Föenander Galleries | Auckland

Lottie Consalvo is a celebrated artist living and working on the land of the Awabakal and Worimi people in both Newcastle and Pindimar NSW, Australia. Consalvo’s works explore the human psyche, imagination, dreams, memory and their place in the real.

Stylistically, Lottie’s work appears to be an extension of the abstract expressionist tradition but conceptually more closely related to Surrealism – in its exploration of dreams and past experiences However, her work is perhaps closer still in spirit to that of Agnes Martin, who used the extreme limitations on palette and structure expected of Minimalism to provoke a spiritual, rather than, intellectual response to the painted surface.

Lottie Consalvo’s works explore the human psyche, imagination, dreams, memory and their place in the real. With a practice traversing painting, performance, video, and sculpture, she looks at the physicality of the overwhelming presence of thought and the impact the mind has on all living things. She parallels these natural phenomena of the mind by investigating the human connection to nature, desire, longing, loss and the ungraspable.

Consalvo’s performances are observations of transformative experiences, often taking form as video or live performances. More recently the artist utilised the imagination of the audience to present a performance where she was not physically present, but rather the audience witnessed her actions within their minds. Her paintings further this conversation where the artist creates a physical presence for thought, imagination, memory, and psychological transitions. Consalvo paintings are often monumental forms with vast empty spaces. Working with a restricted palette across mediums, the artist often grasps onto forms and uses the high contrast of opposing dark and light to mark out a place for the unknown and the intangible.

Her recent public exhibitions include; ‘Somewhere Else’, Maitland Regional Art Gallery (2019); ‘I Tried To Make A Horizon For You’, Casula Powerhouse (2019); ‘In The Remembering’, Heide Museum of Modern Art, (2018). She has been extensively exhibited around Australia, most recently in Goulburn, Newcastle, and Lake Macquarie. She has participated in numerous residency programs across Australia and Germany, and notably selected to participate in a residency with Marina Abramovic for the 30th Kaldor Public Art Project in 2015.