18 Mar

Posted at 19:12h in Artist's Books

Southampton: Southampton Art Gallery, 1984
21 x 14.8cm, 48pp plus printed wrappers with tipped on reproduced drawing. Offically an exhibition catalogue for a touring show and also a single number of the poetry and literature review New Arcadians - here dedicated to Finlay who wrote the text. The catalogue is illustrated throughout by Andrew Griffiths. The works all relate to the Little Sparta War as well as proposed artworks that are grounded in the Nazi iconography (as Finlay points out elsewhere these works do not support fascism - the symbolism of the Third Reich is powerful and can be detourned for good reasons by artists).
This is really an artist's book by Finlay and we are cataloguing it as such. One of 1000 hand-numbered copies. . VG+.

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05 Jul

Posted at 14:26h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1983
11.6 x 7.6cm , 10pp (single folded sheet printed on one side only) brown on white artist's card with two photographs by Andrew Griffiths of a tree that had recently been planted and another a fully grown - both have tree-column sculptures at their bases. The poem in the middle section reads:
A PLACEMENT
obeisance
and an excerpt from Finlay's "Detached Sentences on Gardening" which clarifies the idea that some items in a garden are like those of societies - some need to be fixed (in the sense of solidified) so that others can be placed (strategic decision-making).
The final section notes the Tree Column-Bases to be found in Little Sparta - one "Lycurge" and the other Saint-Just. The former was a Greek law-maker and the latter the stern deliverer of laws from the French Revolution. Finlay differentiates between the two by suggesting the Greek was more stable and civil while the latter more chaotic and dangerous. VG+.

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