Bianca Raffaella at Flowers, Cork Street, London W1 – Art on a Monday? Who does art on a Monday? And the Summer heat is finally here as well, unbearably hot on the Lizzy line, we’re racing the clock and trying to get to Cork Street in time for what might just be a rather good artist talk and a one day exhibition. It is stupidly hot though, the sensible thing would be to just stay in the East London shade and claim that the studio and the painting muse demanded I stay and work rather than jump on a mid-afternoon train out of Hackney via the overheating Elizabeth Line to Bond Street and another sprint to the gang of plush art galleries and hey, just painting the picture of the day here, the adventure, a little more than a list (or an ‘ot dog) if you know what we mean, not everything in one place and surely covering art is more than just making lists? It was way too hot to be running to art galleries last Monday afternoon…

Cork Street on a very hot Monday afternoon then. Flowers Gallery have their now traditional Artist of The Day thing going on, today’s artist is Bianca Raffaella, she’s been selected by Tracey Emin. The exhibition is open today, Monday 24th June, for just one day. Every year for the past 30 or so years Flowers Gallery – and we do have a lot of time for Flowers Gallery, do miss not having shows you can just walk into in their Kingsland Road gallery here in East London any more, do so miss that space now it appears to have all but closed (they are still there, they seemed to have pretty much given up on regular exhibitions and actually being open other than by appointment though, what a shame, been some powerful art shows in the there). The much smaller Cork Street Flowers space is currently hosting this year’s Artist of The Day thing. A rotating exhibition of “up-and-coming contemporary artists”, a different artist each day over a period of two weeks, it has been happening at Flowers for years now (actually it is a little bit impressive to look back and see who the then relatively unknown artists featured over the years have actually been, there is a small collection from previous years in the gallery’s basement space). The deal is that each artist is selected by an already established artist for a one person show for one day only – a case of “one generation highlighting the emerging work of the next” so they say. “The curatorial role taken out of the hands of the gallery, leading to an unpredictable mixture of styles and mediums” and what the gallery describes as a “wonderful opportunity to discover and collect new work”. Hey look, it is a brilliant thing, you can’t complain, you’ve got to be quick to catch these one day shows, find time to get in there, it can be a problem when it is just for one day in the middle of the week but you really can’t complaint, but then you know us artists, never happy, always complaining and yes, you (or I) could be pedantic and argue (or indeed complain) about this “next generation” thing and maybe one of those more established artists could maybe cast an eye in the direction of one or two artists who have been working with such a relentless need and with unrewarded commitment for years and years (and years) without a hint of a lucky break or the happy accident of showing in the right place at the right time. This fashion for dismissing anyone who hasn’t “made it” within five minutes of leaving art school is getting rather tedious now, there’s some brilliant artists beavering away is studios who tell you they can’t stop, that they’ve all but given up all hope of ever being afforded the opportunity of showing any of the work they are making in their later years (there’s a wonderful painter over in one of the East London studios, she won’t thank me for naming her so I won’t, she says the work she made and exhibited in her twenties and thirties was rubbish but now she’s found herself and no one will ever know it, she’s probably right, most of us make better work the older we get). Today is no day to be raging against the ageist machine though and neither is it a day to be taking cheap shots at Dames or the many wrongs of the honours system or the English establishment let along the art establishment, no, today is a day to enjoy Bianca Raffaella and indeed to thank Tracey and Flowers (and yes, I did do that in person at the end, Tracey almost seemed shocked that I did).

So Dame Tracey Emin has selected today’s Artist of The Day and is in conversation with said artist Bianca Raffaella this hot hot Monday afternoon (did we say it was hot already?), we’re told there’s limited capacity and even though there is a list and it has been sorted, the rush is on to get there in time. I’ve got personal reasons for wanting to listen to this conversation and to actually see some of Bianca Raffaella’s work in the flesh in the formal surroundings of Cork Street. I was rather looking forward to this one; “As a visually impaired artist, Margate-based Bianca Raffaella (b 1992) works with essential lines and marks to describe her subjects, whether this is drawn on paper or outlined through drapes with fabrics. She uses a limited selection of lines and marks that convey contours, shadows and the little extracted detail and definition that she is able to see”.   

