Bonn: Stadt. Kunstmuseum Bonn, 1977
15 x 10.5cm, 2pp b/w announcement card displaying a b/w photograph of Beuys' "Silver Broom and Broom without Bristles" from 1972, verso gallery details. A mailed copy with stamp, frank and typed address. VG+.
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London: Serpentine Gallery, n.d. (1977) 30 x 21cm, 1pp green and b/w offset - the press release for the large scale Finlay solo show at the Serpentine Gallery. Folded for mailing else VG+. JOINT Mailing envelope to Seamus Cooney in Michigan. Neatly opened....
Gent: Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, 1977
22 x 11cm, 4pp announcement card with a drawing of a young woman reproduced on the inside upper half of the card and on the front an image of Beuys during an action. Internally also museum details. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
16 x 30cm, 1pp black on yellow paper with a design for jam pot covers (the printed paper placed on the outside of jam lids). The design here is of two sundials. The text in latin means Light is the shadow of god. Limitation unknown - this is one of two different designs - the other being on white paper. Murray has this as 7.9 and seems to not know there were two variants.
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London: Serpentine Gallery, 1977
23 x 16cm, 96pp. Original pictorial wrappers . An exhibition catalogue with an "imaginary portrait" of Finlay by Stephan Bann and various illustrations and photographs of works and an insert on cream laid paper "The Wartime Garden" by Finlay illustrated by Ron Costley (which was also published elsewhere). VG+.
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London: Serpentine Gallery, 1977
10.7 x 15cm, 4pp (single folded sheet). The announcement card for a major exhibition of Finlay's work which has the first printing of the cover image on it - which meant that Murray's raisonne has this categorised as an artist's card which we have ignored. The cover shows an abstract in red and blue and references the use of similar patterning on fleet ships during the war (called "dazzle boats") :the joke of course is that this type of camouflage resembles hard-edge abstraction which was in vogue for the 60s and 70s and hence the "dislike" by the U-boats. VG+. very scarce.
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Vaduz: Roberto Altmann, 1977
28.3 x 20.9cm, 40pp and card covers. A single number (and the last in the series) of an artist’s periodical that was produced unusually in Liechtenstein, This themed number is a collection of postcards by Roberto Altmann, Christian Boltanski, H.P. Gassner, Paul-Armand Gette, Norbert Haas, Gilbert Lascaux, Annette Messager and Maria Nevelson which are bound in and serrated to allow removal and use if desired. Boltanski shows appropriated images of a goat, children playing, a girl posing, a yacht amongst other things. The images used here were also released as a stand alone artist’s portfolio also by Altmann also entitled Les Vacances but in a cardboard folder. Flay in her Catalogue of Boltanski books notes that but does not reference this periodical presumably not knowing of it. VG+. Very scarce publication.
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Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
11.5 x 7cm, 4pp. Artist's card with a reproduced drawing of a tree by Bernard Lassus of a tree printed green on white and the text: "TREE-SHELLS. Instructions: Apply ear to Tree-shell. Listen for Lakes." The card can be used to create the same auditory illusion as holding a sea-shell to the ear if cupped close enough - hence bringing the sound of water (lakes) to the ear. This is the third of three cards with the same idea but with different illustrations by different collaborators. VG+
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Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
26.7 x 11.cm, 2pp. A photographic card with three images taken from Livingston Development Corporation of newly painted housing gable ends (the houses had just been built) and a Finlay public artwork on walls in the Scottish new town (a version of the concrete poem WAVE). The stripes on the wall reminded Finlay of the Dazzle camouflage used during the Battle of the Atlantic: the longest continuous military campaign of World War II which ran from 1939 to 1945. The WAVE work here clearly symbolising the sea and the two zig-zag paintings representing the British boats with their Wadsworth inspired hard edged paintings together is a visual metaphor for the sea battles between the British fleet, their defensive escorts and the German U-boats and battle ships.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
16 x 30cm, 1pp black on white paper with a design for jam pot covers (the printed paper placed on the outside of jam lids). The design here is of two sundials. The text on the first has FERREA VIRGA EST/UMBRATILIS MOTUS (which Finlay slightly takes liberties and translates as "Stainless steel gnomon/porcelain hour") and "STAY-SAIL" on the second. The first describes the light on the imagined sundial and the latter is a reference to the voyage of a ship. Murray has this as 7.9 and seems to not know there were two variants in design and colour of paper.
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Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
13 x 13cm, 16pp plus card covers and printed dustjacket. Ten reproduced paintings of tanks with camouflage some in vegetation by John Borg Manduca are joined with short legends by Finlay.
1. "To do Poussin over again, for the sake of the War God." abuts a tank with its muzzle pointed right at the reader.
another reads:
6. Pure Cannon Law. Which is a pun on the homophone Cannon - a canon law being an ecclesiastical law.
Unusually there are adverts for other Finlay book on the flaps of the dust jacket. VG+.
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Heidelberg: Edition Staeck, 1977
Original transparent plastic folder content of ten original yellow-black postcards and one colophon card. This is one of a small number of signed copies alongside the unlimited edition. Fine. Schellman Nr P34 - 43.
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