08 Sep

Posted at 20:16h in Invitation Cards

Kiel: Galerie Sfeir-Semler, 1995
11.5 x 10cm, 4pp, Artist's card with a photograph by Robin Gillanders of a piece of rusted corrugated iron against a wall in Little Sparta under which Finlay has placed the word LYRE. The ruts in the iron look like the various lines of a stringed lyre.
This is in fact an announcement card for an exhibition of ceramic jars, slates, neons and paperworks by Finlay in Germany. For some reason it is been mis-categorised as an artists' card in the WIld Hawthorn Press; listings of artist's card and while it is indeed an original card work we have returned it to the correct designation. VG+.

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07 Sep

Posted at 19:59h in Exhibition Catalogues

Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz Verlag,1995
27 x 25.5cm, 228pp plus pictorial card covers. A major monograph of Finlay's public works issued at the same time as the exhibtion: "Ian Hamilton Finlay: works, pure and political" held at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 7 Sept. - 26 Nov. 1995, There are 95 b/w images and texts in German. Edited by Zdener Felix and Pia Smilig. VG+.

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27 Aug

Posted at 20:10h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
9.2 x 8cm, 4pp, Artist's card with a photograph of a airplane smoke trail in the sky which vaguely resembles a bow with an arrow prepared to fire. Internally there is a quotation from Genesis 9:13: " I do set my bow in the cloud" - which Finlay responds as "contrail". VG+.

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21 Aug

Posted at 20:38h in Exhibition Catalogues

Dusseldorf: Galerie M & R. Fricke, 1995
22 x 17cm, 100pp. Boards and printed dustjacket. Exhibition catalogue of city wide public art curated by Marion and Roswitha Fricke with works from Bogomir Ecker, Ingo Gunter, Shirazeh Houshiary, Kazui Karase, Raimund Kummer, Inge Mahn, Hermann Pitz and Kiki Smith as well as Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Finlay's contribution was a wall plaque "Equality does not consist in everyone being arrogant but in everyone being modest": quotation from Louis-Antoine Saint-Just. There is a short text in German by Marion Frick one the work and a full page colour image of the installation in situ. VG+.

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13 Aug

Posted at 13:16h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.(1995)
9.4 x 9.4cm, 8pp plus card covers and printed dust jacket with a line drawing by Gary Hincks of boats on an estuary. Internally there is a "found" text which Finlay has designated as a poem by adding line breaks:

As they slip up the Torridge to Bideford
on the calm of a summer's evening, their
two or three men seem to walk
on the half mile wide stretch of water and
there are only the little islands of hatchways
and the tall thin stove-pipe exhaust shooting
out pulses of blue smoke


to show where there is a barge.

The quotation is from Basil Greenhill's Sailing for a Living from 1962....

10 Aug

Posted at 19:16h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995 10 X 10cm, 4pp card with a drawing of the ”Cabane” by Andrew Whittle on the front and internally a drwing of the proposed motto to be above the door:

LA CABANE A SES RAISONS QUE LA MAISON NE CONNAIT POINT

The proposal for the restoration of the stone hut in Provence was to be built using the original stones except for the lintel with a variation on Pacal's famous dictum which translates into "THE HUT HAS ITS REASONS THAT THE HOUSE DOESN"T KNOW". Pascal's original was The heart has it's reasons that reason doesn't know. VG+. ...

02 Aug

Posted at 19:33h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
8.3 x 19.2cm, 1pp, Artist's card with an elevation drawing of a modern warship with the various towers and gun placements being labelled as if they are the four types of classical columns found in Greek architecture. An amusing correspondence but the quotation "For the Temples of the Greeks our homesickness last forever" comes from Odysseus and his longing for the familiar sights of his home. That gives this war machine a poignancy that the forms of sheet metal itself are unlikely to encourage. The beauty of Michael Harvey's line drawing also makes the boat a thing of classical form.
This image was also a much larger print and one of Finlay's most popular late works. VG+.

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20 Jul

Posted at 19:44h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp, Artist's card with concrete poem drawn by Michael Harvey in orange and green. The words Purse and Seine are jumbled up the former words all on top, the latter below. The mass of the words comes to resemble the actual Purse Seine - a form of netting that is vertical and surrounds the fish - usually netting far more catch than more traditional formats. VG+.

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19 Jul

Posted at 19:26h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
14.8 x 10.5cm, 1pp, Artist's card printed black on dark "gold". A quotation from the "Parmenides dialogue" where the divisibility of things is discussed is reprinted because of the use of the idea of a SAIL (the maritime imagery appealing to Finlay one presumes) and whether if it covers more than one man it is still a single thing. In the original a sail is compared to the sky - is the sky over everything or is just part of the sky covering the earth? VG+.

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19 Jul

Posted at 19:19h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
5.1 x 5.1cm, 8pp, concertina fold single sheet printed black on dark blue. The two notices are 1. PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE BOATS and 2. PLEASE DO NOT SINK THE FLOWERS.
The first was one of the earliest Finlay works that was found in Stoneypath (before the renaming to Little Sparta) next to the Backdoor Pond. The second is a proposal to be placed next to the Giant Victoria Water Lillies in the Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh - such lilies do look as if they cannot be sunk. The humour in both "notices" being the misuse of the verbs. VG+.

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17 Jul

Posted at 19:11h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
15.1 x 11cm, 2pp. A quote from Ovid of how a cottage was transformed by the Gods into a temple is set by John R Nash in an attractive typographic manner (with three different but similar fonts) and with the final lines "AND THE THATCH TO SHINING GOLD' printed in gold ink. The text is not an exact translation from the original but a reworking (itself a transformation).
Finlay is often attracted to Ovid's most famous texts and this description in many ways is also apposite to the creation of the Garden Temple in Little Sparta from an ordinary farm building. VG+.

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