READ | Diena Georgetti x Melissa Loughnan

I’ve been a fan of Diena Georgetti since curating Victory Over the Sun with Helen Hughes at Utopian Slumps, in its first location in Collingwood, in 2009. The work in the exhibition was an intricate geometric abstract painting in brown and primary-coloured tones. As a failed painter myself and an appreciator of the canons of modernism, Diena’s technical prowess completely blew my mind. I’d been told that she doesn’t really do email or phone calls and just dealt entirely with her gallery. She sent me a handwritten thank you note afterwards, in a sparkly peach envelope, which I have kept to this day. Sixteen years later I am now the proud owner of one of Diena’s paintings, and as new Fair Director, am pinching myself that she has agreed to chat with me.

ML: I am a big fan of your new AI-driven works. Can you tell me how this new direction came about?

DG: A lover whilst exiting my life, turned to say ”l never really loved you. l loved your art.”

It wasn’t the biggest burn.

I consider myself the art anyway.

It’s the best part of me.

Really, actually, the only me.

There is so little of me (‘my’ life). I have extra territory to make a variety of art personas.

Early on, I saw a Mondrian exhibition that included bucolic landscapes, abstract still lives, and the hard-edge grid paintings. It read as a group presentation. Right then I wanted to be that artist – signatureless.

Within this greed are the AI paintings. Late on a Sunday afternoon, bored but not, I entertained myself on a generator. I used all the prompts from my self-made archive, including art movements/artists/music lyrics/historical eras and dates. An example was ”please help my killer, Matisse.”

In prompting, I was starting the art with words, which in turn became ideas. These are ideas made into paintings. Which isn’t a way I make art. My preferred way is to make imagery, that is then interpreted into ideas. An education. However, these newfound ideas became undeniably worthwhile. So, although I was initially uncomforted by the illustrative type of them, I gave over to the value of the content.

Diena Georgetti, The Collector/foyer, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 101cm. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne).

ML: Are The Collector/trinity and The Collector/foyer the basis of what you’ve presented at Melbourne Art Fair? Can you tell me about them?

DG: The Collector collection came by thinking of my 40 years making art, isolated in the studio. I thought about those objects outside of the studio. I thought of the collectors, and how in number, they are rarer than artists. How private they are, not thirsty for acknowledgement. And how that small numbers of peoples’ attentions carry the continuance of many artists. To honour them, I made them the art.

I’ve contributed two Collector paintings to the NEON PARC stand, as part of a group presentation, including Damiano Bertoli and collaborators Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley. The largest at 2 metres is titled The Collector/trinity and depicts a chain of three figures (portrayed as collector, artist, director?) in embrace within an art gallery. The physicality of that connection appears sexually driven, and may emit the question of art appreciation being, likewise hard wired. There is some kind of supernatural affect upon them, due to the proximity to all that art. Something extra metabolic erupts as a tumour upon them, connecting them by organic tissue. The smaller painting at 1 metre is titled The Collector/foyer, in which a single female figure is viewing a painting within a foyer. She is dressed for a soiree and appears to have ostracised herself to spend time alone. In that, an intimacy develops between her and the art. The painting appears almost smug, in its position of elder, having within it, the historical experiences of all mankind. Her pose, in response, is one many of us have struck. Self-aware, all eyes, with white noise screeching in our ears. Desperate to find, learn, and know what can be, via this mysterious object.

Upcoming projects for Diena Georgetti include the Art Basel Hong Kong Insights sector with a solo presentation courtesy the artist and Neon Parc, March 2025; Circular Quay Foyer Wall commission at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, courtesy the artist and 1301SW Sydney, March 2025; and debut solo presentation at 1301SW Sydney, October 2025.