Water-cooled Watercress

Location

Country: India
City: Mumbai
Place: British Deputy High Commission

Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006) was a poet, gardener, moralist and neo-classical artist, whose work took many forms. Born in the Bahamas of Scottish parents, Finlay returned as a child to Scotland. Following a brief period at Glasgow School of Art, he served during the War in Germany, and subsequently worked as a shepherd in the Orkneys and later as an agricultural labourer. In the 1950s he began to write short stories and poems, and during the next decade became Britain's leading exponent of ‘concrete poetry’; later collaborating with specialist calligraphers, carvers and sculptors to create pamphlets, cards, prints to inscribe stone objects. In 1967 Finlay moved to an isolated farmhouse in Dunsyre in Lanarkshire, where he and his wife developed a modern version of the 18th-century poetic garden known as Little Sparta.

Places

Subjects

conceptual art, text-based work, watercress

Materials & Techniques

screenprint

Artist

Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925 - 2006)

Title

Water-cooled Watercress

Date

1990

Medium

Screenprint

Dimensions

height: 49.40 cm, width: 101.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Ingleby Gallery, July 2004

Inscription

none

GAC number

17878