Giovanelli blows up details that intrigue her discovered within reproductions of famous paintings (such as Renaissance masters like Fra Angelico or frescos in Byzantine churches) from the canon of Western art, or from contemporary mass-media culture, televised concerts (such as Mariah Carey) or stills from popular movies depicting film stars like Tippi Hedren or Sissy Spacek. She is especially fascinated by the effects of raking light on curved skin, cut fabric surfaces (worn or on hangers) or the movement of female bodies, caught in moments of rapture or distress, paying close attention to luminosity and texture.
Read MoreGiovanelli specialises in thin underpainting that makes the depicted material, hair or flesh glow as the gesso base beneath shines through. She works from found, digitally transmuted images (often from Instagram), but deliberately hides their context, withholding key information about the background of the grainy images, leaving space for the viewers imaginative interpretations.
Typical Giovanelli artworks include Cameo, 2020; Plexus, 2021; Dyer, 2020; Wager, 2021; Two Grooves, 2019; Billyo VI, 2019. Traversing or radiating light is the ubiquitous element within these works, be that rendered to seem as if it is coming from behind the viewer, from one side, or from behind the picture-plane of the depicted image where dark tones dominate. She often creates two or more near-identical works in series, using repeated motifs, testing the viewer's power of perception.
