Louise Giovanelli, Prairie (2021). Oil on canvas. Overall: 240 x 340 cm.
Louise Giovanelli, Supra (2024). Oil on canvas, triptych. Overall: 240 x 390 cm.
Louise Giovanelli, Para (2019). Oil on canvas. Framed: 102.5 x 92.5 cm.
Louise Giovanelli, Dyer (2020). Oil on canvas. 100 x 70 x 4 cm.
Over the past few years we’ve had the good fortune in London to watch the ascent of this British artist Louise Giovanelli at Workplace, GRIMM, and more recently at White Cube.
Now, audiences in China can see her painting’s glory with the arrival of her first solo show in Asia, Louise Giovanelli: Paintings 2019–2024, at He Art Museum in Foshan, Guangdong Province (23 March–16 June 2024).
Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando, the 8,000-square-metre exhibition space is the perfect environment to host Giovanelli, whose cinematic paintings range from small, handheld gems to gargantuan triptychs depicting twinkling stage curtains fit for Hollywood.
They reflect an ongoing accumulation of source imagery by the artist, who is perpetually on the lookout for the next image to translate onto canvas—whether TV moments, favourite films, or Mariah Carey’s legs.
‘Painting is a way for me to work things out, and a way to discover what fascinates me [about] a particular image—that’s why I work in series. It’s not that I become bored of specific images, it’s just something else might come into my orbit,’ Giovanelli told Ocula Advisory in 2022.
Cropping allows Giovanelli to hone in on the part of the image that she finds most significant: a hand clasping a wine glass, a gaping mouth, or a tightly curled ringlet of hair.
A love of film and photography has undoubtedly played into Giovanelli’s considered handling of light and shadow. She has cited the influence of Belgian photographer Dirk Braeckman, saying, ‘He has a painter’s brain, almost—he considers light phenomena, and he kind of manipulates the surface so it reads a lot more like a painting... that links to my work in a certain sense, because light is so fundamental to everything I do.’
Also coming up is Giovanelli’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong at White Cube. Here on Earth (26 March–18 May 2024) features works produced during a winter residency at Neuendorf House in Mallorca.
Later this year, Giovanelli heads to West Yorkshire for her solo show at The Hepworth Wakefield, opening in November.
Main image: Louise Giovanelli, Prairie (2021). Oil on canvas. Overall: 240 x 340 cm.
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