Ian Hamilton Finlay: Fragments
Past exhibition
Introduction
Victoria Miro is delighted to present an exhibition marking the centenary of the birth of one of Scotland’s greatest artists, Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006). Fragments is both a major new book and eight exhibitions that will take place internationally during May 2025 in Basel, Brescia, Edinburgh, Hamburg, London, New York, Palma de Mallorca and Vienna, curated and edited by Pia Maria Simig.
An artist, poet and landscape designer, Ian Hamilton Finlay reinvigorated the classical tradition in a body of work that encompasses a variety of creative forms to celebrate the sustaining power of words. He is best known for his garden Little Sparta, set in the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, where he lived and worked for the last 40 years of his life. He significantly influenced the concrete poetry movement, and his extensive printed poetical and graphical works were published by Wild Hawthorn Press, which he co-founded in 1961. His visual art work, achieved in collaboration with expert artists and craftspeople, can be found in museums, parks and gardens worldwide.
Drawn principally from the 1990s, and featuring sculpture in stone, wood and neon, as well as wall painting, tapestry and print, works on view at Victoria Miro in London are curated around the themes of ‘maritime’ and ‘revolution’. Representing a moment of enormous political and aesthetic rupture and signalling a great moral, as well as political leap, the French Revolution proved a rich subject for Finlay; he first received international attention for his guillotine installation A View to the Temple at Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and thereafter the guillotine became one of the most enduring elements of his iconography. La Rèvolution est un Bloc, 1992 – a wooden block carved with the words of the title and a central aperture reminiscent of a guillotine’s lunette – alludes to advances in secular democracy and social progress, and the bloodshed and unrest brought about by the Revolution. Two carved-stone wall sculptures, Head of the Dead Marat and Irony n. The Unwanted Shadow, both completed in 1991, refer to Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 portraits of revolutionary martyrs, Death of Marat and The Last Moments of Michel Lepeletier.
Finlay’s rarely seen neon works date back to the early 1970s and run parallel to his better-known inscriptions in stone, extending his poetic ideas beyond the printed page to become objects in the world. Key examples on view include ICI on Danse, 1996, which quotes Camille Desmoulins in response to the fall of the Bastille, in which the journalist and politician played an instrumental role.
The sea and maritime themes such as boats, fishing and seafaring were recurring sources of inspiration for Finlay. The tapestry Proem, 1998, distils a visual and linguistic pun (poem/prow) and also makes reference to the classification numbers of fishing boats (in this instance, BCK35, signifying Buckie in the Moray Firth). Finlay was born in Nassau, the Bahamas, and later, during the winter of 1955-56, lived on the small island of Rousay, Orkney, a location that inspired the symbolic landscapes of his later works. Often his works stretch outwards from the immediacy of language in the here and now towards the immensity of nature or, temporally, to the infancy of philosophical thought. In the 1992 neon A, E, I, O, Blue, while the initial letters are the first four vowels of the English alphabet, the sequence is completed not by the final vowel – U – but by the word ‘blue’, which creates a rhyme on its pronunciation, complemented by the colour of the work, as well as a corresponding sense of vastness.
Ian Hamilton Finlay: Fragments book
Published on 8 May 2025 by ACC Art Books and edited by Pia Maria Simig, Fragments draws together one hundred works by Ian Hamilton Finlay, each accompanied by a short, fragmentary text by the artist and myriad distinguished writers who wrote about Finlay’s work during his lifetime. It features introductory essays by Stephen Bann (CBE, Emeritus Professor of History of Art at the University of Bristol) and Tom Lubbock (chief art critic of The Independent from 1997 until his death in 2011) and includes 100 full colour plates. Additional texts by: Yves Abrioux, Stephen Bann, Prudence Carlson, Patrick Duncombe, Julia Eames, Patrick Eyres, Alec Finlay, Ian Hamilton Finlay, George Gilliland, Harry Gilonis, and Tom Lubbock. Designed by John and Orna Designs.
An artist, poet and landscape designer, Ian Hamilton Finlay reinvigorated the classical tradition in a body of work that encompasses a variety of creative forms to celebrate the sustaining power of words. He is best known for his garden Little Sparta, set in the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, where he lived and worked for the last 40 years of his life. He significantly influenced the concrete poetry movement, and his extensive printed poetical and graphical works were published by Wild Hawthorn Press, which he co-founded in 1961. His visual art work, achieved in collaboration with expert artists and craftspeople, can be found in museums, parks and gardens worldwide.
