Tilburg: De Pont, 1997
42 x 30cm, 16pp (self cover). Artist designed newspaper with many images of eyes in closeup. Each image seems haunting or even accusing.
Unopened in original outer wrapper Newspaper in near mint (folded) condition and bandeau with slight paper loss on unprinted right hand side. Now scarce.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
Two cards, both 6.8 x 7.6cm, 4pp. Both cards have the same text and only differ in colour - one light blue, the other cerise. The front of the cards both have SOUTH COAST SAILS printed vertically in three columns and then in the final column the letters of SAILS become the first letters of Sunset/Amber.Indigo/Lovely/Still. South Coast Sails are a company who supply sails to the boat trade. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
10 x 13.9cm, 4pp. The front of the card has a b/w image of a model shop complete with a model boat. Inside Finlay lists imaginary places:
Atlantis, Xanadu, The Heperides, Tir-na-nOg, Arcadia
\
and below notes the name of a company that specialises in model making - Gee Dees.
The models are fantasies - perfect reproductions that are not quite real but imaginary perfect versions of their inspirations. VG+.
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Peninsula and Van Abbemuseum, 1996
20.5 x 25.4cm, 80pp. Printed green cloth boards. Exhibition catalogue for a major group show of public works which includes many important artists including Robert Barry, Thomas A Claek, Hamish Fulton, Douglas Gordon, Jenny Holzer, Joseph Kosuth, Richard Long, Hans Waanders, Lawrence Weiner and others including Finlay.
Finlay's work is ICI ON DANSE - which is a neon based on the inscription found at the Bastille one year on when the site was transformed into a faux forrest and monument for a celebration. The slogan comes tfrom a translated text by Camille Desmoulins who can be credited being one of the people who initiated the attack on the prison which is usually regarded as the start of the actual French revolution. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
9.5 x 9cm, 4pp. The front of the card has a line drawing of a part of a carburettor - the mechanism that mixes the fuel and air before combustion. It is not clear if this is for a model or not (but given the artist's interest in model then it seems likely). Internally Finlay creates a poem
Concentric Float Chamber Carburettor - top feed
gull
We suspect the metaphor here is the way seagulls open and close their beaks but in all honesty we are not sure. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
15.2 x 6.7cm, 4pp. Inside the bright red card ate two one-line poems:
On the uneven road the bobbin red sail of the postvan
On the nearby bush the distant postvan's rose-
The colour is crucial here - both metaphors rely on the easily identifiable colour for a sale or a rose. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
10.5 x 6cm, 4pp. A drawing of a butterfly on the wing by Jo Hincks. Inside is a poem:
ROLLING HOME
Over-
canvassed
Common
Cabbage
White
The Cabbage White is probably the most commonly seen butterfly. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
11.3 x 8.7cm, 4pp card with a drawing of women in a harbour Jo Hincks after M Denis printed black on brown.
BRITTANY
litany
The poem suggests that nothing much has changed in these Breton fishing villages, life is a repeating refrain. Finlay also quotes Caroline Boyle-Taylor on this "The painters felt that the peasants' lives had not changes since medieval times". Maurice Denis - the source for the original image - was one of the Symbolists and Les Navis who often documented small communities on canvas especially fishermen. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
13.2 x 16.5cm, 2pp card with a b/w photograph by Robin Gillanders of three toilet rolls that have been painted and place on a table such that the image looks like the funnels on a steam boat. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
17.7 x 12.5cm, 2pp folding card with a watercolour by Janet Boulton after a boat model by Ian Hamilton Finlay identified as a "French Sardine Lugger". Boulton did a number of such paintings and Finlay seems to have enjoyed them. VG+.
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Llandudno: Oriel Mostyn, 1996
28 x 22cm, 40pp plus boards, First edition of this artist's book with a commentary by Harry Gilonis published on the occasion of an exhibition in North Wales. One fold out page. A series of linocuts by Jo HIncks illustrate one line poems by Finlay all of which are marine scenes.
"A grey shore between day and night" is "dusk" with an image of a boat.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
10.2 x 5.2cm, 4pp folding card printed green and blue on white with the text reversed. The two inner folds read:
Faint,
Lingering
Under
The
Elms
and
Faint,
Lingering
Under
The
Eaves
Both poems have the word FLUTE made up of their first letters and this indicates that both poems should be associated with sound. The former with birds in the trees (the birds' home), the second with sounds in a home. Finlay finds both sounds "enchanting" and magical one assumes. A pretty card. VG+.
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