NIROX WORDS FEST | David Krut Bookstore

David Krut Bookstore is pleased to be participating in this year’s WORDS Festival hosted by Nirox Foundation which will be held on Sunday the 28th of May.

The NIROX WORDS Festival dedicated to the power and promise of WORDS written, spoken, and sung, bringing multiple disciplines together to appreciate and examine their profound influence in shaping our world. The second edition of the festival, WORDS Fest 2023, is entitled “My Intimate Skies,” taking its cue from a poem written in residence at NIROX by Sudeep Sen, in which the sky becomes a portal for rethinking our relationship to place and time. Held on 28 May, this year’s festival includes a multitiered programme of exhibitions, talks programmes, screenings, book launches, and poetry readings.

David Krut Bookstore will be presenting a range of titles that celebrate South African art history, local artists, writers and publishers. As well as a new collaborative body of work between the featured artist of the festival, Sudeep Sen and the David Krut Workshop. Have a look at our selection below!

TAXI ART BOOKS:

TAXI Art Books: The first major series of monographs on contemporary South African artists by a South African publisher, TAXI Art Books have become an invaluable resource to educators and individuals both in South Africa and abroad.

The TAXI series, with the associated Educational Supplements, was launched in 2000 and comprises fifteen monographs on South African artists. Each Educational Supplement presents an introduction to and explanation of the artist’ s unique working method. This is followed by a number of worksheets containing conceptual and practical projects that refer to the artist.

Due to the generosity of Keyprint, the commercial printers of this series, we are able to present editions that were previously unavailable. These artist’s monographs are available at the original prices of R150, other than the those with limited availability.

ASHRAF JAMAL:

Ashraf Jamal: After a successful launch of three new titles by Ashraf Jamal hosted at The Blue House we are so pleased to be stocking ‘The Shades’, ‘A Million Years Ago in the 90’s’ and ‘Looking into the Mad Eye of History without Blinking’ at this year’s WORDS festival as well as his previous collections of essays, ‘Strange Cargo’ and ‘In the World’.

Ashraf Jamal is the writer-researcher for ArtBankSA, and a Research Associate in the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg. He is the co-author of ‘Art in South Africa: The Future Present’, and the co-editor of ‘Indian Ocean studies: Social, Cultural, and Political Perspectives’. Jamal is also the author of ‘Predicaments of Culture in South Africa, Love themes for the wilderness’, ‘A million years ago in the nineties’, ‘The Shades’, ‘In the World: Essays on Contemporary South African Art’, ‘Strange Cargo: Essays on Art’ and the newly published ‘Looking in the Mad Eye of History without Blinking’.

As part of the programme at WORDS – Ashraf will be doing a reading of his novella, ‘A million years ago in the 90’s’.

FOURTHWALL BOOKS:

Fourthwall Publications: It is unfortunate that we have had to say goodbye to Fourthwall Books, however, we were lucky enough to receive a great amount of the above titles which are all available are R150!

Writing the City into Being is Bremner’s long-awaited collection of essays, spanning more than a decade of work on Johannesburg. Háábré by Joana Choumali involves the link between past and present, as well as self-image. For this project she sought out the last generation of people who bear the imprint of the past on their faces. A Monologue in Two Voices by Sandra Saayman argues that writing and painting form two manifestations of one and the same creative force in Breytenbach’s oeuvre. Lastly, Gary Schneider’s Handbook – In 2011, on a trip to South Africa for an exhibition, Gary Schneider began a series of handprint portraits of South African artists.

ARTIST’S MONOGRAPHS AND SOUTH AFRICAN ART ARCHIVES:

Artist’s Monographs and South African Art Archives: We are so pleased to present such a wide range of monographs on artists such as Jeremy Wafer, who will be in residence at Nirox during the time of the festival, Willem Boshoff, Diane Victor, Wayne Barker and many more. Additionally, this selection includes many exhibition catalogues and publications on South African art history such as Engaging Modernities, Thami Mnyele & Medu, Printmaking In a Transforming South Africa, Positions: Contemporary South African Artists and Polly Street: The Story of Art.

SUDEEP SEN:

Sudeep Sen is the editorial director of AARK ARTS, editor of Atlas, and an award winning writer. Sen is the first Asian honoured to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival. Sen operates in the fields of writing and photography and is currently completely a residency at Nirox. Through research, writing and collaborations with local creative practitioners , he is exploring the relations between these two fields of expression. He is also the central figure of this years WORDS festival.

Sen has recently collaborated with printmaker Sbongiseni Khulu at DKW, transferring his photography to another medium which incorporates his written poetry into his imagery. These new experimental works will be exhibited at the festival alongside the launch of Sen’s new book, entitled RED, published by Nirox Foundation.

My Intimate Skies written by Sudeep Sen

We are looking forward to spending the day sharing the love of all things words in such a beautiful venue! Purchase tickets here: