Some excellent art news just in, Flowers Gallery have just posted that they are “delighted to announce our representation of Bianca Raffaella and the upcoming debut of her first major solo exhibition, Faint Memories, at our Cork Street space in the New Year”

Back in the Summer these words found their way onto these pages after an encounter with her and her work at Flowers Gallery, “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”. The full feature is here – ORGAN THING: Bianca Raffaella, Artist of The Day at Flowers Gallery, an exciting painter, there’s a real need to see more and with upmost respect for what is happening here, not just what Tracey Emin has (joyously) selected for us today…

“A recent graduate of Tracey Emin’s artist residency, Margate-based Bianca Raffaella (b 1992, London) creates evocative paintings, working from memory and sensory cues rather than direct observation. As a partially sighted artist, her ephemeral floral and figurative works draw viewers into her world by capturing fleeting moments suspended in “persistent vision,” where her sight is in constant motion, and images appear only briefly as faint shadows or flickers of light. ’Faint Memories’ will feature a collection of textural paintings that evoke the artist’s experience of beauty in braille, which was how Raffaella first learned to read and write”.

Awarded a First-Class Honours degree, Raffaella was the first registered blind student to graduate from Kingston University with a degree in the Visual Arts. An advocate for accessibility in the arts, she has shared her insights as a speaker at the Goethe-Institut’s ‘Beyond Seeing’ project and as a panellist for Tate Modern’s ‘Please Touch the Art’. More recently, Bianca Raffaella was selected by Tracey Emin for the Flowers Gallery 2024 Artist of the Day series, presenting a one day solo exhibition as part of the programme’s 25th edition in June.

Bianca Raffaella: Faint Memories at Flowers Gallery Cork Street space, 12th February to 15th March 2025

View work by Bianca Raffaella in the Small is Beautiful exhibition, 21 November 2024 – 4 January 2025 at Flowers, 21 Cork Street, London.