Louise Giovanelli layers colour and distortion in screenprint
The artist builds 'Media Luna' through meticulous printmaking techniques that mirror her painterly practice, creating a work that bridges two disciplines with luminous complexity.
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There exists a particular alchemy in the relationship between oil painting and the ancient art of printmaking. The same chromatic intelligence that guides a painter’s brush can orchestrate the layering of silkscreen inks, the same sensitivity to surface and depth moving across mediums with elegant inevitability. Louise Giovanelli understands this kinship intimately.
In her new work ‘Media Luna’, created for the Government Art Collection’s 2026 Robson Orr TenTen Award, Giovanelli has woven together these parallel practices into something arrestingly original. Working alongside printmaker Gregory Day at Worton Hall Studios, she has taken a deceptively simple subject, an image of a blonde wig, and submitted it to a process of deliberate distortion and chromatic accumulation.
A Layered Luminosity
The print emerges through fourteen distinct layers of colour, each one building upon the last with the patience and precision that defines serious printmaking. This is not merely technical virtuosity, though the craft is undeniable. Rather, it is a translation of Giovanelli’s broader artistic language into a medium that demands its own rigorous discipline. The screenprint process, with its reliance on stencil and squeegee, offers a fundamentally different vocabulary from painting, yet under her direction it speaks in the same voice.
What distinguishes ‘Media Luna’ is the way Giovanelli has refused the purity of the medium. Across the printed surface, spot glaze elements and hand painted details catch the light, adding tactile dimensionality to the work. It is a gesture of deliberate hybridity: the print remains a print, yet it carries the fingerprints of the artist’s hand. The wig, abstracted and fragmented through successive layers, becomes something altogether more elusive, a meditation on image, identity and the strange poetry of distortion.
Supporting Emerging Voices
The significance of this work extends beyond its formal elegance. As part of the TenTen Award scheme, proceeds from ‘Media Luna’ support the Government Art Collection’s acquisition programme, directed specifically towards emerging artists. It is a generous mechanism, one that places established practice in service of the next generation’s voice.
Giovanelli’s forthcoming exhibition ‘In the Light of False Suns’ opens at White Cube Mason’s Yard this November, promising further explorations of her distinctive visual language. In the meantime, ‘Media Luna’ stands as a luminous testament to the possibilities that emerge when disciplines converge, when an artist brings her full intelligence to bear upon a medium new to her.
Imagery courtesy of White Cube (@whitecube).