The Story Behind Louise Giovanelli's Dazzling New Public Sculpture

"Walking down the eastern end of the Strand in London, Louise Giovanelli's new public artwork appears like a mirage. St Mary le Strand, a 300-year-old baroque church designed by James Gibbs, has been transformed by the artist, with a vast trompe l'oeil shimmering silver curtain attached to its side. Grand in scale and ambition, Decades is haunting in its strangeness, inviting questions around notions of worship, devotion and history. Like all good public artworks, it is unexpected, hypnotic and ambiguous, providing a moment for pause in the hustle and bustle of metropolitan life."

"Curtains are a recurring motif for the British artist, who has depicted them on vast canvases in hyperreal, shimmering oil paint in greens, blues and golds. A versatile subject matter loaded with meaning, curtains fascinate Giovanelli for their rich symbolism, tactility, and presence in art history and religious spaces. The artist recalls that, at her first show with White Cube in London in 2022, people came to the gallery just to take selfies in front of her curtain paintings to post on social media. "I'm fascinated by how curtains change people's behaviour," she says. "They make people feel like celebrities." Giovanelli tends to paint curtains from working men's clubs in Manchester, where she lives (the silver sequined curtain of Decades is named after the Joy Division song of the same name, which happened to be playing at the club when the artist photographed it)."

"At the heart of Giovanelli's dazzling paintings of closely cropped film stills, curtains, hair and clothing is an obsession with contemporary modes of devotion. Despite now identifying as an atheist, the artist's religious upbringing translates into a reverence for the aesthetics of worship - although now, in her paintings, pop culture and celebrities have largely replaced the religious icons of the past."

Louise Giovanelli installed a vast trompe l'oeil silver curtain on St Mary le Strand, a 300-year-old baroque church on the Strand in London. The work, titled Decades, uses a shimmering sequined curtain to create an ambivalent, mirage-like encounter that prompts questions about worship, devotion and history. Curtains recur across Giovanelli's hyperreal oil paintings in varied colours and textures, drawn from working men's clubs in Manchester. Visitors often photograph the works, treating them like stages for celebrity-style behaviour. Religious aesthetics inform the work, reframed through secular devotion to pop culture and celebrity imagery.

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