Somewhere else

Maitland Regional Art Gallery 2019

Essay by Ineke Dane

Perhaps we were only given a body so we didn’t fly away.

This begins the inquiry of multi-disciplinary artist Lottie Consalvo, who is a constant agitator for new languages and means to express the ineffable.

The exhibition Somewhere Else continues Consalvo’s journey of probing the unknown: here three vignettes culminate in an immersive investigation into the places we go in the self.

In the main hall a long, deep single painting 'On And On' explores the dimensionality of experience and viewing, provoking a conversation between what is seen physically and how this is amplified by the infinite capacity of the mind, which in turn bares no witness.

Filling the main gallery are a series of paired paintings, ‘Somewhere Else’ and ‘Here’ 1, 2 and 3. The latter being a derivative memory of the former, here Consalvo highlights the impossibility of returning to or replicating original thought. Mounted away from the wall as if floating, the paintings transcend the space itself.

The film work ‘I Stirred the Sea to See if it was Alive’ binds the exhibition through its permeating, perpetual movement and sound in an attempt to reach beyond the real. Using the ocean as a metaphor for the endlessness within the human self, Consalvo asks: you have a dream, and you wake and it’s not real… why is it called poetry and not just life?

Ineke Dane