Lesley Giovanelli
Past Artist In Residence
2003

Lesley Giovanelli lives in Sydney, Australia where she has maintained an active art practice since 1985. She has a Masters degree in Visual Art from Sydney University and she currently teaches Art History/Theory in tertiary institutions, where for many years she worked with Aboriginal people as an art teacher. Her sculptural practice is informed by her early studies in Architecture and Interior Design, as well as an interest in textiles, which she developed during her travels, learning Batik dyeing in Indonesia and Tibetan weaving in India. Since 1998 she has worked in a variety of venues that accommodate her large installations. In these, her earlier interest in textiles has evolved into a broader experimentation with texture, color and the transformation of materiality. Giovanelli also breaks away from the traditional purposes of architecture and design to explore and create non-functional and experimental uses of space. In 2003, she received a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts that enabled her three-month residency at 18th Street. While here she worked on an installation titled “Chromophobic,” where she painted a colored square on a wall, leaving the casual brush strokes visible, but ensuring that the colored wool hung over it vibrated against the rough color underneath. This helped to create the perception that the wool is rising off in response to the high energy color harmonics.