Ambia I

Louise Giovanelli (1993 - )

oil on canvas

2018

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Downing Street

    Louise Giovanelli employs a layering technique to build composite works that simultaneously presents multiple modes of representation and explores painterly concepts of flatness, translucence, abstraction and realism. Her use of luminous deep blue-blacks that saturate the surface further reveals the painting’s own history by scratching fine lines to expose layers of multi-coloured underpainting. The painting’s title opens further avenues of interpretation, ‘Ambia’ being an arabic word used as a female name meaning 'Prophet Muhammad's Relative'.

    In the artist’s own words:

    My practice is informed by ways of looking and perceiving, with the act of looking itself as a kind of content. I employ found and generated images, cultural references and excerpts from other art forms to investigate the languages and histories of painting. [My works] are results of things noticed, measured, assembled – In a sense the paintings are a refusal to give into the idea of the scriptic authorial  touch. They are not about me, they are through or of me.

  • About the artist
    Born in London, Louise Giovanelli lives and works in Manchester. She completed her BA in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art in 2015, and an MA at Städelschule in Frankfurt Am Main, Germany, under the renowned US painter Amy Sillman, in 2020. Giovanelli has exhibited in London, Germany and the United States since 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include: GRIMM, New York (2020); Frutta Gallery, Rome (2019); Manchester Art Gallery and Workplace Foundation, Gateshead (2019). She has also participated in group exhibitions including: ‘Life Still’, C.L.E.A.R.I.N.G., New York (2020); ‘El oro de los tigres’, Air de Paris, Romainville (2020); and ‘Touching from a Distance’, The Conduit, London (2019).
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    Materials & Techniques
    canvas, paint, oil, oil painting, underpainting
  • Details
    Title
    Ambia I
    Date
    2018
    Medium
    oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    height: 116 cm; width: 81.5 cm; depth: 2 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from the artist via Division of Labour,, with funds raised from print sales from the Robson Orr TenTen Award, a GAC/Outset Annual Commission, 2019
    Inscription
    verso: inscribed by the artist 'Giovanelli 18', top left
    Provenance
    The artist via Division of Labour; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 2019
    GAC number
    18813