19 Dec

Posted at 08:17h in Artist's Postcards

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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15 Dec

Posted at 11:01h in Artist's Books

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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16 Nov

Posted at 13:22h in EXHIBITION CATALOGUES

Lille/Steenvoorde: Musee des Beaux-Arts de Lille/College Sait-Exupery de Steenvoorde, n.d. (c. 1994) 27 x 21cm, 48pp on thick paper plus outer card covers with plastic spine binding. Exhibition catalogue for an exhibition of work by students of the College Sait-Exupery based on a year long programme of tuition by Jacques Mayeux, Pierre-Yves Bohm, Gerard Duchene as well as Christian Boltanski with each student's work reproduced with polarised images in b/w. The work is clearly heavily influenced by Boltanski's interest in archive and there is one b/w reproduced photograph of the artist in the school studio. A collective artist's book released during the exhibition this is in VG+ condition and is very rare and unknown in the Boltanski reference books....

15 Oct

Posted at 12:50h in Artist's Postcards

Vermont: Longhouse, 1995
8.8 x 10.8cm, 4pp black on green folding card - the internal poems have capitalised first letters which vertically read as the words CRATE DOOR, HOE, SOAP, BALSA and TWINE. The associated words create a description of each word eg.:

H eaven
O rders
E arth

Order comes from above - as it does when a gardener uses a hoe. VG+.

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11 Sep

Posted at 14:51h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995 10.5 x 5cm, 4pp card with a 4pp insert. Two drawings - both concrete poems (or Calligrammes) one the original by Guillaume Apollinaire and the other by Ron Costley after Finlay's instruction. Apollinaire's Eloge de l'arbre has the text: "arbre qui fut la displante par Victor Hugo" - praising the socialist writer (the tree that was planted by Victor Hugo), Finlay's reflection becomes "Abre de la liberte et sa floraison"(Liberty tree and its flowering) a reference to the french Revolution and the symbolic trees shown at the feasts and celebrations. A lovely small concrete work. VG+. ...

16 Aug

Posted at 10:08h in ARTIST’S BOOKS

Stuttgart: Oktagon Verlag, 1995
17 x 13.5cm, 32pp which include 23 full colour 8.7 x 12.5cm "Kodak" photographs loosely tipped onto blank pages plus title page and colophon. Padded orange boards with foil stamped title. First edition of this artist's book which was designed to look like a family photographic album.
The photographs purport to be souvenirs of a family holiday at Berck-Plage in August 1975 and have the over bright colours found in the colour stock of the time - and an over saturated colour pallet that Boltanski has used in some of his mid-career photographic studies.
As with all of Boltanski's work one is left unsure if the images are genuinely from the artist's family records or found from some other vintage source?
This is one of 500 signed and numbered copies in pencil on the colophon by the artist. The series of Oktagon artist's books was edited by Hans-Ulrich Obrist who has since worked several times with Boltanski including the series of "Take Me I'm yours" exhibitions from the late 90s. VG+ condition.

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13 Jul

Posted at 13:03h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.3 x 10.3cm, 12pp plus typographic card covers. A b/w photograph by Robin Gillanders of wild flowers in the Picpus Cemetary where many of the guillotined dead during the last months of the Terror were buried in mass graves and a text by Finlay:

THREE WILD FLOWERS
Julie Boissard
Adelaide Lienard
Agathe Greaude

These are names of three of the women who were murdered during the Terror and buried in the cemetery. Finlay's suggestion that they be seen as wild flowers re-emerging from the ground is a beautiful memorial. VG+.

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13 Jul

Posted at 12:40h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
13.5 x 9cm, 60pp plus black unprinted boards with red ribbon. A list of all the people murdered during the Terror and buried in the Picpus Cemetery in Paris. The cemetery was only five minutes from the Place de la Nation where the guillotine was set up so was used for the creation of mass graves where where the decapitated bodies were thrown in together without regard for social class.
Finlay has listed here the names of all those killed during 7 - 9 Messidor (the tenth month in the French Republican calendar) in the second year of the Terror (a period which is known as The Grand Terror as the numbers of those condemned rose very greatly before the downfall of Robespierre). These dates in the common calendar are Thursday 25 June 1795 to Saturday 27 June 1795.
By our count this consisted of 116 people of differing station and most noticeable is the number of young lives under 30. Of course the popular view of the Terror is that it was the nobility that were guillotined but that is not true - the majority were working and middle class people accused of anti-revolutionary views and actions.
The red ribbon is a nod to the line of red blood on a guillotined body (obviously it was not a line) and the use of such ribbons tied around a wrist as a memorial to those killed. The black unprinted board an obvious allusion to death.

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12 Jul

Posted at 21:33h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
252 x 14.8cm, 28pp plus card covers and typographic dust jacket. A proposal in book form for the cladding and internal walls and glass of a German bank. The external works are all "definitions" such as:

AFFLUENCE n.
A SHORTAGE OF SACKCLOTH & ASHES.

which is ironic for a bank.
Internally wall paintings of "Evening will come they will sew the blue sail" and also "Wave/Rock" are found. The glass entrance doors have Star/Steer etched upon them.Text in English and German and all works photographed in b/w. The central seven images of the outer claddings open out as an accordion fold-out. VG+.

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06 Jul

Posted at 13:37h in Object + Paper Multiples

N.p. (Little Sparta): s.p. (Wild Hawthorn Press), n.d. (1995?) 16.5 x 15 x 24cm, glazed ceramic teapot with a text "TEAPOTS ARE THE NAVALS OF HAPPY HOUSEHOLDS". A limited edition object multiple - Finlay produced at least two teapots with text of which this is one. Slight internal damage to the pot but not visible from outside when the lid is on. Limited edition - the actual number produced was not many....

22 Jun

Posted at 22:56h in Poems in folders

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
16 x 11cm, 4pp orange outer folder with printed title. Internally a 16 x 11cm, 4pp sheet with two concrete poems both entitled THE INSCRIPTIONS but the first being for Carl Rakosi and the second for Harry Gilonis.
The former is an objectivist poet, the latter a friend of Finlay's and also a poet. The first form of the poem is duplicated in both but in the second Finlay has crossed out the original words, kept the physical structure but the classical names replaced by names of meaning to Gilonis. The echo here being the similarities in the two poems.
This is one of a series of works which the Wild Hawthorn Press denoted as "Poems in folders". VG+.

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