Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 2000
7 x 12.6cm, 4pp artist's card with a landscape drawing by Kathleen Lindsley. Internally there is a definition work by Finlay:
(Classical) landscape, n. a stand of concepts.
Finlay's definition is aware of the long traditions and ideas behind both landscape gardening and the painting of such scenes. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
10.6 x 8cm, 20pp plus card covers. Artist's book dedicated to Colin Sackett which can be read in both directions - in one direction every right hand page has the word "runnel" and if turned around and read in the opposite direction the the word repeated is "funnel". Hence in one direct the words run off the page like a stream (a runnel) but in the other move away like the expelled steam from a funnel. Interestingly the name "sackett" is regarded as having the meaning of an opponent - someone who goes opposite to you. VG apart from the staples are a bit rusted.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
17 x 28cm, 4pp outer folder content of a 17 x 28cm, 4pp semi-opaque sheet with a proposal for an installation for the new Gallery of Modern Art,Glasgow
Finlay explains the work thus: "The drama of the deeply recessed windows is accentuated by an inscription which plays on a well-known slogan from the French Revolution. The words are set within simplified linear representations of a guillotine blade, both elements (verbal and graphic) being realised as clear glass within frosted glass, allowing a contrasting partial view of the present-day street. Speaking of The Terror, the French socialist historian Jaures wrote: 'The scaffold filled the city with a glow of immortality.' Questions such as that of the survival of the soul after death had ceased to be academic.'" VG+....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
11 x 11 cm, 4pp black on white folding card. The poem internally reads:
VILLAGE
red houses.
yellow houses
blue houses
greenhouses
Gabriele Münter was a female German expressionist painter from the turn of the 20th century. Her work often showed rural landscapes including villages with the colours being bright (like Fauvism). Finlay's poem listing these bright buildings ends humorously with the pun of "greenhouses". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.6 x 11.3cm, 4pp outer folder in grey with tipped in inner 4pp sheet. A text printed in a outline font reads:
A FRAYED EDG
A WORN EDG
A FAINT EDG
A WARPED EDG
The E in each word EDGE is missing to create the visual counterpart of the text. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.6 x 11.3cm, 4pp outer folder in grey with tipped on inner brown paper with a text printed in reverse. Read the correct way round it would read:
LETTERS AND NUMBERS
SEEN IN REVERSE
THROUGH A SAIL
The text directly references its own format - the reader is forced to read "through" the "brown sail". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
14.4 x 15.4cm, 4pp outer folder in grey with tipped on 14 x 45cm (opened out) white paper with the text in outline font:
SOME FLAKES OF SNOW STIRRED
BY THE WING OF A PIGEON
The poem is a winter scene. The white tips and flecks of a pigeon's wings are compared with the falling flakes of snow. VG+>
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.6 x 11.3cm, 4pp outer folder in grey with tipped on 9.5 x 44cm opened out, 8pp concertina folded, white paper with the four panels of texts in outline font:
PART OF A PLANK
OVER
PART OF A PLANK
EDGE TO EDGE
PLANK TO A PLANK
END TO END
ABUTTING
STEM TO STERN
The panels firstly describe three methods of ship building where different ways of laying the wood is used. The final panel encompasses the entire boat from front to back.
One is reminded, although the comparison is probably just coincidence, of Lawrence Weiner's conceptual art works where all physical options of interrelations between things are listed to create conceptual sculptures. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
7.2 x 8cm, 4pp. Artist's card printed red on light yellow with an abstract drawing by Gary Hincks on the front that looks like a close up of sackcloth .
Internally there is a translation of two lines from a fragment from Archilochus the Greek poet:
The deep red-brown
of rain-wet sailcloth
The poem is reflected in the drawing. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
12.7 x 8.6cm, 4pp, Artist's card printed black on blue with a poem by Finlay called LONGING.
to see
to see if it were
if it were but the smoke
the smoke going up
going up from the houses
the houses
of rocky
Ithaca
The poem describes the longing and homesickness of Ulysses for his home. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
12.5 x 13cm, 48pp plus printed boards Artist's photo-book with twenty-two b/w duotone photographs by David Paterson of sculptures and their sites in Little Sparta.
Finlay has had as a constant theme in his work a trick pof adding "signatures" (usually in a form of a plaque or a ground sculpture) to natural objects - eg "Poussin" at a viewpoint for a hilly landscape. These photographs are all of works that fall into that grouping.
The final photograph is of a boat on Lochen Ech which has as its name "UNSIGNED". One of only 250 such books printed as Christmas gifts by Finlay. VG+>
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
Three nested sheets, each 15 x 11cm (closed size), with texts on the folds and an illustration by Gary Hincks of a Zulu Skiff in the centre sheet. The work can be slowly opened to read in order:
UNTITLED UNFOLDER
bow curves bow cleaves
sail powers sail steadies
rudder steers stern stitches
TT 117 zulu skiff
Part of the :"Echoes series" this work is a variation on another poet's work - here Ian Stephen. The card is noted as being Christmas 1995 but also Easter 1996. VG+.
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