Two Waters: Wairua

Laree Payne Gallery, Hamilton, New Zealand (with Maia McDonald) 2019

Lottie Consalvo’s practice is anchored in the human psyche. She is concerned with how we experience and manifest the complexities of events and moments in time that can unravel us yet make us feel the intensities of what it means to be human. She considers the mind as the dominant and powerful force in existence and she believes that all living things have a psyche.

In this exhibition she exhibits a group of small intimate works she made during lockdown. She spent the beginnings of the world shutting down by a lake in NSW Australia. She had somewhat fled from the city. Her anxiety subsided by the stillness of the water and landscape around her as if to remind her that we are apart of something much greater. While looking out across the lake for hours and days and weeks there was a sense that while the human portion of the living were in havoc the land and it's other beings remained still and unaffected by the humans falling world and in fact thrived from the catastrophic event.

The intensities of Covid came directly after the devastating Australian Bush fires and before that for the artist she had spent 2019 caring for her dying mother. The painted framing within the works act like portals with the contrast of havoc and stillness in the mark making. The artist here offers views into moments in time for one to fully comprehended the event before moving onto the next however futile this attempt might be.

By Laree Payne