Workplace Foundation is delighted to present the first solo exhibition of Manchester based artist Louise Giovanelli in the Northeast of England.

Louise Giovanelli makes intense, luminous, paintings that refer both to art history and contemporary mechanics of viewing and consuming imagery. Cropped and isolated images gleaned from historical painting are repeated and restated throughout several works, dislocated from their origin and repositioned within a rhizomatic sequence of artworks. Giovanelli employs a layering technique to build works that simultaneously composite multiple modes of representation and painterly lexicons of flatness, translucence, abstraction and realism.

A new body of black monochromatic paintings derived from Giovanelli’s studies of the Acanthus leaf and its use as ornament throughout classical art. Hand modelled by Giovanelli in shallow black plasticine relief, her Acanthus sculptures are manipulated and folded to form deep linear ‘X’ shaped creases that run diagonally from corner to corner. These are then used as studies for paintings to create dark abstractions that assert both the obliterative and the decorative; the ‘X’ functioning both as an authoritative crossing out and as a flirtatious kiss. 

Emphasised by underpainting revealed beneath and below the image; and finished with gestural glyph-like inscriptions on top of the illusionistic surface, Giovanelli’s works flit restlessly through a multiplicity of painterly strategies bringing together interruptions, false starts, and obfuscation into a corrupted yet beautiful polyphonic totality. 

Louise Giovanelli was born in London in 1993 and lives and works in Manchester UK. She completed her BA in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art in 2015, and is currently studying at Städelschule in Frankfurt Am Main, Germany. 

Her work was recently featured in The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting published by Anomie Press. Forthcoming exhibitions include a solo show at Manchester Art Gallery and recent solo exhibitions include A Throw to the Side, Warrington Museum and Art Gallery; Slow to Respond, Touchstones Gallery, Rochdale; From Here to Here, Part 1 & 2,The Grundy Gallery, Blackpool.

Giovanelli’s work is in numerous museum collections including: The University of Salford Art Collection; The Grundy Gallery Collection; Manchester Art Gallery Collection; Warrington Museum and Art Gallery Collection; Touchstones Gallery Collection; and Private Collections in U.K., USA, Canada, China, Slovakia, Germany, and Italy 

A detail of An Ex III, 2019, Oil on canvas, 170 x 120 cm by Louise Giovanelli. An abstract painting of dark blacks and blue acanthus leaves with white glitches over a central X axis

Installation documentation of Louise Giovanelli's 2019 solo exhibition at Workplace Foundation in Gateshead 

United Kingdom

Gateshead

WORKPLACE

Louise Giovanelli's solo exhibition at Workplace Foundation showcases her luminous paintings that fuse art history with contemporary viewing. Highlighting black monochromatic works inspired by the Acanthus leaf, Giovanelli employs layering techniques to explore abstraction, realism, and painterly lexicons.

Louise Giovanelli

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Louise Giovanelli

London

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