Invigilating Gallery 15’s Louise Giovanelli’s exhibition can leave you pondering your mortality.
Giovanelli’s work is inspired by, amongst other things, Italian Renaissance paintings. The exhibition text tells us that “Giovanelli isolates elements from historical painting, sculpture and contemporary imagery, removing them from their origin and repeating and restating them throughout a sequence of paintings.” But why? To what end?
The paintings themselves don’t immediately offer up an easy answer. Key for me, though, is a series of large, blue acanthus leaf paintings. The acanthus is a Mediterranean plant which inspired forms of decoration in classical architecture and art, where the leaf came to symbolise mourning, enduring life or immortality. Overlaid over these paintings are sketched images of the leaf as if drawn with light; short-lived, reduced to a simplified glyph, as if its original meaning had been forgotten.
(L) acanthus leaf credit; Wikipedia (C) Corinthian column with acanthus leaf decoration credit; Wikipedia by Ad Meskens - Own Work CC by SA 3.0 (R) An Ex IV by Louise Giovanelli (2019)
As a prelude to Giovanelli’s work, the exhibition starts with a display of Renaissance altar panels and icons. The initial opening of the exhibition featured two works from the National Gallery, one of The Ascension by Firenze, another of the Virgin Mary accompanied by icons of several saints and The Crucifixion, attributed the School of Duccio, from our collection.
(L) The Transfiguration by Duccio (1307) credit: The National Gallery, London (R) The Crucifixion , School of Duccio (1315-30) credit: Manchester City Galleries (B) The Virgin and Child with Ten Saints (1360-70) by Andrea da Bonaiuto da Firenze credit: The National Gallery, London
Jesus, of course, has eternal life. The saints gained immortality and are remembered for their acts of faith, becoming Christian icons, or ‘celebrities’, in the process.
Many saints achieved their immortality through martyrdom. Victor Man’s Senza Titolo (Dopo La Strage Degli Innocenti, anonimo, verso 1400) (2010) is a study of Massacre of the Innocents attributed to the school of Cenni di Francesco di ser Cenni; children slaughtered by Herod in his search for the baby Jesus. These were the first martyrs.
(L)Senza Titolo (Dopo La Strage Degli Innocenti, anonimo, verso 1400) by Victor Man (2010) credit: David Roberts Collection (R) Massacre of the Innocents - School of Cenni di Francesco di ser Cenni © Artnet Worldwide Corporation (2019)
In sharp contrast to the muted lighting of the Renaissance corridor, Giovanelli’s paintings are set against stark Instagram white walls. Here, still in view of the Renaissance icons, Giovanelli’s Marker VI (2019), for me, allows us to make a connection to the Renaissance and sainthood and one saint in particular; Saint Winifred.
The Marker series features lines across the throat; from a bright pink scar across the canvas to an echo of a finger drawn across the neck, a throat-slitting gesture; an omen of death and mortality, perhaps. In the case of Saint Winifred, it was a literal throat-cutting. A seventh-century Welsh saint, young Winifred caught the eye of a local heathen chieftain who wanted her for a wife. But she was already promised to God and fled for the sanctuary of the local church, but the chieftain cut off her head before she got there. St Bueno, who was saying mass, performed a miracle placing her head back on her shoulders, resurrecting her. Winifred achieved her immortality and became a saint, often depicted with a red line around her neck because of this.
Marker VI by Louise Giovanelli (2019)
But in a blending of the ancient and modern, Giovanelli’s Marker series is not a detail of a religious icon at all, but a different kind of icon altogether. It’s from a photograph of movie icon, Elizabeth Taylor by Bert Stern. In 1962 he photographed Taylor in the role of another historical icon, Cleopatra, during the movie of the same name, starring alongside Richard Burton. Cleopatra, the Egyptian Queen who, through myth and archaeology, has also achieved a kind of immortality (although there were six other Cleopatras who didn’t).
(L) Elizabeth Taylor by Bert Stern(1962) © Staley-Wise Gallery (C) Detail of photo (R) Marker VII by Louise Giovanelli (2019)
Today’s movie icons and celebrities, like Liz Taylor, also vie for immortality of a sort and some seem to have achieved it; living on indefinitely through their films, music, books and social media feeds.
Giovanelli’s detailed study of the photograph prominently captures Taylor’s tracheotomy scar, received only a year earlier after being hospitalised during a severe bout of pneumonia.
Elizabeth Taylor’s scar brings up another aspect of the exhibition; flaws. Elizabeth Taylor as the flawed beauty. Several of Giovanelli’s paintings also feature coloured stripes and jarring lines. These reference digital artefacts or corruption of digital data, like photographs when copied and recopied. Flaws transmitted through repetition and time.
There is also a parallel between the saints of yesteryear and the celebrity icons of today. Saints, of course, are recognised and verified, if you like, by their golden haloes, celebrities today by their verified blue ticks on social media. Whereas in the past, people would offer up thoughts and prayers and pleas for intercession to the saints, today, in our more secular world, we seek similar contact with immortality through celebrity shares, likes, retweets and reposts.
But Victor Man’s other painting in the exhibition, Untitled (Connaissez-Vous des Esseintes?) (2015) speaks of a different kind of immortality. The woman has a curious faerie-like or otherworldly quality.
Untitled (Connaissez-vous des Esseintes?) by Victor Man(2015) credit: © Tate, London 2019
Folklore has it that time passes differently in Faerie and that those bewitched or stolen away can spend hours there and return to find that decades have passed on earth, or spend a year there and return moments later - a form of immortality that’s as much a curse as a blessing.
While Giovanelli’s Billyo series also offers us yet another cautionary fable, a warning that immortality is not guaranteed. It is hard to achieve and harder even to hold onto. Billyo V and VI show a ruined statue, which reminds me of Percy Bysshe Shelly’s poem, Ozymandias.
Billyo V by Louise Giovanelli (2019)
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Ozymandias was an ancient king who sought to immortalise himself by building a mighty city and a huge statue of himself to preside over it, so that future generations might remember him. It didn’t quite work out like that. Time buried his city and eroded his statue until little was left to tell of his existence.
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
So for me, the exhibition is about the very human need to be recognised, to be seen, a desire to be remembered after we’re gone, to leave our mark for posterity and the difficulty of achieving that no matter how hard you may work for it.
Creating art is one way of striving for immortality, an act of hope and defiance. But will the artist be remembered, will any of us? Who knows?
Only time will tell.