in association with

Embassy of Ireland to China | Hong Kong VA Galleries | LolliGo Art Space

One hundred years ago, in November 1923, W.B Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This year, on the 13th June, the poets birthday, Hamilton Gallery will mark this anniversary with the opening in Beijing of “Ancestral Houses”, an exhibition of paintings by artists from across Ireland, as part of the cultural programme of Ireland’s Embassy there.

The exhibition comprises individual paintings from artists all over Ireland, in response to the suite of poems “Mediations in Time of Civil War” which Yeats wrote in 1921.

To accompany the exhibition, a new short video has been produced by Hamilton Gallery. Filmed by videographer Sligo Peter Martin in the beautiful setting of Temple House in County Sligo, the short film carries parallel readings from Ancestral Houses in both English and Chinese, while the cultural context of the poem is explained by Yeats Scholar Sean Golden.

Ancestral Houses | Produced by Hamilton Gallery in association with the Embassy of Ireland to China | Film by Peter Martin | Filmed at Temple House County Sligo

Hamilton Gallery extends special thanks to the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Irish Embassy in China for their invaluable involvement in making this significant cultural project possible, and also to the owners Temple House and the family of W B Yeats for their help in creating the film. The exhibition will travel from Beijing to several other major cities in China until the end of 2023, as part of the cultural celebrations surrounding the centenary of W B Yeats’ Nobel Prize.

#YeatsDay

Hamilton Gallery proudly sponsors the annual world wide social media celebration #YeatsDay each year

We are delighted again this year to support the Yeats Society in Sligo with the roll out of this wonderfully popular communal celebration of some or our greatest literature