THE PRINTED MATTER bookshop and event space in New York is hosting on exhibition of publications produced by the graphic designer and artist Dave King between 1977 and 2019 – including many materials reflecting King’s extensive work in the punk counterculture.
As well as being a member of the band Sleeping Dogs, King is particularly well known in anarchist punk circles for designing the striking circular logo which first adorned the cover of Penny Rimbaud’s 1977 samizdat Reality Asylum, and which was later adopted as the ‘Crass logo’ and which became central to the band’s iconography.
A second printing of the book David King Publications 1977–2019 and a new commemorative silk-screened poster have been produced to coincide with the exhibition.
The exhibition was previously on display late last year at the San Francisco Centre for the Book.
David King Publications 1977-2019. Printed Matter. 231 11th Ave, New York City. 5 June to 24 August 2025. https://www.printedmatter.org/
The exhibition was launched yesterday (6 June) with an event at which the exhibtion’s curators, Luca Antonucci and Matt Borruso, were joined in conversation by author and professor Sukhdev Sandhu, to discuss King’s artistry.
Perhaps best known as the creator of the Crass symbol, the iconic cross and two-headed serpent motif he created in 1977, David King was also a core member of the New York band Arsenal, and later on, the San Francisco-based bands Sleeping Dogs and Brain Rust. His connection to the wider underground music scene was a driving force for much of his creative work between 1977–1988 as King generated hundreds of show flyers, and created logos, brand identities, and posters for New York and San Francisco nightclubs. King’s work also encompassed a mix of drawing, photography, sculpture, film, video, and radio plays, with his practice moving freely between these interests and mediums.
The exhibition includes dozens of photocopied and offset zines alongside numerous original paste-ups that King began making after he relocated to San Francisco in 1980. He produced these cheaply-made zines as a way to move through his graphic design concepts—stapling together a few letter-sized pages with minimal text and juxtaposed images that he drew from mainstream periodicals like National Geographic and the San Francisco Chronicle. This practice evolved into a robust yet obscure publishing output that varied widely in subject matter and approach, featuring dystopian science fiction zines indebted to J.G. Ballard (Suburbs of Hell), collaborative works made using mail art practices (Too Many Zombies; No. One), and projects that reflected the politics and anarcho punk aesthetics of his bands (Sleeping Dogs #1 and #2).
Also on view are a selection of King’s self-published idiosyncratic books, which he began to produce in the early 2000s through online print-on-demand services. Published under his imprint MoST Books (Museum of Small Things), King issued dozens of brief volumes in editions of only a couple copies each, a series of wide-ranging explorations on topics that included rock formations in early Western films, masked film characters, and comic book heroes. The works drew on his sprawling collections of peculiar objects and printed materials that he diligently accumulated and photographed, as well as the cut-and-paste scrapbooks that he created over decades. Toward the end of his life, King grew more involved in small DIY publishing communities, bringing about a wave of book projects that assembled the work he had been creating for decades, but that was far less known than the Crass symbol. Several publications on his graphic design and photography released through Colpa Press, &Pens, Goteblüd, and Gingko Press/ Kill Yr Idols are included in the exhibition and available for purchase.
David King Publications 1977–2019, co-published by Colpa Press and San Francisco Center for the Book, is now in its second printing and is available for purchase through Printed Matter.
On the occasion of the exhibition, Printed Matter and the David King Estate have produced a new screenprinted exhibition poster, reproducing King’s iconic illustration created for his band Sleeping Dogs. Printed in Los Angeles by Kol-Bee.
This exhibition is made possible with the cooperation of the David King Estate and supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
A version of this exhibition was first developed by Antonucci and Borruso for the San Francisco Center for the Book, presented October 25–December 22, 2024, and an accompanying book David King Publications 1977–2019 was published on occasion of the show, with both initiatives supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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