For the 2024 Melbourne Art Fair, we are delighted to be collaborating with Lottie Consalvo. The collaboration was sparked by the idea of creating a bag that represented the artists’ work but also their personality or their use of a bag.

Our introduction to Lottie came through her husband, James Drinkwater, who happened to be one of Alpha60's initial collaborations with an artist way back in 2017. Since that point, our connection with Lottie has flourished. When Lottie provided me with the brief, it centred around the concept of an Italian widow Nonna, evoking nostalgic memories of her grandmother's bags. It was a unique and rare directive—one I had never received before and likely won't encounter again.

"My father is Italian from the Abruzzo region and I have just started living partly in Italy each year. So this is what influenced the scarf and bag.

Italian art and design has come into my focus along with Catholic spiritualism which very much influenced the painting in the scarf and my recent art in general. The superstition, the aesthetic. It's not the indoctrinated religion I am looking at but rather a belief in something beyond the physical world and how we can access this place, whether there is one or not is not my concern, it's the feel of its presence that I am taken in by.

For the bag I wanted to look into 'Nonna fashion', their sandals are much like what is in fashion now, big bulky velcro black things, practical and cool! The bag is a hybrid of an Italian Nonna leather bag as well as my curved forms making up the shape and handles. The snakeskin print is a very cool chic Italian look that I am drawn to. I love this lighter snakeskin, there's something 'trashy cool' about it popping out of an outfit and clashing with bold coloured clothing and even just black like I usually wear. This bag will be my everyday bag for now in Australia and in Italy. It's also just so practical, big enough but small enough to find everything, I love it and I feel my Italian roots wearing it.

I call the bag 'The Nevia' named after my late Nonna who I adored so much, I wear her necklace and earrings everyday. Taking my family back to Italy feels like I am keeping our family culture intact as best I can."

U pause I pause, Sydney Contemporary 2023 by Lottie Consalvo

Lottie Consalvo’s interests lie in our invisible worlds; thought, imagination and dreams are key themes throughout her work. 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 with that of nature by drawing out the mystical properties of the ocean, the horizon, the bush and other species. She parallels this inability to fully understand nature with our inner-worlds and draws out ideas around desire, longing, loss and the ungraspable.

www.lottieconsalvo.com
@lottieconsalvo