Lottie Consalvo - Tis Waking That Kills Us

​Foenander Galleries is thrilled to present ​Lottie Consalvo's debut solo exhibition in Aotearoa:

Tis Waking That Kills Us
Opening: Thursday 23rd October: 6-8pm
Until: 15 November

Lottie Consalvo is one of Australasia most thought-provoking contemporary artists. Her practice challenges conventional notions of reality and urges us to embrace what is unseen and unknown, pushing into the mind’s capacity to explore the unbound possibilities of our existence and what lies beyond. She explores what she calls “the invisible world”—the realm of thought, imagination, dreams, and psychological states that exist beyond the tangible.

In 2025 she was named as one of Australia’s 100 most collectable artists and a public survey of her video & performance was shown at the Watt Space Gallery, Newcastle. Consalvo also won the 2025 Muswellbrook Art Prize earlier this year, and is a current finalist in the Mosman Art Prize.

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’Tis waking that kills us
Lottie Consalvo, Föenander Galleries 2025

"By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life." - (Virginia Wolf, Orlando)

"My eyes are closed for an extended period of time and I attempt to hold onto no thoughts. I open them and my gaze lands on the horizon. A coal ship sits on it and I have a strong sense that I was just swimming in the water beside it and then was placed back on the shore where I now sit.

I close my eyes again, deep pink fills behind my eyelids. The pink is not my colour. I float on a small wave of nostalgia and a second wave comes shortly after it. No image, no sound or smell, just a feeling but it feels like they are not my nostalgias but somebody else’s. With my eyes still closed, an image of an eye appears and the profile of a face comes into view. The eye remains as the face disappears and is replaced with another face looking in the opposite direction. It morphs into another face and another and another and another. All faces older than mine and I don’t recognise any of them. Intuition tells me that they are someone else’s lost loved ones, as if I am experiencing the memory of another.

Yesterday a bee landed on me and was very intent on staying. I thought at first it was unwell, tired and just used me for a pit-stop. It inspected my metallic watch and my beetroot-stained fingers. I was overwhelmed and talked too much to it. After what felt like minutes the bee flew away. I felt as if I was being invited back into the natural world. In this moment, I had an intense desire to shed myself of the trappings of modernity so that any barrier to - my becoming a part of - nature would be dissolved.

Emma Marris writes about wild animals and questions whether any are in fact ‘wild’ anymore when humans control most of the natural world. I question whether most of us humans are animals anymore? I watched a magpie swoop for a worm this morning and I observed the stillness of a tree that is older than I am and both existences looked very appealing. Constantly I am wrestling with how to unravel my humanness, it’s like trying to backflip out of a straightjacket.

I read that after a bushfire we should not put food out for wild animals because ‘it can lead to dependency, malnutrition, disease, and aggression among animals, while also attracting predators and pest species. Providing food can also cause long-term ecological harm by disrupting natural foraging behaviours and ecosystems.’ This was quoted from AI. It sounds like they are describing the fall of humanity. If food wasn’t left out for us, would we have been better off?

I had a dog who died a few years ago. Sometimes I will see a minor bird and have the feeling that it is her. I have the sense that animals share souls. I also see humans in animals and insects and I know this is collective belief. My late sister I see in butterflies and my late mother is a magpie. My mother is spending a lot of time with me of late, I think she senses that I am softening my feelings for her.

I read Rachel Yoda’s Night Bitch, about a young mother who turns into a dog. I often look at birds and trees and think how I would like to turn into them. Perhaps my convening with a bee was a sign I am on my way.

Last night I heard a Tawny Frog Mouth. It’s call kept perfect beat. It made me wonder, how did we create time? Did it stem from something we heard in nature or the beat of our hearts? A day and night divided perfectly into 60. What if we hadn’t created time at all and just continued to refer to lightness and darkness. It’s something I should know and I try not to Google it and just enjoy the pondering. After all, what’s the rush.

These are the things I think about".

Lottie Consalvo: 2:17am Thursday 25th September, 2 days before my 40th birthday

I acknowledge and pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the land in which this piece of writing was formed and the artworks for this exhibition were made, the Awabakal and Worimi people. I acknowledge that their land and sea constantly inspire me. The people who cared for and respected this land and sea for over 65,000 years. The oldest continuous living culture in the world. A culture deeply connected with the natural world and who lived without time as we know it. I would also like to extend my acknowledgements to Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, mana whenua of Tāmaki Makaurau.