THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview one of the most esteemed young painters working in the world right now, LOUISE GIOVANELLI!

Giovanelli’s paintings bridge art history and modern pop-cultural narratives and explore the tensions between representation/ abstraction, fiction/ reality, historic/ contemporary, painting/ digital sphere.

Retaining the meticulousness of renaissance paintings and coalescing it with 80s and 90s music videos, Giovanellis’s delicate and electrically luminous scapes offer a language rooted in history yet feel completely otherworldly. On a screen they feel like one thing, but meet them in the flesh, and they become real, with dabs of white oil paint SPARKLING off the canvas. For me, they are time-based. Sit with these paintings and it’s like their surfaces are constantly moving.

Born in the 90s and now based in Manchester, Giovanelli has quickly risen up the ranks as one of Britain’s leading young painters. Having completed her BA at Manchester School of Art, and her MA at the Stadeschule in Frankfurt with professor Amy Silman in 2020, Louise Giovanelli has since exhibited all over the world, including at Grimm Gallery, the Hayward Gallery’s Mixing it Up, Manchester Art Gallery, and more recently, at White Cube in London.

Giovanelli’s paintings are theatrical and stage-like. She creates a language that feels like a heightened version of reality that looks to renaissance painting and film stills and encompasses photography, classical sculpture, architecture and painting. They feel almost too good to be true, full of mystery and enigma. As the artist has said herself –

‘These curtains, once thrown back, offer this promise to enter another realm – and once closed, contain that promise. The painting hangs in a suspended state, leaving us wondering whether the show is over, or in fact just beginning.’

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Frieze review of White Cube: https://www.frieze.com/article/louise-giovanelli-as-if-almost-2022-review

AnOther interview: https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/14447/daniel-arsham-on-bringing-his-first-exclusively-outdoor-exhibit-to-the-uk

FT article: https://www.ft.com/content/a0bfd459-e1f3-4940-8ec6-93546ccb7047

Ocula interview: https://ocula.com/advisory/perspectives/louise-giovanelli-white-cube/

Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-figurative-works-black-artists-self-expression-redress-british-colonialism

White Cube show: https://whitecube.com/exhibitions/exhibition/Louise_Giovanelli_White_Cube_Bermondsey

Dissolving Realms show: https://www.kasmingallery.com/exhibition/dissolving-realms-2022

ENJOY!!!

Follow us:

Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel

Research assistant: Viva Ruggi

Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic

Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner

Music by Ben Wetherfield

https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

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THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com