Born in Melbourne, Australia, Cally Lotz grew up in Zimbabwe. After attending Bath Academy of Art, Great Britain, she obtained a bachelor of Visual Arts (hons) from the University of South Africa in 2009. Following this, she completed a Professional Practice in the Visual Arts at Artspace/Art Source in Pretoria, South Africa. Currently, she is studying a Master’s degree in Fine Art at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology).
Since 2006, Cally has participated in many group exhibitions, mainly in South Africa and Australia, but also in Germany, India and France. Moreover, she has had several solo exhibitions in Australia and South Africa and curated a group show at the Tatham Gallery, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
In 2018, the artist was a finalist at the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (EMSLA), Australia and has been selected several times for diverse awards. For the period 2014/15 she was granted a year’s residency at St. Vincent’s, Melbourne. Her most recent residency was in 2017 in France at A.I.R. Vallauris.
Cally paints still life’s of everyday objects in a realist/expressionist manner. The background is often only a plan or a blurry space, whereas the items are mostly realistically represented. Nevertheless, there are rarely traces of usage and reflections are strongly highlighted. Depicted are keys, containers, wrapping papers and foils or – like our artwork of the month January 2019 – buckets. In her work, the artist’s attention is not focussed on the physical aspects of the objects, but more a reflection on their existence. Beyond that, many of her items can be used to hold or enclose something. Here her consideration is interiority and the literal or metaphorical possibility that the objects contain something that enable further perception.
Cally lives and works in Melbourne.