The overarching theme of this year’s PAGES event is The Library. At this moment in time when there are many differing ideas and approaches regarding the purpose, future and continuing existence of our public libraries, it is apposite that we present new and alternative proposals to such spaces, highlighting their unique and enduring potentials.

The Tetley is also host to two artists from Pakistan, the photographers and filmmakers Madiha Ajaz and Mahbub Jokhio, who are invited as part of the New North and South; a three-year programme of activity across eleven arts organisations from the North of England and South Asia. Ajaz and Jokhio are particularly interested in notions and correlations of public and private spaces – the home, the library or the graveyard. Similarly, The House That Heals The Soul, a project and installation consisting of a functioning publishing studio by artist and writer Nick Thurston in collaboration with the CCA, Glasgow, invites the public into the gallery to participate and self-publish, examining the relationship between contemporary art and libraries as possible sites of ‘resistance, shelter, preservation, creation and restitution’.

Anna-Sophie Springer, independent curator, writer, editor and Director of the publishing platform K. Verlag in Berlin, will be presenting this year’s keynote lecture focusing on libraries as sites of discovery, chance occurrences and the non-linear, and the library as curatorial space. Conversely, or similarly (depending on the methodology one employs) the annual AW&P symposium will examine artists’ publications as instructions, scores and manuals.

In addition to documenting the Fair’s participating artists, publishers and educational institutions, PAGES The Library includes essays addressing aspects of library, archive, memes, bricolage and braille.

PAGES gratefully acknowledges the support of The Tetley and the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds.