To mark the centenary of a Scottish jack of all trades—the artist Ian Hamilton Finlay—a series of exhibitions across eight international cities (London, New York, Edinburgh, Brescia, Hamburg, Vienna, Basel, and Palma de Mallorca) looks at his legacy. The London show at Victoria Miro explores two central themes in Finlay’s work: revolutions and maritime life. A key work, The Medium is the Message (1990), a carved slate headstone quoting Marshall McLuhan, exemplifies Finlay’s fusion of sculpture and poetry. In fact, he was a pioneer of the global concrete poetry movement. Still, Finlay really just thought of himself as a “very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all—it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything.” —Carolina de Armas