Mary Hammond

Born 1928

Biography

Mary Hammond was born in Spearwood, W.A. and moved to Melbourne to attend the National Gallery School (1951-55).  Mary also completed a short course in printmaking at RMIT and later taught drawing there part time in the architecture and architectural drafting department for 15 years

Mary has depicted the lives of ordinary Australians for over 50 years since first exhibiting with the Melbourne Realist Group in 1953. The group, which included Ailsa and Vic O’Connor, Noel Counihan, Jim Wigley, Dave Armfield, Peter Miller and Bernard Rust, saw their art as a tool for social reform.  Mary has held many solo and group exhibitions. Vic O’Connor first introduced us to her work in 1991 and since then we have held 9 exhibitions at our gallery in Carlton

In 1974 she had a studio opposite Victoria Market.  Later studios included a shop front in Northcote and above a shop in Richmond. As a wife and mother her primary interest has been in depicting the plight of urban women struggling with their daily lives – and their shopping trollies!   Her subjects are not the bikini-clad beauties of calendars and centrefolds but vibrant living women with kids and budgets, catching our attention by the forthright drawing of an artist familiar with the beauty and appeal of simple, difficult lives.  She catches their bodies and faces with a heightened sense of reality which makes ordinariness glow in her frames