Interview: Conor Donlon

We managed to tie down the most elusive character in London's world of books for an interview: Conor Donlon. Conor is the owner of Donlon Books, an inimitable bookshop located on Broadway Market where he sells a personally curated eclectic mix of counterculture, subculture and youth culture informed books. Since LN-CC opened its Dalston-based gates in 2010, Conor curated the book selection, providing us with the cream of the crop of books and printed matter.

Conor came from Ireland to London to study fashion design, completed a BA and MA at Central Saint Martins and went on assisting artist Wolfgang Tillmans. Possibly inspired by working in Saint Martins' college library, he took the opportunity to open a small bookshop in Herald St Gallery, just below Tillmans' studio space. The selection of books was appreciated by the art and fashion people who came down the gallery, so Conor decided to take a step forward and opened his own independent shop on Cambridge Heath Road. After running two shops simultaneously for a while, he then opted to continue only the space on Broadway Market, which opened in 2009 and just recently he moved above the shop where he is now unintentionally merging private and working life.

Still he is a mysterious phenomenon as everybody here at LN-CC knows him, but nobody knows too much about him. Hopefully this is going to change now...

LN-CC: When did you come to London and how did you sense the city, coming from a small town in Ireland?

Conor Donlon: I came to London in 1994 to study fashion design in Saint Martins, Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan had just graduated and there was a real sense of excitement in the air. I remember blagging a press pass for London Fashion Week the day after I arrived in London and seeing one of Chalayan's first shows in a big draughty warehouse behind Kings Cross Station - all very exciting for someone fresh off the plane from Ireland.

I guess I was always more into research and ideas behind fashion, it was never so much about designing clothing for me. At Saint Martin's they allowed me to do what I wanted to do, especially on the MA, where course director Louise Wilson was really supportive. Although studying womenswear, I don't really remember making many clothes throughout my six years of study. My MA ended with flocked power tools, a fascist army of Irish dancing trophy tops and a very confused external examiner!

LN-CC: But you got carried away from fashion...

Conor Donlon: After college I worked with the artist Wolfgang Tillmans who had seen my graduation show. I worked for him as an assistant for several years, not so much as a photographic assistant, more helping edit and put publications together, installing shows, which was great, I got to meet lots of interesting people and travel all over the world.

LN-CC: And then afterwards you opened the shop?

Conor Donlon: Yes, the shop sort of happened by accident. I've always collected books and was invited to have a bookshop by Herald St Gallery which was located just below Wolfgang's studio. It was all very small scale. I remember when it opened I only had a few books, everything was facing forward, most of the titles were from my own collection, it's amazing what a few old cabinets and some strategic placement can do.

I guess people responded to the strange mix of books, I had a lot of German and American counterculture related material, and lots of stuff which I guess in hindsight was atypical to what you might find in a gallery environment. It was all very hidden away though, an industrial building on a backstreet in Bethnal Green, the last place you would expect to find a bookshop, but Herald St's diverse mix of artists, people such as Pablo Bronstein, Scott King, Donald Urquhart, Nick Relph and Alex Birkin, meant a sympathetic audience and a steady flow of people with a passion for books.

LN-CC: Do you have a favourite place to find interesting books?

Conor Donlon: All over the place really. I travel quite a lot, and always make sure to do the rounds if I am in a new city, not necessarily to buy but to see new things, that's the good thing about books, there's always something new to discover. Tokyo, L.A. and Paris all have amazing specialist bookstores and the Printed Matter book fair in New York every year is a great place to get an overview of what is going on, but actually Berlin is kind of my favourite, there is a much more evolved specialist bookshop culture in Germany, and the antiquarian bookshops are great. I think you can even do a degree in bookselling at university there... which might be a bit excessive, but anyway. I have stocked a lot of older German books in my shop from day one.

LN-CC: So would you ever consider an opening of Donlon Books elsewhere?

Conor Donlon: Haha, I don't think so. I run a very small scale operation and I am firmly rooted in London. The bookshop is very much a product of my seventeen years living here. The people who I have met and have influenced me, the clubs, nightlife, the diversity and that energy that drew me here in the first place. I can't really imagine living anywhere else either to be honest, unless perhaps in a Buckminster Fuller style Geodesic Dome somewhere remote when I hit my 50s, but we'll see how it pans out.

