Killkenny: Butler Gallery, 1989
16 x 11.6cm, 24pp. Original wrappers with printed green dust jacket. A catalogue for a show in Ireland but the booklet was designed by Finlay for the exhibition and could easily be regarded as an artists's book. Ten b/w photographs of Little Sparta by Martyn Greenhaugh are placed above quotations from Finlay's "Detached Sentences on Gardening". There is also a commentary of the works in the exhibition by Yvex Abrioux. VG+.
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Mejan d'Arles: Actes Sud, 1989
19 x 9.8cm, 48pp plus card covers. First edition of this artist's book that reproduces found b/w vintage portraits of unknown people. VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
29.7 x 21cm, b/w lithograph with two parallel drawings by Gary Hincks which have similarities with each other. One a guillotine - the agency of the Terror - and the other a waterfall - in itself a phenomena of nature's violence. FInlay as often draws metaphors from human objects and the power of the landscape. VG.
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Schwabisch Hall: Stadische Galerie am Markt 1989
21x 15cm, 16pp (including wrappers). Exhibition catalogue for a show in Germany which notes 27 works being displayed - all relating to the French revolution. Five images of installations, the gallery show, and drawings/prints are reproduced along with a b//w portrait of Finlay wearing a sheepskin coat on the cover - very much looking like a farmer. Short text in German. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989.
20.3 x 31.5cm, 4pp folded print - offset lithograph green on silk paper. Finlay proposes a series of five arches of wood around a semi-circular path of bricks. The path passes through a "wilder" part of the garden at which point the arch is entirely "rusticated" but the beginning and end of the path has more "rectilinear" wood as the basis for the arch. Three diacrams/plans/drawings by Robert Johnson.
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Zurich: Parkett Editions, 1998
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp announcement card for the release of the artist's book by the Swiss publishers - an image of the ring bound book on the front.. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
13.4 x 9.2cm, 4pp red outer folder with a drawing by Kathleen Lindsley. Internally a 13.4 x 9.2cm, 4pp sheet with a poem:
Avenue Studios, Fulham Road*
Rose
Pettigrew
Pettigrew
Rose
Rose Pettigrew was the most significant of Whistler's models but later is recorded as falling in love with Philip Wilson Steer (apparently unrequited). Steer was one of the artists who lived at the Avenue Studios which gives this poem it's name.
By reersing the model's name in the second part of the poem, Finlay is comparing her to an English rose.
This is one of a series of works which the Wild hawthorn Press denoted as "Poems in folders". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
10.4 x 14.1cm, 4pp light brown outer folder. Internally a 10.4 x 14.1cm, 4pp sheet with a poem and a drawing (a still life)by Carlo Rossi.
The poem is:
Still-life
"From the Monad and the Dyad
Come the numbers"
- Of 'le violon', 'la musique',
Et 'la carafe'.
The poem cites a pre-Socratic saying meaning that number is an emerging-property of units and elements. Those elements in a still life are a violin, music and a jug which are common in most period still-lives.
This was one of a series of "poems in folders". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
15.3 x 10.6cm, 16pp plus card wrappers and red dust jacket. Four poetic works all relating to the French revolution. The first is
July 28, 1794
Refreshment for the wild flowers
which is a direct reference to the deaths of the members of the Committee of Public Safety who were the effective dictators of the Terror. The wild flowers being fed blood and bodies.
A Riddle
To those who watch, a waterfall; to its victim, a glacier.
The truth of the relativity of the observer when facing the guillotine.
One of only 250 copies. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
13.5 x 13cm, 12pp plus silkscreen blue card covers. Drawings by Grahame Jones. The poems in French are all based on those by Verlaine and Denis. The first is
After Verlaine>
Les violons
De l'automne
(Les triangles
Du Printemps..)
One ofFinlay's most lovely of books. VG+.
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Toronto: Art Metropole, 1989
25 x 16cm, 116pp plus printed wrappers. Exhibition catalogue and monologue examining the dispute between Finlay and Catherine Millet and others with a long sympathetic essay by Peter Day. Works reproduced in b/w throughout. VG+.
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Paris: Carte Segrete Editeur, 1989
27 x 21cm, 134pp plus printed blue card wrappers. Exhibition catalogue for a conceptual group show (which doesn't have a physical gallery to exhibit in) which includes documenation of early work from 1972 onwards from Christian Boltanski, Daniel Buren, Andres Cadere, Annette Messager, Sarkis and others.
Boltanski's section includes images of work not shown elsewhere including Ombres - an installation in windows where shadows of interesting events could be seen from outside and French WIndow - a similar work elsewhere.
VG+ - very scarce.
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