Louise Giovanelli zooms in on the beautifully strange and the strangely beautiful at White Cube

‘I've always talked about slowness, or slow looking,' says London-born, Manchester-based artist Louise Giovanelli, on the eve of a major new show at London's White Cube gallery. ‘I see more and more of this tendency in painting – to really focus on directing attention into the canvas and not away from it. I'm contemplative. I really try and hold the gaze of the audience.'

It is a considered approach that's reflective of Giovanelli's practice as a whole, in both her subject matter, which captures the heavy slowness of anticipation, and in the oil paintings themselves. In the flesh, the richly worked pigments shine, glint and seduce, rewarding a second, and a third, look.

Louise Giovanelli presents ‘In the Light of False Suns’

Giovanelli, who developed her craft at the Manchester School of Art, graduating in 2015, doesn't make it easy for her viewers. She is fascinated by the spectacle, but resists the easy narratives that her motifs conjure up.

In a series of works focusing on curtains, there is a playfulness in the disparity between the expectation that something is about to be revealed and the access the closed curtains withhold. For Giovanelli, the concept of a curtain as something that shows, but also hides, is a complex one.

‘This idea of action having happened, or about to happen, means the curtains can be very sad things – or honest and happy, or very grand. They can also be very seedy things. They straddle so many different notions of class and geography; nightclubs, working men's clubs, hotels. They denote so many different things. I think that's why the curtains in particular are so frustrating to people, because of this meta narrative that they have,' she says. ‘They are just a painting, and it's super flat. I've realised fairly recently that it's something I do with all my work. Everything I paint is very close up to the surface. It feels very claustrophobic, almost aggressively pushed forward into the realm of the viewer.'

Throughout Giovanelli's work, there is no single-point perspective, but instead a tension between the figurative and the suggestion of abstraction. We are looking at what is real, but that might not be what we think it is.

‘Of course, the image matters, but, for me, it's probably at the bottom of the hierarchy,' Giovanelli says. ‘Or at least it should be when you're learning how to paint. Everything else is much more important.'

She cites Giorgio Morandi's lifetime spent painting clay pots. ‘There's nothing interesting really about a clay pot – but of course there is. There's the idea of light; different configurations, textures, formats, sizes; where the shapes are placed within the canvas, so that your eye doesn't ever fall out of the vista. All those things look nuanced, but they are very powerful.'

It is a universality reflected in Giovanelli's references, which may appear eclectic – there are motifs and techniques from the Renaissance, religious iconography, nods to theatre and pop culture filmography – yet share a focus on the concepts of worship and idolisation.

For the new work she is set to unveil at White Cube (Mason’s Yard, London, 20 November 2026 – 16 January 2027), she draws links between these themes, as well as forming new connections between her existing paintings. ‘For the first time, I've included a face within a curtain image,' she says. ‘That's something I've never done before. It's almost like I create rules for myself, but then I see that almost as a challenge, so I break my own rule.'

Elsewhere, scale is distorted, and Giovanelli breaks another one of her rules by creating a wig painting (a series of her works that compactly frame wigs) that is bigger than a human head. When we speak before the opening, she is working from photographs of hanging carcasses of meat she took during a visit to an abattoir. ‘I know it sounds crazy, but if I can pull it off, it should be very seductive and beautiful. I want it to look like a seascape or landscape, very geological. It's quite a departure.'

Her technique, also, is developing. ‘I've been known to make works that are very thin, with no discernible brushstrokes, whereas this show has much more of them. It feels like I've found a new confidence.'

Ultimately, the power of paint to convey, magnify, and distort meaning continues to captivate Giovanelli. ‘What I'm trying to do is make paintings that initially register as very seductive and are very beautiful to look at – but there has to be an undercover or slightly macabre tone. There's a darkness in my work that takes a minute or so to really understand or appreciate. I'm old-fashioned. I love the idea of beauty. I think it should be beautiful – but beauty with an edge.'

Louise Giovanelli will be on show from 20 November 2026 – 16 January 2027 at White Cube Mason's Yard, London SW1, whitecube.com

A version of this article appears in the November 2026 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 8 October in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today