“As a tactile and intuitive painter, I translate the constant motion and visual disturbances of my sight through gestural marks. My work is about memory, perception, movement, and fragility. Never losing contact with the canvas, colours are blended until they become a hushed impression, details are made with fingertips or scrapes of a pallet knife. Often the viewer will detect the echo of a figure that was once there.”- Bianca Raffaella

There’s a million questions to ask Bianca, or things I maybe want to quietly discuss with her, to quiz her about the way she works, the feelings she conveys, the way she see things. Actually there’s quite a few things I want to say to Tracey Emin about being a visually impaired artist, not that Tracey is getting anything that wrong as she kind of talks for Bianca or maybe tries to put words into her mouth and yes painting is as much about feeling and seeing (and there is a vast different between seeing things and really looking at things). There is an obvious delight here in terms of Tracey Emin’s love of and for art as well as her clear love (it does come over as love, excitement maybe) of Bianca Raffaella’s art. It isn’t about what art is doing for Bianca Raffaella, as isn’t for any (serious) artist, there isn’t much of a choice for Bianca, there clearly isn’t an option, painting is something that must be done and no she doesn’t want to make sculpture thank you very much! Seems everyone thinks she should – no to sculpture! No, she wants to paint, almost defiantly so. I’m at the back so the two of them are kind of blurry figures, I can’t see faces, trying to catch the body language. Apparently the work Tracey has selected here is Bianca’s more upbeat positive side, seems Tracey Emin wanted to feel good in the gallery, wanted it to be upbeat, a positive for this one day, she wanted it to delight us (it does) – they do talk of (or drops hints about) some very dark paintings, dark times, Bianca also talks about the pure relief of painting flowers just to escape the more serious subjects she sometimes addresses with her paint. Apparently Bianca’s Margate painting space, in Tracey Emin’s studio, is full of flower paintings (and yes, I can relate to that escape into just painting flowers now and again, just for a respite, for the relief, just for the hell of it). 

Colour isn’t a thing for Bianca Raffaella, kind of surprising to hear her say that that until you do get to look at the paintings that are on the wall and you finally see (some of) what the artist is (maybe) seeing and that detail that pulls you in as things start to really come into focus or as the paintings start to talk to you and you start to really see what might at first might appear to be superficial. Her rather pale almost white paintings on the very white very formal gallery walls in here take their own time to reveal themselves, hints of forms at first and then more emerges as you are kind of find yourself compelled to just stand there and actively search for shapes that are maybe telling us about Bianca Raffaella’s own continuous hunt for form? She does draws you into her world, you are kind of happy to go there safe in the knowledge that, unlike her, you don’t have to stay for any longer than you want to. She says it is a world in which painting allows her the greatest comfort. I wonder if it really does? Does any painter ever really find comfort in in their art? Maybe in the thought of the next one? That there is always the possibility of the next one? I want to see more of Bianca Raffaella’s work now, I want the other side of her work, I want to see what she sees, what she goes through as a painter, not as visually impaired painter, just as a painter. It is about the feeling, about the feeling in her whiteness as it is about the feeling in Tracey’s bold red forms, in Rothko’s layers, in Sean Scully’s stripes painted again and again (and again), painting is about a feeling, real painting surely is. 

And Bianca Raffaella, pretty much based on this Monday afternoon encounter and little else, certainly is an exciting painter, there’s a real need to see more, kind of want it all now, not just, with upmost respect for what is happening here in Flowers Gallery on just this one day, not just what Tracey Emin has (joyously) selected for us today in such a positive way. Actually Tracey is doing an really good job in terms of talking about the art while sitting next to the artist, in coaxing information out of the artist. Bianca Raffaella comes over as an artist growing in confidence, in belief, belief in terms of what she’s saying as well as doing. As much as Tracey isn’t getting too much wrong, she can’t really talk about (the worry of) visual impairment and art making, art seeing, ways of seeing when sometimes you can’t really see. Tracey Emin can of course talk about art as a feeling with great authority, as a state of being, as well as talk of the actual act of drawing or painting, the commitment, the burden (actually neither of them bring up the burden or art). I really want to explore more of Bianca Raffaella’s work now, more of her visual language, I almost want to say she’s brave but that’s wrong, she’s committed to something, she doing something she needs to do and in doing that, as an artist she is exciting me, her marks, her movement, there’s something special here, the feeling is of something strong and this is kind of why art matters, why painting matters, why it matters to paint and to communicate a feeling with paint. Tracey Emin does it and here, in many ways a very similar way to Tracey, so does Bianca Raffaella. What a fine way to start a week.  (sw)   

Flowers – Artist of the Day archive / Flowers website / Bianca Raffaella at Flowers / Flowers via Organ / Bianca Raffaella on Instagram / Bianca at the Tracey Emin Foudation /

As always, please click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show that does little justice to the work that really need to be seen in the flesh.