Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1993
12.2 x 8cm, 4pp. Folding card with a drawing by Gary Hinks on the front which is in the style of the Edlich who used wood and other found objects in his cubist-like works. Here the drawing shows what looks like a found piece of wood with the word "JACOBIN" on it. One assumes Finlay felt that Edlich was somewhat Jacobin in his life. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1993
18.5 x 12.2, 4pp. Folding card with a reproduced colour painting by Gary Hincks on the front which is a wild rose. The date 1794 was an important year in the French revolution as it not only saw the death of Danton by degree but also the Law of 22 Prairial where Robespierre centralised his unofficial dictatorship over the country by removing rights of defendants when accused of sedition or slandering the state. The wild rose for Finlay (which here has a bud alongside a fully opened flower) is signifying the wild actions of the Committee for Public Safety but also the potential of the revolution (which ultimately failed like most and returned France to the monarchy then Napoleon's despotism). This "definition" was used by Finlay in other works including a limited edition vase for wild flowers. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1993
18.5 x 10.6, 4pp. Folding card with a reproduced colour painting by Gary Hincks on the front which is of a yellow wild flower. The definition of a Wildflower is given by Finlay as "A Mean Term between Virtue & Revolution". The word "mean" has two meanings here - an averaging or the synthesis of the two ideas of virtue and revolution and/or the effects of the themes of virtue and revolution causing chaos and unpleasantness (which is a mild way of describing The Terror). VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
23.5 x 6.5cm, 4pp. Folding card with a drawing of old fashioned bee hives by Gary Hincks on the front with Finlay's text which is repurposing Pindar's classical reference to the "temple of the bees". The humming of the insects is compared to religious singing. VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
11.5 x 11.2cm, 4pp. Folding card with a painting by Gary Hincks on the front of a woman wearing a republican rosette watering flowers. The original is a Kate Greenaway painting albeit Hincks has altered the imagery a little and the word Thermidor placed top left. Lilies grow behind her (a symbol of the French crown) and she is watering red roses. Arrosoir was the month when Robespierre and his cohorts were removed overnight by their colleagues on the National Convention and the revolutionary calendar month's name translates to watering-can. Thermidorian reaction led eventually to the re-establishment of the French monarchy but the replacement to Robespierre while not as virulent was still a committed revolutionary regime. The painting is a cute metaphor for the events of July 1794. VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
8.1 x 6.8cm, 4pp green outer folder with a drawing by Gary Hincks. Internally a 8.1 x 6.8cm, 4pp sheet with a text telling a tale of a discussion of "the moral effects of the arts and sciences" after stopping at an avenue of chestnut trees.
The text is in two parts - one taken from Thomas A. Clark and the other referring to an essay by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The title of the work refers to the attempted escape of the French king and queen while being held hostage during the first months of the French revolution - they were stopped on the way because a shop keeper recognised the King's striking (ie big nosed) visage from the coin of the realm and escorted back to the capital.
Together Finlay has created a new story of morals and escape from unthinking philosophies of behaviour.
This is one of a series of works which the Wild hawthorn Press denoted as "Poems in folders". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
20.9 x 14.8cm, 12pp, card covers and printed dust jacket. A proposal for a public work at Tout Quarry, in Portland, Dorset in the form of an artist's book - the intent is to use the giant blocks of stone that are abandoned in the quarry and have them carved on the upper face and along the sides with an inscription 'Gods of the Earth / Gods of the Sea' from Virgil's Aeneid Book III. The full original text is "Gods of the Earth / Gods of the Sea, Gods who rule over storms, give us a wind to help our voyage and may your breath bring us aid."
The block will have an image of a net (where there are knots will be mechanically drilled holes and the lines by light chisling) and deeper letter forms. There are two drawings by Gary Hincks and Nicholas Sloan is also credited....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
11.5 x 11.2cm, 4pp. Folding card with a drawing by Gary Hincks on the front of a ship in a storm. On the back Finlay lists the names of some of the RN "Flower" class corvette - of which the ship depicted is one. The unpredictable torrents it rides causing it to be a "wild" flower . VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
70 x 82cm, full colour offset lithograph with a reproduced painting by Gary Hincks of various weeds and flowers - each named after a prominent woman of the French Revolution. Charlotte Corday, the heroine who murdered the evil Marat in his bath, is shown as a nettle and Marie-Antoinette as a lily. The work is subtitled as "after Anselm Kiefer" who produced a major sculptural installation of the same name with beds made out of lead for each woman.
One of only 250 issued. VG+ condition.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
8.4 x 15.7cm, 4pp card. Two water colour paintings by Gary Hincks of wild growing flowers have two different Finlay definition works noted below each - the first is:
WILDFLOWER, n. a wayside text
and
WILDFLOWER, n. an inflammatory text
VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1993
23.4 x 18cm, 4pp. A proposal for a permanent installation in a new art museum planned for Germany. The work consists of a sentence from Saint-Just in four different languages:
THE NATIVE LAND IS NOT THE LAND IT IS THE COMMUNITY OF FEELINGS
on the ground of a 60 x 60m terrace. VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1991
21 x 15cm, 36pp with card covers and printed dust jacket. Image by Gary Hincks. The annual Christmas book publication by Finlay is here a collection illustrated short poems (most two-liners and most rhyming).
COUPLET
Doodlebug, doodlebug, where have you been?
- I've been to London to visit the Queen."
has a drawing of a V1 rocket bomb used during the blitz which was often called a "Doodlebug".
The staples are a little rusty else VG+.
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