Description: Since September 1993, Robin Gillanders has been photographing the neo-classical garden of internationally renowned artist, Ian Hamilton Finlay. The Garden, Little Sparta, at Dunsyre in the Pentland Hills, is a modern conception of a classical garden with sculptures, stone inscriptions and other artifacts placed within the landscape. Robin Gillanders' beautiful photographs are a personal response to this remarkable environment, composed over a number of years and through different seasons, during which he familiarized himself with the garden's topography and Finlay's poetry and thought. As he came to know the place, there is a growing spiritual and imaginative response and, with this, a sense of permission to explore the landscape on his own terms. This sense of possibilities opening before him echoes Finlay's observation: A garden is not an object but a process. In celebration of this composition, the National Galleries of Scotland are publishing a limited hardcover edition of Robin Gillanders' photographs accompanied by Ian Hamilton Finlay's thoughts on gardening and a unique conversation with him about the creation of Little Sparta.

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