A Variety of Cultures is an orchard consisting of a set of sixty-six oak ladders, each of which accompanies a native variety of sapling apple or plum tree. The ladders both anticipate and offer a measure for future growth; ultimately, they will provide a means by which visitors can access the canopies of the trees and any fruit they may bear.

Finlay conceived A Variety of Cultures during a residency at Jupiter Artland in 2010. He describes the piece as ‘an essay in eco-poetics’; a phrase which beautifully draws out the ways in which his work is at once a set of experiments with language, a play between nature and culture, and a poetic deployment of materials (including living things) as well as words.

In After John Butterworth we used to say…, a poem that addresses itself to A Variety of Cultures, Finlay offers these lines in praise of place and of variousness, which seem particularly apt for Jupiter Artland:

an orchard is an
archive of locality

Alongside A Variety of Cultures, Jupiter Artland’s permanent collection includes another artwork by Finlay titled Mesostic Remedy.

Biography

Alec Finlay (b. 1966, Inverness, Scotland) is an artist, poet and publisher based in Edinburgh. In recent years Finlay’s work has been primarily concerned with contemporary visions of nature and landscape. He employs a diverse range of forms: neon text, nest-boxes, major interventions working with windmill turbines, multiples, paper works and all forms of print and web-based media, alongside innovative poetic forms such as the renga, circle poem and mesostic.

Recent exhibitions and projects include: Retrospective, Arizona Poetry Centre (2018); Question & Answers (after Paul Celan) a permanent public artwork commissioned by CGP Gallery (2018); Taigh the national memorial for organ donors at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, commissioned by Scottish Government (2014). Finlay’s major public artworks in Scotland include a xylotheque in the Hidden Gardens at Tramway, Glasgow; a series of permanent artworks for Springburn Park, Glasgow; Home to a king in George Square Gardens, Edinburgh; and Interleaved, a text-based work in Sir Basil Spence’s Main Library at the University of Edinburgh. Finlay has worked on long term residencies and exhibitions with BALTIC and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and performances for Tramway and Tate Modern.

His publications have won numerous Scottish Design Awards, and recent publications include Wonderous Sore (2023) two illustrated poetic essays reflecting on landscape, vulnerability, and violence; and Gathering (2018) a place-aware mapping of the Cairngorms in poems, essays, photographs and maps.