14 Sep

Posted at 11:25h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
11.5 x 8.6cm, 8pp, plus card covers and printed blue dust jacket. Three appropriated drawings of named boats by Gloria WIlson from as book published by Fishing News are printed below their names and a short paragraph describing the,. The names together read "PROSPERITY/LEAD US 11/AND GALILEE" which Finlay relates to both the life of Jesus and the Romantic poet Christina Rossetti who wrote many devotional texts.
The title "A WILD HAWTHORN RE-READER" alludes to the appropriation of another's work and a re-interpretation of it.

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08 Sep

Posted at 19:33h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999 17.7 x 14.7cm, 20pp plus boards with tipped on title label. Internally there are four b/w photographs of stone walls and a wooden wall in close up - each with a name of a type of boat below. The boat name shows an association with the construction of each wall. VG+. ...

01 Sep

Posted at 20:28h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999.
29.5 x 14cm, 12pp plus cards and printed dust jacket. Artist's book with a poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and it's English translation by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which have linocut illustrations by Jo Hincks and then a variant on the poem by Finlay where the original poem's landscape is replaced by a scene of boats (which are blue lemons):

Do you know the land where the blue lemons ride
A silver fountain springs from the vessel's side?
There, in the stern, the orange net-floats glow,
The brown sail shifts, the salt winds gently blow.
DO you know it well, that land, beloved friend?
"Thither with thee, O, thither would I wend!"

The poem also is a thought of death and heaven. FInlay's version is also illustrated by Hincks - making the boat references more obvious (the fountain for example is the bilge water spraying out)>
VG+ example.

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10 Jul

Posted at 20:00h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999 16.2 x 12cm, 20pp plus card covers and dust jacket. Printed on thick laid cream paper. String bound. Artist's book with various texts by Finlay displayed over a drawing of a crate by Gary Hinks.

PLEDGE (FOR PIA)
YOUR NEEDLE AND THREAD
IN THE SAIL OF MY ZULU.

VG+. ...

26 Feb

Posted at 11:30h in Artist's Books

Barcelona: Joan Miro Foundation, 1999
16 x 11cm, 48pp, with black boards and tipped on title label. This book accompanied the exhibition "Variations on Several Themes' and is identified often as an exhibition catalogue but this is incorrect - it is an artist's book in itself.
The first pages of the publication have a new concrete poem which is based on Christina Rossetti's devotional works, and Eugen Gomringer's Constellation form of visual poetry. The words boat, net, wind, fire, vine, flock, sun, lamb are recombined in different placings to create five different imagined scenes.
At the back of the book there is an essay by Thomas A. Clark in English who points out that the structure of the poem is from Gromringer's 5 mal 1 konstellation' and the words used are from Rossetti's "Letter and SPirit". That essay is better than I can write here so we shall leave this here although we will point out that in the late 90s religion as a subject begins to be more apparent in Finlay's work.
We have re-classified this book as an artist's book and not just a catalogue

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20 Jan

Posted at 11:08h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9 x 7.4cm, 19pp, plus turquoise card covers. Content of three drawings of flowers by Jo Hincks along with quotations about warships - all from the Flower Class of corvettes - found in a book by Preston & Raven from 1942. Each quotation gives the drawing its subject - for instance:

Anemone, Bluebell
Ships with
original
sheer and flare.

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14 Jan

Posted at 11:02h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.2 x 7.5cm, 12pp, plus turquoise card covers. Content of three codes for different types of flower used in a seed suppliers catalogue (all have only the initial of the word to identify them) below which Finlay has added three names of warships - all from the Flower Class of corvettes - where the names also start with the same letter.

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14 Sep

Posted at 10:20h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
15.4 x 10.4cm, 10pp, leporello printed one side only with grey boards and tipped on title label. The book reproduces four b/w simplistic but dramatic drawings by Gary Hinks of the prow of a boat - BCK35, a modern fishing boat from Buckie in the Moray Firth named CALEDONIA III.
The title is a neologism made up of two words - Prow and Poem - and the drawings show various abstracted views of the boat's prow. The beauty of that curve appears to have attracted Finlay's attention as well as the coincidence of Poem/Prow.
Finlay also published prints and cards using Hincks' drawings. This is a VG example of a rather lovely book.

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14 Aug

Posted at 10:15h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
11.3 x 9cm, 20pp with card covers and printed dust jacket. Five drawings of warboats by Gary Hincks show the battleships with their varying camouflage paints. Below each is an anagram of each ship's name (all named after flowers) which by the jumble has "camouflaged" the names. Finlay kindly gives the answers to the anagrams at the back of the book.
One of 250 copies. VG+.

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14 Aug

Posted at 10:05h in Artist's Books

n.p. : Aggie Weston's, 1997 14.6 x 9cm, 4pp with card covers. There are two texts:

Fun and Colourful
this solid little sailing barge is designed to sail on bath and pond alike

a blurb from a toy company, and then,

Fun and Colourful
this solid little sailing barge is designed to sail on bath and pond and sink". The joke is a visual one, a photograph taken by Rodger Brown shows a small toy boat which has turned over in a sink (sunk).
A joint work with Stuart Mills, this example is signed by Mills on the last page. VG+.

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14 Jun

Posted at 10:55h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.8 x 10.6 cm, 12pp, plus card covers and dust jacket. Content of 16 b/w drawings of knots used in netting by Gary Hincks- the subtle differences between them and the sequential way they are presented reminds one of the schematics of Sol Lewitt. The last pages of the book have a line by Finlay:

Variations on a Theme of Diamonds
net

A one line poem which notes the shapes of the netting as the ropes are pulled into diamond shapes. And the value of such nets to the fisherman.

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