For further information:

www.nyartbookfair.com
www.artistbookinternational.com

Keywords: Artist Book International, David-Krut, Diane-Victor, New York Art Book Fair, Paris Book Fair, Stephen-Antonakos, William-Kentridge