Biography
Paul Yates has sustained a highly original and compelling creative output over some four decades across poetry, painting and film-making attracting international connoisseurs of the Avant-Garde. Several volumes of his poetry have been published with translations in French, Danish, Russian, Spanish a...
Paul Yates has sustained a highly original and compelling creative output over some four decades across poetry, painting and film-making attracting international connoisseurs of the Avant-Garde. Several volumes of his poetry have been published with translations in French, Danish, Russian, Spanish and Chinese. His paintings feature in various public and private collections and his film works have won international awards.
Yates began writing and painting at an early age encouraged by his then high school English teacher, the artist, Jack Pakenham. In 1972, at just eighteen years of age the first exhibition of his paintings was held at the Tom Caldwell Gallery in Belfast. In 1974, A WHITE CAT WITH A HUMAN FACE, his first collection of poems and drawings was published.
In 1976, under the auspices of surrealist aficionado, Sir Roland Penrose, his drawings were exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, where he also read from his second collection of poems and drawings, SKY MADE OF STONE.
Full Biography:
1954: Paul Yates born in Belfast.
1968/69: Early poems broadcast on BBC Radio by author, Sam Hanna Bell.
1972: First solo exhibition at the Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast. Curated by Patricia Riddle.
1972/73: Paul Yates and artist Jack Pakenham collaborate to produce two poem-prints.
1974: A WHITE CAT WITH A HUMAN FACE poems and drawings published in a limited edition of 400 copies. Sponsors included the artist, Gladys Maccabe, poet, John Hewitt, Businessman, Gareth McMurray and Jim Gracey, founder of the Blackstaff Press.
1975: HEAP a dramatic monologue written and performed by Paul Yates at QUB festival.
1976: SKY MADE OF STONE poems and drawings in response to terrorism in Northern Ireland published by the Appletree Press. Translations in French, Danish and Russian.
1976: Paul Yates reads his poetry at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and is invited by leading British surrealist, Sir Roland Penrose, to exhibit his drawings at the ICA.
1976: Paul Yates profiled on BBC Tonight programme by John Pitman and Sue Lawley.
1976: Paul Yates and Samuel Beckett engage in a ‘dialogue by postcards’ between Paris and Belfast.
1977: FRAGMENTS television script written and performed by Paul Yates for the BBC2 Light Of Experience series, later published by BBC Books, an abridged version appeared in The Listener magazine.
1977: PENTA exhibition at Octagon Gallery, Belfast. Paul Yates submits a mock theatre installation. Other artists taking part included Jack Pakenham and Malcom Bennett.
1977: NEEDLE AND BALLOON limited edition poem-prints. Most of this edition was lost when an IRA bomb destroyed the premises of Appletree Press.
1978: CLUE OF THREADS poems published by William Derragh under the Pendragon imprint. Triptych on Western Man, a long poem from this collection was read in full by Paul Yates on the BBC World Service.
1978: CATAPULT a dramatic poem published by William Derragh
SHAPE-SHIFTER commission for Caffe Casa
1989: LEVITATION AND THE UNFAITHFUL SENTRY poems and songs published by ABSA and sponsored by The Potcheen Company.
1992: MASTERS OF THE CANVAS BBC Arena commission. Yates’s award winning film documentary, featuring Pop Artist, Sir Peter Blake, photographer, Sir Terence Donovan and masked wrestler, Kendo Nagasaki. Winner of various international awards, the film was screened at TATE BRITAIN and BFI London as an example of documentary film making excellence and re-broadcast by popular demand.
1995: DUNADRY BANKS limited edition poem prints with artist Basil Blackshaw published in France on behalf of UNICEF.
1998: IMAGES OF NAGASAKI private commission, video art work.
1999: MIS-COUNTED HAIKU video art work for Manako Corporation, Japan.
2000: SHAPE-SHIFTER commission for Caffe Casa, Belfast, paintings, photographs, plates and liquid sculptures.
2001: EAST epic prose poem published with cassette recordings performed by actor James Ellis.
2002: AUTUMN WINDOWS painting commission, Kings college, Cambridge.
2003: RAIN ANGELS sculpture commission, Moorcourt Nursing Home, Staffordshire.
2004: CHANTREY VELLACOTT commission of a suite of SNOWHEAD paintings.
2004: SNOWHEAD painting purchased by UTV for their corporate collection.
2005: TATTIE-BOGLE, short story recorded at BBC by Gail Porter.
2005: A POET’S PAINTINGS, recent works at the Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast.
2005: MOURNE, poems and images with artist, Basil Blackshaw.
2007: I MUST NOT WRITE POETRY IN CLASS, blackboard paintings at the Tom Caldwell Gallery, Belfast as part of QUB festival.
2008: WATER-COLOUR, Zen film work, private commission.
2010: XII MONTHS OF MOURNE, UTV commission, winner of the prestigious New York Television Festival ‘Best Direction’ award.
2018: STUDIES TOWARDS A NEW TAROT, one hundred and fifty paintings published in a limited edition of 51 decks of cards, launched at the inaugural Saint-Paul de Vence Biennale, at the Casa d’Amor Design Gallery by Isabelle de Botton.
2019: STORYBOARD, a series of nine collage-assemblages depicting scenes from an imagined film in homage to the village of Saint-Paul and the surrealist dancer Helene Vanel,
Exhibited at the Casa d’ Amor Design Gallery by Isabelle de Botton.
