Koln: Art-Station Sankt Peter, 1995 21 x 21cm, closed side - which opens up to a 63 x 63cm four winged cross. The white card has blind embossing and additionally printing in white/cream so that the text is very hard to read. The text is by Heinrich Hall. Found within the folded construction is a 10.5 x 15cm, 2pp map of the exhibition and short texts about content. Fine condition - this was both print edition and exhibition catalogue at the same time....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.
9.8 x 8.6cm, 4pp artist's postcard that show a drawing of a republican liberty cap on the front by Gary Hincks. Inside is a poem by Finlay:
For P.E.
A cap
of liberty
with a Spitfire
roundel
In place of the traditional cockade in blue, red and white is a Spitfire (airplane) roundel which is in the same colours (sometimes yellow or orange is a further outer colour). A reminder of the weapon is added to the revolutionary symbol - terror being alongside virtue. VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.
9.8 x 8.6cm, 4pp artist's postcard that show a drawing of mouthwash bottles on the front by gary Hincks. Inside is a poem by Finlay:
Des Esseintes
The muddied
colours of
the mouthwash
cocktails
Jean des Esseintes is a fictional character in a novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans. The character hates the modern world and lives an eccentric, reclusive life in an aesthetic of his own making. Presumably Finlay dislikes the plastic fuctionalism of mouthwash bottles. VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995 12 x 8.8cm, 4pp. Artist's card with two drawings front and back by Gary Hincks after texts by Bridgey Penney (A Catch of Poems about the Shipping Forecast) and Homer's Odyssey (Book XI) - the first drawing shows two boats, one of which is named Morning Star (the name of son Eck Finlay's small press) against a sunrise and the second an oar sunk into the ground as a form of monument. The first has the text BILLOWS PILLOWS under it and the second BILLOW WINNOW. The "pillows" of the first are nets and folded sails being caught by the wind, and the second similar pair of words meaning the wind through grass. VG+. ...
Cambridge: Kettle's Yard, 1995
15 x 21cm, 24pp plus card covers. A documentation of the various artists who had previously exhibited (intervened) at the gallery who all exhibited in a group show. Finlay notes in a short text that he has a "sentimental regard for Kettle's Yard as the apotheosis of English Pebble Culture in the 1930s". Finlay had previously exhibited a number of small works on polished rocks and "pebbles" in the gallery - Unnatural Pebbles - one work is shown full page "KETTLE'S YARD CAMBRIDGE ENGLAND IS THE LOUVRE OF THE PEBBLE". Other artists included David Nash, Michael Craig- Martin, Richard Deacon, Richard Wentworth and others. VG+.
...
Oldenburg: Oldenburgen Kunstverein und Carl von Ossietzky Universitat, 1995
20 x 21cm, 20pp plus card covers. Exhibition catalogue for the installation of two works the first by Boltanski - Gymnasium Chases (based on a school photograph from Wien in 1931) and a second show based on found images - Private Waldschule Kaliski als insel der geborgenheit in Berlin 1932.
There are essays in German - Martin Sonnbend, Margret Stuffmann on Boltanski, and Hertha Lucas-Busemann on the private school which seems to have escaped the wrath of the Nazis during the war despite its Jewish links. Both articles are illustrated in b/w - Boltanski's with 8 images of faces and the original group photograph. An essay comparing the two exhibition is by Michael Daxner. VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
5.4 x 4.3cm, 8pp, plus card covers and printed cream dust jacket. Internally there is a text:
"Apples are points in the fields of Eragny".
The painting "Fields of Eragny" is by the pointilliste Camille Pissarro - an art style that was made up by coloured dots on the canvas that "mixed in the retina" (although in actuality more like the visual cortex). Hence an apple in the painting would be nothing more than a dot due to both the style and the distance the painter was from the tree. VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
11.9 x 17.7cm, 2pp. Different forms of hatch beams which have different combinations in different boat designs are shown here in cross elevation in a drawing by Gary Hincks. In some ways this is just an abstract composition but it also reflects Marcel Broodthaers reworking of Stephane Mallarme's Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard (A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance) where the text of the original concrete poem is replaced by black rectangles that emphasis the placing of the words and negating the semantic. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
6 x 12cm, 6pp concertina folded card. A text "one piece of driftwood patched on another" is repeated on three of the panels - but the typography of each is different with various fonts used to emphasis different aspects of the conjured images. The different fonts also reflect the text in that each is "patched" upon another in an unusual way that still creates a harmonious whole. VG+.
...
Warsaw: Galeria Sztuki Wspolczesni Zacheta, 1995
21 x 15cm, 28pp with printed card covers. Exhibition catalogue for a solo show with four plates (two in colour) with texts in English and Polish by Harry Gilonis. The only exhibition in Poland by Finlay that we know of. VG+.
...
NYC: Marian Goodman Gallery, 1995
21 x 15cm, 1pp typographic announcement and invitation card. VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.. (1990)
14 x 11.4cm, 4pp printed outer folder with 4pp insert - a typographic design which is part artist's card and part poem in a folder. There are two poems inside on the inner sheet:
Morning
The solace of chill fields.
and
Evening
A broken bow of geese.
Both simple works reflect the style of the Imagists of which Yvor Winters was a key early figure (along with Pound and Elliot) - simplistic and minimal but accurate in the use of language. Additionally both images in the poem are winter scenes - punning on the poet's name and the title. VG+.
We have placed this work as an artist's card because of its promotion as such by Finlay but it could be argued to be otherwise. In fact the Wild Hawthorn Press indicate it is a "valentine" card!...