The New Art Centre is proud to announce an exhibition of work
by Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006), the first time his work has
been shown in the Gallery here. It coincides with our exhibition
of paintings by Eileen Hogan, which she made in response to
Finlay’s work, as well as a new installation in the Artists’ House
by Edmund de Waal, who, like Finlay, was inspired by the
eighteenth-century poet and garden theorist William
Shenstone. Ian Hamilton Finlay was an inventive and
interesting artist as well as a concrete poet. He was renowned
for works which played with the juxtaposition of word and
image. A great achievement of his was the garden called Little
Sparta which he made with his first wife at Stonypath, their
home south-west of Edinburgh. There, over a period of 25
years, Finlay revived the idea of the poet-philosopher’s garden
of Epicurus and Shenstone, arranging ponds, trees and plants
to provide an environment for his work.
The garden’s name, a reference to Sparta’s conflict with Athens, is an allegory for the relationship
between an artist and the establishment; Finlay often found inspiration in dispute and struggle, the
upheaval of the French Revolution, for example, or World War II (in which he served). Evident in the works
selected for the exhibition at Roche Court is the imagery and metaphor Finlay found in antiquity and Neo-
Classicism, which he sometimes combines with a very particular sense of humour. Finlay insisted on the
role of the artist as moralist, whose duty was to address sometimes uncomfortable and challenging truths
in a civilised yet unsettling world. Equally, he was concerned with the definition of beauty and the
acknowledgement of tradition in the best art of any time. Each piece in the Gallery is identifiable as a
work by Ian Hamilton Finlay - the ideas, the concept, design and guidance are all his own – although in
order to realise his ambitions in a diverse range of materials, he collaborated with highly skilled
stonemasons and letter-cutters such as Gary Breeze, whose work is also shown at Roche Court.
Finlay first made his reputation as a writer, publishing short stories and plays in the 1950s. In 1961 he
founded the Wild Hawthorn Press with Jessie McGuffie before he established himself as a concrete poet.
He used a wide range of materials to convey his poems, inscribing words in stone, wood, bronze as well
as on paper, and his publications played an important role in the dissemination of his work as a visual
artist. In light of recent displays of Finlay’s work at Tate Britain and at the São Paulo Biennial, the
presentation of Eileen Hogan’s paintings of Little Sparta alongside Finlay’s work at Roche Court is timely,
especially since we share with him an understanding of the alchemy that can result from siting a work of
art within a landscape: always dependent on the time of day, and quality of light and atmosphere,
encountering art in a garden setting is a magical, ephemeral experience.