Lottie Consalvo’s Entries To Nowhere Featured in Arriving Slowly at Ipswich Art Gallery

Artist Lottie Consalvo’s Entries To Nowhere (2021) was featured as part of Arriving Slowly: Exploring the Abstract, a group exhibition at Ipswich Art Gallery in Queensland bringing together 20 contemporary Australian artists in dialogue with two significant figures in twentieth-century abstraction, Mark Rothko and Agnes Martin.

 

Consalvo’s Entries To Nowhere, an acrylic on linen measuring 183 × 244 cm, was presented alongside works by artists from across Australia and in proximity to Rothko’s 1957 #20 (1957), on loan from the National Gallery of Australia as part of its Sharing the National Collection / Art Across Australia program.

 

Curated in response to Rothko and Martin, Arriving Slowly invites audiences to reconsider how abstract art is experienced. Rather than encouraging a quick reading or a single interpretation, the exhibition asks viewers to slow down and spend time with the works, allowing meaning to emerge through sustained observation. This approach provides a compelling context for Consalvo’s Entries To Nowhere. Working through abstraction, Consalvo creates a space in which perception becomes central to the experience of the work. The title itself suggests a sense of movement without a fixed destination - an entry point into an undefined space where the viewer is invited to construct their own associations and meanings.

 

Across Arriving Slowly, gesture, line, shape and colour become vehicles for this open-ended experience. The exhibition brings together artists working across diverse mediums and artistic lineages, while resisting the idea that abstraction must communicate a singular or predetermined meaning. Instead, the exhibition proposes a more personal relationship between artwork and viewer. Audiences are encouraged to take their time, immerse themselves in the works and allow their own responses to develop.

 

This emphasis on contemplation reflects the influence of Rothko and Martin, whose approaches to abstraction were deeply concerned with the emotional and experiential possibilities of art. Rothko sought to create an intimate encounter between painting and viewer, describing a desire to find “pockets of silence” within which audiences could experience and reflect. Martin similarly spoke of the experience she hoped her work might evoke as one of “pure abandon” - a moment of leaving oneself behind.

 

Within this context, Entries To Nowhere contributes to the exhibition’s broader exploration of how abstraction can create space for individual experience. Rather than prescribing what the viewer should see or feel, Consalvo’s work becomes part of a larger conversation about perception, interpretation and the freedom to encounter an artwork on one’s own terms.

 

Arriving Slowly brings together works by contemporary Australian artists including Lincoln Austin, Yuriyal Eric Bridgeman, Leonard Brown, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Margery Edwards, Ian Friend, Michael Georgetti, D Harding, Robert Hunter, Paul Knight, Lindy Lee, Taree Mackenzie, Hilarie Mais, Ross Manning, Dawn Ng, Jonny Niesche, Rosslynd Piggott, Sandra Selig and Amber Wallis, alongside Consalvo.

 

The resulting exhibition creates a quiet dialogue between contemporary Australian abstraction and the work of two of the twentieth century’s most influential abstract artists. For Consalvo, the inclusion of Entries To Nowhere places her practice within this broader history while demonstrating the continued capacity of abstraction to create moments of contemplation, uncertainty and personal discovery.

 

Through its invitation to slow down and look closely, Arriving Slowly offers an environment in which works such as Entries To Nowhere can be experienced not simply as images, but as spaces to enter, explore and inhabit.

 

Read more about the 'Arriving Slowly' exhibition here.

February 4, 2025