In 1922, T.S. Eliot first published ‘The Waste Land’, now considered to be one of the 20th century’s most important poetic pieces, and a defining staple of the modernist style.

It’s a piece of literature that has always inspired artist Susie Hamilton, especially her 2018 exhibition titled ‘At the Violet Hour’, which showcased over eighty pieces of art hanging just a short distance from the bus shelter where Eliot composed part of ‘The Waste Land’.

It is also the catalyst behind her bold new book, ‘On Margate Sands: Paintings & Drawings based on T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land’.

Synopsis:

‘ON MARGATE SANDS’ takes its inspiration from At the Violet Hour, a 2018 exhibition at Nayland Rock Hotel, Margate, next to the bus shelter where Eliot wrote part of The Waste Land . 

For this show Hamilton made over eighty paintings and drawings which respond to the fragmented and diverse nature of the poem and range from depictions of the sordid to the luminous, from the gloom of Hades or The City of London to the light of ‘the hyacinth garden’. 

They were hung, Salon-style, from floor to ceiling in one of the bedrooms in the hotel. The exhibition was part of Turner Contemporary’s programme “Journeys with ‘The Waste Land'”

In November part of this exhibition will be recreated for one evening in the Eliot territory of Bloomsbury, near Russell Square, where Eliot used to work at Faber, and near Bedford Place and Bury Street where he lived for a while.