Not Your Usual Book Club
Female Singapore|April 2023
An art book is not just some coffee table tome, Renee Ting will have you know. Instead, think of it as a work of art that comes in the form of a book. As founder and director of the Singapore Art Book Fair, or SGABF for short, the 30-year-old has been an indispensable figure in building awareness and support for this experimental medium here and in the region. This month from the 14th to the 16th she will host the biggest edition of the independent festival yet to mark 10 years since its debut in 2013. Ahead of this milestone, this bibliophile with a creative streak gives Keng Yang Shuen a crash course on art books, how the scene in Singapore has evolved, and the all-important community she relies on to help keep print going.
Not Your Usual Book Club

LET'S GO BACK TO THE START, RENEE. WHAT GAVE YOU THE IDEA TO START SGABF?

"The organisers of the Tokyo Art Book Fair had approached me and my friend Stephanie Peh (a freelance arts and culture writer and producer), and said: 'You know, there isn't an art book fair in Singapore, so you guys should start one.' This was back in 2013, when the art book scene here was pretty much non-existent or extremely niche, and the people involved in it were doing things in silo. Nothing really happened until a month before the first SGABF was scheduled to take place. Steph and I started scrambling and calling people whom we knew were doing things related to magazines - even remotely because it was the printed medium that most were into at the time. It was also something we were familiar with ... In hindsight, that debut edition featured things that were on the periphery of what would be defined as an art book and wasn't tightly curated. We both had full-time jobs and I saw it more as something on my calendar that I had to do and get over with. After leaving my job (in the world of publishing) in 2017, I took over SGABF and decided to run it independently. That was when I realised that I had a much bigger vision and dreams for this event and its community."

THE CONCEPT OF AN ART BOOK AND WHAT CONSTITUTES ONE IS FOREIGN TO MANY. SEEMS LIKE IT WAS A QUESTION YOU HAD TO GRAPPLE WITH TOO WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED SGABF.

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