FROM THE MUDBRICK HOUSE
– UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE GALLERY 

20 March – 20 April 2019 
OPENING EVENT: Saturday 23 March, 3pm

Dino Consalvo and Lottie Consalvo ~ father/daughter exhibition
curated by Ahn Wells

Catalogue link here

Part retrospective, part collaborative this exhibition provides a unique insight
into the parallel art practices of father/daughter artists, Dino Consalvo and Lottie Consalvo.

From the Mudbrick House is a curated exhibition that explores the art practices of Newcastle-based artists Dino and Lottie Consalvo, who are father and daughter.

From age two and a half to ve years, Lottie lived with Dino in a small mud-brick house in country Victoria, in a little town called Briagolong. It was a simple existence that revolved around Dino painting in his studio (usually at night), teaching art at the local TAFE, working as a sign-writer, and raising Lottie as a single parent.

Much has been written on the affects in the early years of a child’s life on the crucial role that learning and experience has in the development of a child’s personality. Dino’s art practice was the backdrop to Lottie’s everyday life. In looking back across both artists’ practices, spending this particular time together in the Mudbrick House has in uenced not only their art, but also their relationship as father/daughter. It is evident that unintentional synergies have been created within their work.

This is the rst time ‘the Consalvos’ have exhibited together and as a consequence they have spent signi cant time reviewing each other’s artworks. This process
has elicited much debate and an intense review of works that they feel have the
most innate resonance to the relationship, from both their own – and the other’s – practice. This process was undertaken over many months and the result is in a part retrospective and part collaborative exhibition. It has been a journey for both and hasforged a special bond as artist to artist, alongside the familial relationship of fatherand daughter. While both artists are on independent trajectories within their careers, this exhibition comments on family dynamics, the family home, and shared time and space, and how these elements in uenced each artists’ approach to making.

Ahn Wells

Curator

UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE GALLERY 
University of Newcastle
University Drive
Callaghan NSW 2308
Australia

Gallery opening hours
Wednesday to Friday 10am – 5pm, Saturday 12pm – 4pm,
or by appointment. For enquiries please phone +61 2 4921 5255

DINO Consalvo‘s work sits primarily within a popular vein of contemporary Australian painting that is both representational and fundamentally concerned with the application of paint. With a keen eye for the everyday, Consalvo often grapples with depictions of the landscape, both natural and manmade. While personal experience and a commitment to en plein air painting may be his starting point, his work alludes to more profound connections between people and place, as well as the impact of industrial activity on the natural environment.

LOTTIE Consalvo works across a range of mediums. Often she creates large scale abstract paintings with an earthy and restricted palette of black, white, brown and ochre. Her paintings have simple ghostly forms and their titles allude to moments of psychological shifts and states of awe. Memory has been central to a number of Consalvo’s works which explore the fragmentary and fragile ways that memory is offered up to us, as well as their relationship to the present and future. The intangible and ungraspable are strong themes within her work.