Drawn principally from the 1990s, and featuring sculpture in stone, wood and neon, as well as wall painting, tapestry and print, works on view at Victoria Miro in London are curated around the themes of ‘maritime’ and ‘revolution’. Representing a moment of enormous political and aesthetic rupture and signalling a great moral, as well as political leap, the French Revolution proved a rich subject for Finlay; he first received international attention for his guillotine installation A View to the Temple at Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and thereafter the guillotine became one of the most enduring elements of his iconography. La Rèvolution est un Bloc, 1992 – a wooden block carved with the words of the title and a central aperture reminiscent of a guillotine’s lunette – alludes to advances in secular democracy and social progress, and the bloodshed and unrest brought about by the Revolution. Two carved-stone wall sculptures, Head of the Dead Marat and Irony n. The Unwanted Shadow, both completed in 1991, refer to Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 portraits of revolutionary martyrs, Death of Marat and The Last Moments of Michel Lepeletier.
Finlay’s rarely seen neon works date back to the early 1970s and run parallel to his better-known inscriptions in stone, extending his poetic ideas beyond the printed page to become objects in the world. Key examples on view include ICI on Danse, 1996, which quotes Camille Desmoulins in response to the fall of the Bastille, in which the journalist and politician played an instrumental role.
The sea and maritime themes such as boats, fishing and seafaring were recurring sources of inspiration for Finlay. The tapestry Proem, 1998, distils a visual and linguistic pun (poem/prow) and also makes reference to the classification numbers of fishing boats (in this instance, BCK35, signifying Buckie in the Moray Firth). Finlay was born in Nassau, the Bahamas, and later, during the winter of 1955-56, lived on the small island of Rousay, Orkney, a location that inspired the symbolic landscapes of his later works. Often his works stretch outwards from the immediacy of language in the here and now towards the immensity of nature or, temporally, to the infancy of philosophical thought. In the 1992 neon A, E, I, O, Blue, while the initial letters are the first four vowels of the English alphabet, the sequence is completed not by the final vowel – U – but by the word ‘blue’, which creates a rhyme on its pronunciation, complemented by the colour of the work, as well as a corresponding sense of vastness.
Among Ship’s Bells, 2002, a sequence of brass bells engraved with text, one bell features the words ‘Pre-Socratic Attunement’, a reference to the early Greek concept of a harmony of opposites that rings with Finlay’s restless intellect and characteristic wry humour.
Ian Hamilton Finlay: Fragments takes place in May 2025 at: Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh; Kewenig Gallery, Palma de Mallorca; Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia; Victoria Miro, London; David Nolan Gallery, New York; Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg; Stampa Galerie, Basel; Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna.Ian Hamilton Finlay: Fragments book
Published on 8 May 2025 by ACC Art Books and edited by Pia Maria Simig, Fragments draws together one hundred works by Ian Hamilton Finlay, each accompanied by a short, fragmentary text by the artist and myriad distinguished writers who wrote about Finlay’s work during his lifetime. It features introductory essays by Stephen Bann (CBE, Emeritus Professor of History of Art at the University of Bristol) and Tom Lubbock (chief art critic of The Independent from 1997 until his death in 2011) and includes 100 full colour plates. Additional texts by: Yves Abrioux, Stephen Bann, Prudence Carlson, Patrick Duncombe, Julia Eames, Patrick Eyres, Alec Finlay, Ian Hamilton Finlay, George Gilliland, Harry Gilonis, and Tom Lubbock. Designed by John and Orna Designs.
Publications
Related
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Ian Hamilton Finlay: Fragments is reviewed in Sculpture Magazine
May 12 2025'This much-deserved centenary celebration demonstrates the continued relevance of his questioning work.'Read More -
Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Republic is The Week in Art’s Work of the Week
May 6 2025For The Art Newspaper’s The Week in Art podcast, Ben Luke spoke to Stephen Bann about this sculptural work, currently on view at the gallery...Read More
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Ian Hamilton Finlay’s son Alec Finlay on the centenary of his father's birth in The World of Interiors
April 23 2025'He experienced language as a Heraclitan and oracular medium. To him, the poem was an exemplary device that had a gift for revealing the metamorphoses words contain.'Read More -
Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta featured in the Financial Times
April 17 2025'As a whole, Little Sparta is “like a cryptic crossword puzzle. It’s a place that allows you to think.”'Read More
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The Observer reviews Ian Hamilton Finlay at the National Galleries of Scotland
March 23 2025★★★★ 'His is an art of distillation, juxtaposition, thrift and contemplation... Finlay understood as few other artists the emotional power of letters cutting into form, shape and colour.'Read More -
Exhibitions celebrating the centenary of Ian Hamilton Finlay feature in The Times Scotland
March 1 2025'...Finlay saw himself as a disruptor, someone who challenged the establishment and picked quarrels with it, whenever he felt its power was being misused.'Read More
