Ian Hamilton Finlay

The Printed Works

Opening Thursday 3rd April 2025

CLICK HERE to request a preview of the exhibition catalogue

In celebration of the artist’s centenary year, CASSIUS&Co. presents Ian Hamilton Finlay: The Printed Works, an exhibition focusing on the printed materials that sit at the heart of the artist’s practice. With objects dating from the 1950s until the his death in 2006, The Printed Works explores Finlay’s lifelong fascination with the word as image, and the means by which his Concrete poems could become physical objects through print.

Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925 - 2006), was a Scottish artist, poet and gardener, celebrated for his contributions to the field of Concrete poetry, his sculptural works, and for Little Sparta, the garden he created in the Pentland Hills of South Lanarkshire. Many of his sculptures grew out of ideas he had initially explored in print, whether with the cards and broadsides he produced throughout his life or through the poetry he published with his Wild Hawthorn Press and magazine Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., a complete run of which is included in this exhibition.

Finlay was a prolific maker of printed material, and while not completist, the c. 200 works presented here serve as a thorough testament to a lifetime dedicated to bringing language, image and objecthood together with clarity and precision. The specific application of Concrete forms to Classical themes like the pastoral and the poetry of Virgil, and the rigour of this enterprise, leave us an oeuvre that at its best can reduce a complexity like the ocean to a single word printed on a postcard.

The materials included in the presentation at CASSIUS&Co. are offered in collaboration with rare book dealer Sotheran’s.