Solo exhibitions include (Upcoming) Mingling Currents, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2023); Moon, Commonage Projects, London, UK (2023); Breezy, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2021); At Once and a Touch Away, Studio KIND, Braunton, UK (2021); Solo presentation at the Viewing Room, Thames Side Studios, London (2019).

Group exhibitions include BRR-ARB, Curated by Ana Teles and Luis Sandes, Triangel Gallery, Chelsea Collge of Arts, London (2022); Improv, APT Gallery, London (2022); Art Karlsruhe (2022); Future Art Fair, New York, USA (2022); The Greenness of the Green Fields Supernal, duo show with Henry Tyrrell, Lewisham Art House, London (2022); AORA Pop-Up, London (2021); Julie’s Bob, Terrace Gallery, London (2021); RA Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2021); Wild Grapes, Unit 3 Projects, London (2021); Facing the Sun, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Schloss Göerne, Germany (2021); Friends with Benefits, Safe House One, London (2021); Spiral Drift, Terrace Gallery, London - curated by Frank Minoprio (2021); The Echo System, Thames Side Studios Gallery, London - curated by Milda Batakyte (2021); AORA Pop-Up, Ohsh Projects, London (2021); Wabi-Sabi, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2021); III AORA Space (2021); I, AORA Space, online platform (2020); London Now, Space K, Gwacheon, South Korea (2020); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery, London (2020); Catamaran, Thames Side Studios Gallery (2019), R & H Artworks, Rawlinson & Hunter, London (2019); Hix Award, Hix Art Gallery, (2019); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Leeds Art Gallery, London (2019); Tate Staff Biennale, Tate Modern, London (2019); Of Course, I Haven’t Forgotten!, Artists.Space, London (2019); Black Stuff, Unit 3 Projects (2019); Annual Summer Show, Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London (2019); Black Stuff, Unit 3 Projects, London (2019); The Nomenclature of Colours, Slade Research Centre (2019), FBA Futures, Mall Galleries, London (2019); Elephant x Griffin Art Prize, Elephant West, London (2018); Young Contemporary Talent Purchase Prize, Cello Factory, London (2018); Let me know before you arrive, Warbling Collective pop-up space, London (2018); Marching Through the Fields, Jeannie Avent Gallery (Warbling Collective), London (2018).

Highlights and Collections

In 2021 Gabriela Giroletti was a recipient of the Eaton Project grant. In addition, Giroletti has been awarded several other prestigious awards including the Freelands Foundation Emergency grant and the Unit 1 Gallery Workshop grant in 2020. Giroletti is also a 2019 Bloomberg New Contemporaries artist and was shortlisted for the Hix Award that same year. In 2018, Giroletti received the Desiree Painting Prize and was also the runner up for the Chadwell Award as well as was shortlisted for the Elephant x Griffin Prize and the Young Contemporary Talent Purchase Prize by the Ingram Collection of Modern British Art.

While Giroletti’s work emerges from and responds to periods of introspection, Theodor Schwenk’s book Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air formed an important point of reference for this latest body of work. The book explores the subtle patterns and phenomenon of water and air and their relationship to biological forms – the title of the exhibition comes from a passage  that Giroletti found particularly inspiring and which discusses the ways in which everything is interconnected and in constant flux. Keeping these ideas in mind, she used paint in a very spontaneous and vigorous way in an attempt to translate ‘some of nature’s potent energy’ onto the canvas. The result is a series of curved, stacked and overlapping forms that seem to simultaneously emerge from and sink beneath layers of translucent colours. Though we might glimpse something familiar in the shapes that we see, she retains a deliberate ambiguity to evoke a sense of slippage and wonder. ‘I try to dance between different possible meanings so people will read my work using their lived experience,’ she says.

While Giroletti has previously worked with deep, earthy colours, this latest body of work is both lighter in colour palette and atmosphere. Layers of translucent paint create an appearance of radiance while also allowing the viewer to glimpse through the surface to the marks beneath. At the same time, the canvases remain textured, full-bodied, almost gritty at times, as if capturing sand or stones tumbling through water. Bodies, like most real-world details, are stripped away, but we feel almost as if we are being pulled into or washed over by the paint. They’re paintings that seem to spill over their edges to envelop both viewer and surrounding space.

These contrasts between different depths and materialities, between stillness and movement are central to Giroletti’s approach to painting. She is interested in transitions and borders – the points at which things meet, intermingle, gain form or collapse into shapelessness. As she puts it, ‘I’m exploring the idea of whether the work can be painting and sculpture at the same time.’ This is most obvious in the works where she has extended the painted surface by attaching sculptural objects to the stretcher bar that appear like bits of rock, coral or shell, but even those without added elements, evoke a space far vaster and more tumultuous than the stiff linen that contains them.

It is this expansiveness that makes the paintings so compelling – they are caught in a never-ending process of transformation. Shape-shifting, churning and illuminated, what these works capture is not one moment or thing, but the pulse of life in all its strange brilliance.