Prepare to be dazzled by painting show
Louise Giovanelli returns to Blackpool's Grundy Art Gallery with From Here To Here To Here
Beneath the stage of the Liverpool Olympia is a pit once used to keep elephants. It would raise up in front of a dazzled audience, astounding them with the spectacle. Sometimes, instead of elephants there was a pool of water which acrobats would leap into. Different times - no health and safety or animal welfare legislation back in those days.
I’m not advocating for a return to such risky and immoral times, but I was delighted to be invited to walk under the stage and see the pit for myself. The Olympia was designed by celebrated theatre architect Frank Matcham, who was behind at least 80 of them, including the London Coliseum, Belfast’s Grand Opera House and Bristol Hippodrome. He also designed Blackpool Grand and the town’s Tower Ballroom and Circus. Only around two dozen of them survive.
Liverpool Olympia, which is one of the few independently run Matcham theatres remaining, has relaunched as a community interest company with plans to involve local people. I’m looking forward to see how their plans evolve.
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Three reasons to visit the Grundy this spring - but any one of these would do
It’s 10 years since Louise Giovanelli held her first solo show, at Blackpool’s Grundy Art Gallery, and she’s back again with an exhibition that traces the evolution of her process and fascination with light.
She shares the gallery with graduates of Manchester and Italy-based Apollo Painting School, which she co-founded in 2023 to give artists the chance to access high-quality training outside the often prohibitive expense of the London art school system.
But there is yet another reason, not that one is needed, to visit the Grundy this spring. Monet’s The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil (1872) is on display there as part of the National Gallery’s Masterpiece Tour. When applying to be part of the programme, curator Paulette Brien made the connection between Monet’s and Giovanelli’s extraordinary ability to convey light. Their works are very different, which is what makes this exhibition so rich.
In fact, it is peak Grundy - a gallery that has made a point of collecting works about light in a town famous for its illuminations, and supporting emerging artists. Brien regularly places exciting contemporary work next to pieces from its own historical collections, and is brilliant at engaging local people in creating responses to the art on display. In this case, Sound Town - a soundscape created by young people from the charity Magic Club, with artist Kelly Jayne Jones, mixed from sounds they collected on Blackpool beach and in their local neighbourhood that they felt represented Monet’s landscape.
But… when you step inside the gallery, any intellectual or social reason you may have for being there drains from your mind. The initial response to Giovanelli’s work is purely emotional. The light - bouncing harshly, illuminating softly or glittering theatrically - is at once overwhelming and welcoming. Take a moment to let it rush over you before you can focus on the detail.
Giovanelli repeatedly returns to the same subject - curtains, the lower half of a woman’s face, a hand - each time seeing it in a different way. The result, when works are displayed in a series of chronological rooms as at the Grundy, is a feeling of familiarity, almost nostalgia, which is reflected in the retro, Vaseline-lensed appearance of some of her pieces.
You can trace her process from art school, when you can see her start to experiment with light, through painting created in response to other collections, to her move into scraping away the top layer of paint to allow the lower coats to shine through.
Her work is secretive and as a result enticing. She often shows only parts of faces, closed curtains: What colour are the woman’s eyes? What is on the other side of the curtains? And for that matter, which side of them are we standing on - exposed in front or hidden behind?
It’s showbizzy and dazzling, but also ruminative. The effect on the visitor is the same - you leave staggered by its beauty with the exhibition playing as a memory loop for a long time to come.
Louise Giovanelli: From Here to Here to Here is at the Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, until Sunday, 28 June.
See your work featured in Stored Honey
If you’re an artist, actor, theatre maker, curator, director or producer, I’d love to hear more about your work. You can submit details of an exhibition, performance or cultural event by sending details and an image to laura@lauracdavis.com. If you would like to take part in Stored Honey’s regular Meet the Artist feature, please answer the questions in this Q&A or if you don’t like filling in forms I can send you the questions via email.
In case you missed it
Opening this week
Bellwethers, an exhibition highlighting the wounded natural environment as well as the millions of people in Britain who are struggling to survive in this current economic climate, opens at Abbot Hall in Kendal on Saturday 11 April. The multimedia exhibition was created with and by people from Barrow and Kendal whose lives have been impacted by homelessness, substance recovery, and other profound challenges, and asks what can we learn from those who are already facing the sharpest challenges in society?
Now booking
Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey will launch a new collaboration between Tate Liverpool and Future Yard in Birkenhead that will merge the worlds of contemporary art and contemporary music. A new series, Selector, will open at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North Wednesday 10 June, with an evening of conversation as Leckey discusses the influence of music culture on his art in an event hosted by DJ, curator and multidisciplinary cultural producer Thristian. It will be followed by three nights of performances at Future Yard from Thursday 11 June to Saturday 13 June.
Thank you for reading the 174th edition of Stored Honey. As always - if you enjoyed this week’s edition then please hit the ❤️ button to help show it to more people.
I’m off now to take part in an Easter egg hunt. There won’t be a Stored Honey edition next weekend as I’m having a week off with my kids - but I’m expecting a Meet the Creator through very soon so if that drops in time I will send that out to paid subscribers in the meantime.
Have a great week,
Laura
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