/Galleries
David King: Publications 1977-2019
Nov 01 - Dec 22, 2024
Wednesday through Sunday 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
565-0545
Event WebsiteAbout
David King (1948–2019) was an English artist, graphic designer, and musician best known for designing the Crass symbol. His many varied projects encompassed drawing, photography, sculpture, film, video, radio plays, and more. King was a core member of the New York no wave band Arsenal, and later the San Francisco post-punk bands Sleeping Dogs and Brain Rust. He generated hundreds of flyers for these bands and others during the period of 1977–1988, as well as creating logos, brand identities, and posters for nightclubs like Danceteria, Pravda, and the Peppermint Lounge in New York and the I-Beam in San Francisco.
SF/Arts Curator Insight
Famous for creating the iconic logo for Crass, English graphic artist David King landed in San Francisco in 1980, where he took up photocopy art (still in its infancy), started making zines (Suburbs of Hell, Too Many Zombies), and produced pointed posters — mostly black and white cut-ups illustrating smart-ass slogans — promoting his musical projects (Arsenal, Sleeping Dogs, Brain Rust). This lovingly curated collection of stencils and collages resurrects the streets of 1980s San Francisco, the city's surfaces encoded with urgent, funny, often cryptic messages in paint and paper —transmitting all manner of mischief by and for the city's cultural underground.
Mark Taylor
SF/Arts Curator
San Francisco Center for the Book