In an interview on RTE1 with Marion Finucan on November 26th, art consultant Frances Ruane recommended that the best way to learn about contemporary art is to visit galleries regularly. This helps you figure out what you like and become familiar with the market so you can gage the investment value of work. When asked about galleries outside of Dublin worth visiting that feature good-value, investment-grade work, she mentioned the Catherine Hammond Gallery in Glengarriff!
From The Irish Times, Friday, August 12, 2005
GOING WEST, Catherine Hammond Gallery, Glengarriff, West Cork until August 17.
“Since opening her gallery in Glengarriff in March 2004, Catherine Hammond has sustained a programme of top-notch shows in her fine, versatile exhibition space. She rates the current show, by Anne Neely, as particularly interesting given that Neely has exhibited extensively in the US but never had a solo show here before. Furthermore, the work stems from several stays on this side of the Atlantic, at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ballycastle, north Mayo. Neely has a nice, light touch, and her paintings could be seen as a series of meditations or inspired by landscape rather than being landscapes as such. She had, she says, two ideas running through her mind: “the pervasive sense of the Irish past and the constant relationship of land to weather.” While the starting point is Mayo, Neely’s concerns are more general, touching on our relationship with nature, with the way the land weighs us down or sets us free, and how it offers us imaginative space.” Aidan Dunne
On show now t the Catherine Hammond Gallery are more than 80 works by gallery artists. They include paintings and works on paper by Robert Bates, Patricia Burns, Mary Canty, Carol Hodder, Brian Hegarty, Jonathan Hunter, Eddie Kennedy, Bernadette Kiely, Mary Mackey, Anne Neely, Gwen O’Dowd, Alison Pilkington, Frances Ryan, Leonard Sheil, Linda Shevlin, Hazel Walker, and Rita Wobbe.
Now is a good time to start thinking about that special Christmas present!