LN-CC: Is there any book you were looking for for ages and couldn't track down?

Conor Donlon: Most of the time it's not actually a case of not being able to track them down, more a case of not being able to afford. Yes, there are plenty of them. I wouldn't mind a first edition of Jack Smith's 'Beautiful Book', but at lb30,000 I am quite happy to live without at the same time.

I guess at the moment I am more interested in self-published books by younger artists and photographers. There has been a real explosion of independent publishing since I started the shop, and for me generally this is more exciting than stocking the tenth monograph by a well-known artist. I am very happy to leave this job to the larger shops who can deal with this in a more comprehensive way.

My shop is really about an eclectic, maybe slightly subversive mix of things. A Sigmar Polke book next to a book of dead people, opposite some trannys next to a Japanese photo book of jellyfish. Do you remember the childrens programme Mr. Benn, in which a man visits a fancy-dress shop where he is invited by the moustached shopkeeper to try on a particular outfit each time and leaves the shop through a magic door entering a world appropriate to his costume... well, my ideal shop would be like that, maybe an adult version though... except with books.

LN-CC: When you've got some sort of special editions and you've got yourself just one copy, is it not hard to give it away?

Conor Donlon: That's something I learned really early on. A gallerist from Germany who has an amazing bookshop told me that you have to be prepared to sell everything. There have been some things in the past, like a Baader Meinhof photofit folder issued to the German Border Police, which I have been very reluctant to part with, but after four years I managed to find another one just recently. I do believe most things come around again. If I am in the business of selling books then that's what I got to do. A lot of my favourite books, I don't actually own at the moment, and may or may not do again, but that's fine.

LN-CC: How do you generally go about selecting books for your shop?

Conor Donlon: I guess most of what I stock is born out of personal interest, curiosity or conversation with customers. I have a lot of regulars, I generally know their tastes and they know mine so I'm always hearing about interesting books to get in, I get a real buzz of this kind of interaction.

LN-CC: How do you feel about the digital development? Do things like the iPad or electronic books affect your business?

Conor Donlon: Of course it affects my business, as with all bookshops but I do think there is room for both. I guess I am lucky being part of a newer breed of bookshops. I actually have lots of books here that intentionally bypass the usual modes of distribution, zines, artists books and small independent publishers as well as rarer titles. It's the eclectic mix but still very much a personally curated selection. And I think there is now, probably more than ever a need for this within the bookselling industry. For me most of the books in the shop are linked to each other in some way. There is a continuity and a mindset running through everything, and the experience of this is quite difficult to replicate online, as is the possibility of chance and discovery.

LN-CC: And you don't miss fashion at all?

Conor Donlon: I don't really buy designer clothes, I'm not interested in that but I still look at all the collections every season. I'm still very interested in what lies behind fashion and the research that goes into it, seeing a collection and figuring out what designers have been looking at, spotting the references. It's all completely relevant to my job as a bookseller and the books I choose to sell.

In terms of the fashion industry - no! Come on! You know what I mean, it's a funny one, the fashion industry. But then I find the art world isn't all that different, they operate in a very similar way on many levels. It's because I don't really feel completely affiliated to the art world, nor to fashion or photography worlds that I am free to mix things together in a way that other people may probably think is wrong, high brow alongside the outwardly trashy. For me that's what makes it fun, being able to dip into different areas without having to be tied down. But ultimately the most important thing for me is showing interesting books and matching the right book with the right person. That's what makes me a happy boy.

LN-CC: What's next for you?

Conor Donlon: I have a few publishing projects in the pipeline. I have been working on a book about the stolen library books of British playwright Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell which is due to come out in late November. Over the course of two years in the late 1950's the couple stole over 72 titles from Islington's local library. Together they re-collaged the covers and put them back on the library shelves.

A game of cat and mouse ensued between Islington library authorities and the pair. Eventually they were caught and put in prison for six month. Orton subsequently became one of Britain's most celebrated playwrights, before his untimely death in 1967 when he was murdered by Halliwell with a hammer. Halliwell also took his own life. The Orton/Halliwell collages are seen as a big influence on the cut up aesthetic of punk. The book will reproduce all the covers still in existence and piece together their history. I am also working on a few other books which hopefully will be realised at some point next year and also some more curated projects for LN-CC, enough to keep me very busy!

Interview by Lilli Heinemann
Photography by Ben Benoliel