This exhibition is now closed. Please contact the gallery prior to purchasing art from this exhibition to confirm availability.

 St Brigid’s Day

Contemporary Art Exhibition | 90 Women Artists

Inspired by the poem “St Brigid’s Day 1989” by Leland Bardwell

Embassy Of Ireland Berlin 25th March - 26th April / Opening Reception 20th March .

The Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, Kildare Street Dublin 2 - March 6th - March 8th 2019

Celebrating International Women's Day March 8th at 3pm. Paula Barry Walsh  Chair of the Gender Balance Steering Group will welcome you and Martina Hamilton from Hamilton Gallery will introduce Guest Speakers: Susan McKay, author, journalist and broadcaster, Susan has been a reader of Leland Bardwell’s over many years, and has always admired the bohemian wildness of her spirit and its accomplishment in her poetry and novels. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Ireland Professor of Poetry, will share ‘The Raging Foam’ a poem that she wrote in memory of her friend and colleague Leland
 
The exhibition will open to the public from Wednesday 6th March until Friday 8th March, it will then travel to the Irish Embassy in Berlin for the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.  Exhibition continues until May.

Hamilton Gallery Sligo - 9th February - 2nd March 2019

Opening by Mr. Ciarán Cannon TD Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with special responsibility for the Diaspora and International Development.

The 12 Star Gallery London - January 23rd - February 1st 2019

Opening by Mr Adrian O’Neill, the Irish Ambassador to Great Britain. Special Guest: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Ireland Professor of Poetry, member of Aosdána and friend of Leland Bardwell.

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Exhibition Completed. If you are interested in a remaining artwork please contact the gallery before purchasing on-line, as the work may no longer be available

The iconic early Christian symbol St Brigid has been chosen to serve as a catalyst for 90 invited Irish women artists to create an original painting for this exhibition.

Folk custom, the four seasons, women’s lives and crafts, poetry, all intersect at the 1st of February feast-day of Saint Brigid in Ireland. What is celebrated is the rebirth of the living earth; it was usual in some places to turn a sod of earth with the spade, the work of cultivation beginning again.  Many customs, especially around food and cattle, are connected with the day, but the best known was the making of St Brigid’s crosses out of straw or rushes. 

Women’s political journey in the last century of Irish history makes it right to choose the day for special celebration of Irish women artists and the works of art are further held in focus by their relation to the poem “St Brigid’s Day 1989” by Leland Bardwell, which positions the poet as observer, half outside the culture that she watches. 

This exhibition is a dynamic and vibrant contemporary response, to the import and changing cultural significance of powerful traditional female symbolism not just in Ireland, but in all contemporary societies.  

Organised by Hamilton Gallery, Sligo, Ireland, with the support of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in association with the Irish Embassy to Great Britain as part of the annual St Brigid’s Day events celebrating the creativity of women.