Louise Giovanelli - in Conversation

Louise Giovanelli (b.1993, London) is one of Britain's most promising young painters. This, the artist's first monograph, documents her first three solo exhibitions, staged in 2016-17 at The International 3, Salford, the Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, and Touchstones Rochdale. 0Paintings, both contemporary and spanning the history of art, are Giovanelli's primary subjects within her own paintings. Picking out sections or details from existing works - some well-known but mostly lesser-known - she reworks and represents them, focussing on aspects that attract her eye and critical attention.0These might be unusual or odd formal elements - a neckline or a detail on an item of clothing - or can equally be things that are extraneous to the original, such as how candlelight might fall on it, or how it might appear during restoration work by a conservator. Considering the position of the viewer as much as the painter, Giovanelli explores the history of painting as object, the context of its display and reception, and the very mechanics of painting itself to investigate languages of painting both past and present, resulting in works that are cryptic, other-worldly and strangely enchanting.