Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
9.5 x 6.1cm, 4pp, Artist's card with a wreath on the front. The drawing could also be an image of a tyre hung from the side of a boat to stop the hull hitting the dock.
Internally a poem:
Elegy
Courageous 11
Faithful 111
The names of boats placed together leave the impression of a dedication for the dead. Perhaps even fishermen dead. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.3 x 14.4cm, 2pp, Artist's card with a typographic design by Michael Harvey after Finlay's instruction.
YELLOW
VIOLE(N)T
YELLOW
VIOLE(N)T
YELLOW
The structure of the five words reflects the structure of a catamaran with its three hulls (Yellow) and the turbulent water (violent/violet) in between. Hence a symbolic flag for the vessel. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
9.1 x 9cm, 4pp, Artist's card printed black on green. A drawing of rubber beams by Gary Hincks illustrates a poem by Finlay internally:
LAKE ISLE
Nine bean-rows in
a bee-loud glade by
a shore where peace comes<BRdrop-
ping slow
VG+.
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Lille/Steenvoorde: Musee des Beaux-Arts de Lille/College Sait-Exupery de Steenvoorde, n.d. (c. 1994) 27 x 21cm, 48pp on thick paper plus outer card covers with plastic spine binding. Exhibition catalogue for an exhibition of work by students of the College Sait-Exupery based on a year long programme of tuition by Jacques Mayeux, Pierre-Yves Bohm, Gerard Duchene as well as Christian Boltanski with each student's work reproduced with polarised images in b/w. The work is clearly heavily influenced by Boltanski's interest in archive and there is one b/w reproduced photograph of the artist in the school studio. A collective artist's book released during the exhibition this is in VG+ condition and is very rare and unknown in the Boltanski reference books....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.3 x 14cm, 2pp, Artist's card printed black on deep green. The full title is "A SEASONAL MONUMENT TO THE SOVIET POET MAYAKOVSKY*" beneath which is the line "The smashed canoes of the Salix fragilis". Salix fragilis is the willow tree. Mayakovsky killed himself after his love affair with three different women turned sour - he left a poetic suicide note that included the words "The love-boat has come to grief/On the reefs of convention." The crack willow trees are known to break open (usually with a very loud noise) and Finlay's metaphor of a "smashed canoe" reflects the poem left behind in Mayakovsky's flat. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.. (1995) 12.7 x 8.2cm, 4pp artist's card which shows a list of "words" each beginning with the capital letter T and then various anagrams of LARK (but not the word Lark itself) - it is hard to be sure of the meaning of this card other than perhaps the letters are meant to represent the branches of the various pine trees (and the birds in them). VG+. 1...
Glasgow/Loire: Tramway/Frac de Pays de la Loire, 1995BR>
21 x 15cm 48pp plus card covers. Exhibition catalogue from conceptualist Monk's second Glasgow one man show which was entitled "A Brush with Death".
Monk's work often takes the works of great artists and gives it a twist. Particularly good are Monk's holiday paintings - the essence of a vacation instilled into a textual advert on canvas - sold at the same price as the original holiday. Fine. Scarce.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
16.5 x 10.5cm, 2pp, Artist's card designed in the format of the Apollinaire Il Pleut calligramme where the lines descend like rain - but the text here is taken from D. H. Lawrence's Autumn Rain. This is one of Finlay's Echoes Series where known poetic works are recreated with some aspect of the original retained. VG+.
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London: Victoria Miro Gallery, 1995.
15 x 10.5cm, 4pp (single folded sheet) with a drawing of a "birthday cake" on the front which is actually a neo-classical broken column (drawn by Gary Hincks). The announcement for a solo show of recent small publications by Finlay to honour his 70th birthday. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
5.5 x 10.9cm, 4pp, Artist's card with a definition work by Finlay printed on the inner card:
"Jug, n. if in a still-life by Juan Gris, the note of the nightingale."
Gris being one of the most important of Cubists who often painted still life works in which brown earthenware often featured. The jug of a nightingale being also the sound it makes. The colour of the card is also that of the crockery. Essentially a visual pun cum poem. VG+.
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Vermont: Longhouse, 1995
8.8 x 10.8cm, 4pp black on green folding card - the internal poems have capitalised first letters which vertically read as the words CRATE DOOR, HOE, SOAP, BALSA and TWINE. The associated words create a description of each word eg.:
H eaven
O rders
E arth
Order comes from above - as it does when a gardener uses a hoe. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.5 x 8.5cm, 1pp, Artist's card with a quotation from Greenhill's "Sailing for a Living" describing a barge and its crew moving along the canal. The bottom half of the typography is deliberately obscured from the bottom as if misprinted - reflecting the text where the low level of the boats make it look like the men on board are walking just above the water. VG+.
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