Wien: Kunsthalle Wien, 1995
28 x 24cm, 158pp. Original card covers. Artist's book listing all of the artists to take part in the Venice Biennale during the first 100 years including Boltanski. VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
16 x 11cm, 4pp orange outer folder with printed title. Internally a 16 x 11cm, 4pp sheet with two concrete poems both entitled THE INSCRIPTIONS but the first being for Carl Rakosi and the second for Harry Gilonis.
The former is an objectivist poet, the latter a friend of Finlay's and also a poet. The first form of the poem is duplicated in both but in the second Finlay has crossed out the original words, kept the physical structure but the classical names replaced by names of meaning to Gilonis. The echo here being the similarities in the two poems.
This is one of a series of works which the Wild Hawthorn Press denoted as "Poems in folders". VG+.
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Glasgow: CCA, 1995
15 x 15cm, 2pp typographic design announcement card for an exhibition where the works were created from instructions of the artists without their personal intervention. Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Other artists include Felix Gonzalez Torres, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Paul-Armand Gette, Mike Kelley, Rirkrit Tiravanija and others. VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1995)
8 x 7.7cm, 8pp plus card covers and printed typographic dustjacket. Artist's book with two poems by Finlay.
The texts read:
TWO BOATS
two half-moons
and
TWO BOATS
two snowdrifts
Two visual poems. VG+.
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Halifax: Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 1995
29 x 24.5cm, 68pp plus boards and cloth spine. Artist's book which lists the names of all the workers at Dean Clough, Halifax between the years of 1877-1982 at which point the carpet factory failed and all were made redundant - hence "lost". There are 3,437 names in no particular order.
Near mint condition.
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25.5 x 20.5cm, b/w original silver gelatine photograph taken in Dean Clough, 1995 - the massive first installation of the WORK PEOPLE OF HALIFAX 1877-1982 - hundreds of tarnished metal boxes each with an attached label with a name of one of the past workers in the factory buildings that employed thousands of workers in carpet making. The factory closed in 1983.
Boltanski researched all of the names of workers that he could find amongst records from the factory and created a box for each person. The boxes are all empty but one cannot tell that from look alone and it is usually assumed that there are records or relics inside but there is not.
The work exists in various dimensions - there are literally thousands of boxes and it has been shown in a number of different installations since it was first shown in Yorkshire, UK.
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Leeds: The Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, 1995
31 x 21.5 white folder with printed label content of a 30 x 21cm, 1pp press release announcing Boltanski's new works at the Henry Moore Studio incluiding THE LOST WORKERS where local residents with relatives who formerly worked in the Dean Clough Carpet Factory were invited to bring personal belongings and memories to be stored in tin boxes as part of a permanent archive of the past employees. This work eventually became The Lost Workers of Halifax.
Additional to the press release is a photocopy - a 30 x 21cm, 16pp (recto only) interview with Boltanski found in the LOST PORTFOLIO (1994) for use by journalists. Slight wear to folder and xerox interview pages else VG.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1995)
11 x 11cm, 4pp artist's card with a b/w reproduction of a painting by Philip Wilson Steer (who often painted his subjects looking out of a window) and inside the text:
Philip Wilson Steer Paints the Waves at Walberswick.
"window"
Finlay also notes on the inside left page:
"window" - tinfoil strips scattered from an aircraft to confuse enemy radar
making a poetic correspondence between the flecks of rain seen in the painting with the war decoy. VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
14.5 x 10.5cm, 1pp. printed black on red card. Two quotations - one from a letter by a Untersturmfuhrer of the Hitler Youth Division before the Battle of the Bulge and the other from Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. Both quotations discuss the glory of death in battle. Finlay by this correspondence suggests that the views of both good and evil are often the same and "political correctness" (which sound very like "Political Corrections" tends not to allow one to consider the views of the defeated in anything other than negative terms. A final note says "The works of J. M. Barrie ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995 11 x 10.7cm, 12pp plus card covers. Artist's book with a b/w photograph of the grave of Andre de Chenier from the Picpus cemetary (by Robin Gillanders) and a concrete poem by Finlay in the shape of a guillotine blade (the text reads Andre Chenier Des Illes Grecques HORIZON d'acier quie separa noting the fact that the poet was killed by the revolution by the blade.) VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1994)
8.4 x 6cm, 4pp artist's card with two poems internally:
the camouflaged
magpie
whose white
parts are
sky
and
the camouflaged
Messerschmitt
whose blue
parts are
Humbrol
.
The living bird is compared with a toy war airplane - the former however has natural colouring whereas the latter uses the paint brand Humbrol. VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1995)
10.4 x 14.4cm, 1pp artist's card. A translation from Virgil's Ecloga (translated by Jessie Sheeler) reads:
BR>
And now from the steadings already
smoke is rising: the shadows
of the light blue mountain tops extend.
VG+. ...