26 Jul

Posted at 16:23h in Exhibition & Other Posters

Edinburgh: Talbot Rice Gallery, n.d. (1991)
69 x 41cm, full colour offset lithographic exhibition poster with a recreation of the painting "The Poor Fisherman" by Puvis De Chavannes - however the mast of the boat has had a revolutionary cockade been added to it. - hence adding a political edge to the image more than the original solely religious intent. The exhibition at the Talbot Rice Gallery that examined the work in some detail and responses to the work.

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24 Apr

Posted at 18:26h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1991
20.0 x 7.3cm, 8pp (single accordion folded sheet). A scythe is evolved over three panels into firstly a lightning strike as a blade to a single S from the nazi SS logo in the third panel. Drawing by Gary Hincks. The forth panel has a long text written by a 17th century Monk Abraham a Sancta Clara who compares death as a reaper, a gardener, a player and thunderbolt which not only strikes down the poor but also the powerful. The alteration in the design of the blade not only reminds one of the origin of the SS symbol and the German fascist interest in Nordic origins but also the aggression and death that they brought to the world. VG+. This is a variant on a very similar card (with the same name and text) which Finlay issued in a smaller size in 1990. VG+.

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07 Jan

Posted at 16:31h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1991 5.4 x 9.5cm, 4pp. A scythe is evolved into a Nazi SS symbol in place of the blade. Drawing by Gary Hincks. Inside is a long text written by a 17th century Monk Abraham a Sancta Clara who compares death as a reaper, a gardener, a player and thunderbolt which not only strikes down the poor but also the powerful. The alteration in the design of the blade not only reminds one of the origin of the SS symbol and the German fascist interest in Nordic origins but also the aggression and death that they brought to the world. This is one of two cards with similar text which Finlay released - the other card has different drawings and is bigger. VG+....

15 Dec

Posted at 21:11h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1990
7.5 x 7.5cm, 32pp and card covers and printed dust jacket. Artist's book with 9 illustrations by Gary Hincks and three line poems by Finlay.
The texts all relate to winter in the countryside and could be read as a single work but really each stands alone.

foot
following
foot

is shown next to a painting of footprints in the snow.
the staples are rusty but this is a scarce item - only 250 copies were printed as Christmas gifts, else VG+. This example is signed by Finlay on the first blank paper in ink.

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30 Jul

Posted at 16:18h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1990

21 x 21cm, white outer folder content of two 21 x 21cm b/w lithographs by Gary Hincks which parody Victor Vasarely's op-art style. In both (one in outline, the other solid black) the outer square shapes slowly turn into guillotine blades much as OpArt works often show slow gradual change in shapes.
This is a visual poem which is made more poignant with the two quotes on the inside of the folder - one from Vasarely: "Let us first kill in ourselves egocentricity" and another from Anacharsis Cloots - the French anarchist - "France you will be happy when you are finally cured of individuals." by their addition the work reveals itself as being about the tension between the individuals role in the state versus his/her rights to individual liberty. VG+.

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30 Jun

Posted at 16:42h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1990
21 x 19.7cm, blue on white lithograph with folded flap - the drawing by Hincks is of Robespierre's basic lodging and a quote from Lamartine's "History of the Girondists" describing the room and pointing out that it was in some manner as if "Jean-Jacques Rousseau had quitted his cottage to become the legislator of humanity, he could not have led a more retired of simple existence".
The poem by Finlay on the inner fold reads:

His bed
a meadow
his brow
in shadow

which places Robespierre's famous austerity as a landscape, his philosophy clearly from Rousseau's belief in the purity of nature.
VG+.

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21 Apr

Posted at 07:36h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1990
14 x 12.4cm, 4pp and printed card wrappers. The cover drawing of a boat is by Gary Hincks, internally are two poems by Finlay.

3 Sailboats
Juan Gris
Jean Cocteau
Erik Satie

opposite to

3 Sansculottes
Puvis de Chavannes
Camille Pissarro
Jean_Baptiste Corot

Finlay is associating the the thematic interests of the latter three painters (the lives of the poor and oppressed) against the bourgeois interests of Gris, Cocteau and Satie. The sansculottes being the working class mob in Paris during the revolution who could by sheer numbers overthrow the various attempts at moderate government and led eventually to the rise of Robespierre and the Terror. VG+.

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26 Jun

Posted at 15:15h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
29.7 x 21cm, b/w lithograph with two parallel drawings by Gary Hincks which have similarities with each other. One a guillotine - the agency of the Terror - and the other a waterfall - in itself a phenomena of nature's violence. FInlay as often draws metaphors from human objects and the power of the landscape. VG.

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27 Apr

Posted at 17:47h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.
38 x 45cm, black and cream on white laid paper - the image by Gary Hincks is of a grove of trees around a classical temple after WIlliam Stukely. The definition of Grove is "an irregular peristyle" and a quote from Milton. The pristyle is the corridor between a colonnade and the wall of the inner building - hence the definition here suggests the trees are creating a further group of columns around the building. We do not know the date of this work - wee suspect the late 80s. VG+.

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05 Mar

Posted at 08:59h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
11.4 x 8.9cm, 4pp. Artist's card with a drawing of an abstracted moorland/estuary (very similar to the colourful images used in From 35 One Line Poem postcards published earlier by Finlay - and the text "Birds fly, Waterfoul Ply" - one having the air above the water, the other the water and the moorland but the latter being compared to boats "plying" their trade. Strictly speaking ply means to move regularly over an area or to work steadily - something both boats and land birds tend to do. VG+.

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26 Feb

Posted at 14:59h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
40 x 52cm, blue, red and black offset lithograph.A French flag drawn by Hincks has the texts "LIBERTY FOR SOME/EQUALITY FOR SOME/LIBERTY FOR SOME" respectively on each coloured section. The colours of the tricolour (invented as a compromise early during the French Revolution) were the red and blue: the colours of Paris allied to the white of the king. Later after the king was deposed and killed the flag was retained as the nation's flag and never retired even after the rise of Napoleon. The three texts of the work remind one that the revolutionary ideals did not really ever succeed - in fact, one might argue during the Terror, they had already been broken. VG.

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