22 Feb

Posted at 15:06h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
9.9 x 13.9cm, 1pp black on blue card with the epigram:

All that we did not want to catch, we kept, and all that we wanted to take home we throw over the side

The card reflects a then current political dispute about conservation of fish - the European Community forcing fishermen to take account of their actions when over-fishing which of course was unpopular amongst the working fleet. The original epigram apparently referred to lice (All that we caught we left behind, and all that we did not catch we carry home" from the Epigrams of Homer. Finlay spins this with some mis-placed sympathy for the modern fisherman. VG+.

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19 Feb

Posted at 14:44h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
9.5 x 16cm, 1pp black on white card with a photograph of Loch Echen at Little Sparta.

THE AERONAUT PRINZ EUGEN

sank
somewhere
here

An effigy
now
of itself

Prinz Eugene was the German Battle Cruiser from the second world war and was scuttled after the war remaining partly emerged. FInlay's poem seems to remember a crashed model (and its occupant) named after the real boat which one presumes ended up in the Loch (actually a large pool). VG+.

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16 Feb

Posted at 13:16h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
8.4 x 12.6cm, 4pp black on white folding card with the drawing by Gary Hincks of a second world war bomber with a woman as "nose art". The poem internally reads:

1943

Lovely ladies lolling in lingerie
on the noses of B17's. (sic)

The alliterative first line brings to mind real seductresses and the second clearly places the reality of the second world war habit of having female images painted on the front of the bomber planes. VG+.

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14 Feb

Posted at 11:49h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 2000
7 x 12.6cm, 4pp artist's card with a landscape drawing by Kathleen Lindsley. Internally there is a definition work by Finlay:

(Classical) landscape, n. a stand of concepts.

Finlay's definition is aware of the long traditions and ideas behind both landscape gardening and the painting of such scenes. VG+.

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13 Feb

Posted at 20:57h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
10.6 x 8cm, 20pp plus card covers. Artist's book dedicated to Colin Sackett which can be read in both directions - in one direction every right hand page has the word "runnel" and if turned around and read in the opposite direction the the word repeated is "funnel". Hence in one direct the words run off the page like a stream (a runnel) but in the other move away like the expelled steam from a funnel. Interestingly the name "sackett" is regarded as having the meaning of an opponent - someone who goes opposite to you. VG apart from the staples are a bit rusted.

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06 Feb

Posted at 22:04h in James Lee Byars

Koln, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1996 21 x 15cm, 86pp plus card covers. A single number of the "Art Today" series of books which has an interview (In German) with Joachim Sartorius. B/w images of works. Not a great example - a former library book the covers are creased, have some marks from past adhesive and internally there are former library markings/stamps. Really a reading copy....

06 Feb

Posted at 11:23h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
17 x 28cm, 4pp outer folder content of a 17 x 28cm, 4pp semi-opaque sheet with a proposal for an installation for the new Gallery of Modern Art,Glasgow Finlay explains the work thus: "The drama of the deeply recessed windows is accentuated by an inscription which plays on a well-known slogan from the French Revolution. The words are set within simplified linear representations of a guillotine blade, both elements (verbal and graphic) being realised as clear glass within frosted glass, allowing a contrasting partial view of the present-day street. Speaking of The Terror, the French socialist historian Jaures wrote: 'The scaffold filled the city with a glow of immortality.' Questions such as that of the survival of the soul after death had ceased to be academic.'" VG+....

18 Jan

Posted at 13:10h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
11 x 11 cm, 4pp black on white folding card. The poem internally reads:

VILLAGE

red houses.
yellow houses
blue houses
greenhouses

Gabriele Münter was a female German expressionist painter from the turn of the 20th century. Her work often showed rural landscapes including villages with the colours being bright (like Fauvism). Finlay's poem listing these bright buildings ends humorously with the pun of "greenhouses". VG+.

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