A really good bookshop.

I think Leeds' artistic community would benefit greatly from a really amazing bookshop that sold hard-to-find artist books and reading material relevant to artistic discourse.

Good examples of this, I think, are Book Art Bookshop in London:

http://www.bookartbookshop.com/docs/about.htm

and News From Nowhere in Liverpool



http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/

It's the sort of thing that isn't very well represented in the region aside from by temporary events. It would draw people to the city and might also act as a platform for some of the critical discourse in Leeds by offering an outlet for artist publications. Does anyone know of any bookshops locally that already provide this that i'm forgetting about or ignorant of?

A really good independent bookshop would be fantastic. But the independents have been dwindling everywhere for some years now. There is a small shop in Chapel Allerton that is independent, but it doesn't stock the type of things you've been talking about. Maybe somewhere already in existence could be persuaded to stock ro at least order when requested - to try to build up to the sort of thing you're talking about Andy. I'm adding some emoticons - just because I want to see what it looks like!

It was sort of thing Yvonne and I wanted to have more of at 42 New Briggate, but alas... perhaps somewhere like the ArtMarket would be a good place to start a kind of mini-shop? But it'd need to be someone else doing it as I imagine there is enough to do already running the space and shows!

I'm pretty sure that Jay wants to have a zine-shop and drop-in workshop type thing there. Will be brilliant if so. I guess OK Comics is really decent for self-published and artist(y) books but it'd be nice if there was something which spanned a larger 'genre' (fiction, artist books, theory, catalogues etc) where you'd be likely to come across some unusual stuff you might not normally try. Hopefully someone that might be able to shed some light on that might join the forum!

Leeds is shocking for bookshops, & second hand bookshops of every kind (& antique shops!). I remember the days when you could spend a whole afternoon just at Hyde Park Corner looking at the six different second hand bookshops there. Sigh.

Could we have a forum on here for 'recommended reading', where people put up a title & 50 page summary of something they have read & liked? Or, maybe even the offer to lend it out to people if we are all feeling up for it?

I've been thinking about the lack of a shop selling specialist art magazines in Leeds. Since the demise of Borders where can you get hold of the latest issues of fairly mainstream magazines like Art Monthly and Frieze?
Is there somewhere I don't know about?

Also, even if you hated Borders it was probably the main outlet nationally for many many specialist magazines. What will happen to their distribution now?

I've really been lamenting Border's demise of late. There simply isn't anywhere else to get contemporary art magazines. I asked in WH Smith about ArtForum magazine (one of those mags where the ad's or more interesting the articles more often than not, but I like it) - and it wasn't even on their database. That's pretty shocking. I seem to remember that the Museum of film and television (Bradford) carried a few titles once upon a time, but they seem to have nothing nowadays. Waterstones = nothing. It's pretty dire.

Hi Keith

Impressions in Bradford sells a few art mags (mostly photography related) I'm not sure if Leeds Art Gallery sell any in their shop? It's definitely a notable gap in Leeds

Sounds like a gap that could be filled by theartmarket zine bookshop to me! Maybe you have to get a minimum order though? If I didn't work at a college and uni where I get free access to most of them I'd like the following magazines stocked in Leeds:

Mute
Art Monthly
Radical Philosophy
Third Text
The Idler
Afterall

I'd add ArtForum to that and TurpsBanana (curiously, this was a couple of pounds cheaper in Borders than it is buying it from the publishers website). I'm sure there's a myriad of other titles that I don't know about simply because they get little or no exposure in this region.

Will definitely attempt to look into this at some point, thanks for the pointers on the titles people are looking for, I have a few mainstream magazines in mind as well - Creative Review, Varoom & Grafik.

Maybe we should arrange a meeting at some point to discuss this at theartmarket? There's a couple of issues we'd probably have investing in this, but could see if there's any way of solving those issues together.

Happily, ArtForum is stocked at Impressions Gallery in Bradford (discovered that at the AN Air event last week), so that's something at least. They do seem to have expanded their Periodicals section a little lately.
I had a discussion about this very topic during that Artist Newsletter event last week and one proposal was that a certain gallery (can't remember which one now, I have the memory of a..., well, an artist!) could stock a range of art mags that can be freely viewed on the premises - perhaps in the process, creating that much needed meeting space and hang-out that Leeds lacks. I really liked that idea.

JayCover wrote:
Maybe we should arrange a meeting at some point to discuss this at theartmarket? There's a couple of issues we'd probably have investing in this, but could see if there's any way of solving those issues together.

Do you know what's the deal with things like Art monthly - are they Sale or Return or are you just left with the copies that aren't sold? The bookshop/browsing library thing is something we've talked about with Black Dogs for a while and would probs be up for talking about more.