Bianca Raffaella, Faint Memories at Flowers, Cork Street, London, February 2025 –  Now I almost opened by saying (or writing) “look” at the start of the sentence in the forthright way people do when a point needs to be made, and yes, it all about looking. As Peter Prendergast shouts from inside my head pretty much every single day of my life, “art is ninety percent looking and ten percent doing”, it is pretty much all about looking. “You’re not looking!” Peter would yell but we’re not really sure what painter Bianca Raffaella is actually looking at or at least what she she can see, although maybe we are? Surely she has it there, right there on these beautifully big canvases that make up her debut major solo show here in Cork Street at Flowers, the faded flowers on these beautifully big canvases, that’s what she sees. It is all about us being here looking at what she (intensely) looks at and sees. We all see things in different ways, all us painters, artists, viewers, I wanted to say look, Bianca Raffaella is essentially just another painter intensely looking and trying to tell everyone what she sees, it is what we’re all trying to do. Bianca Raffaella does it so well. 

I’ve been really looking forward to seeing this new exhibition after her introduction last year as an Artist of The Day at Flowers Gallery. As our headline from the piece written about that day last Summer reads, Bianca is an exciting painter, there was indeed a real need to see more and with upmost respect for what was happening in the gallery on that hot Summer’s day, not just what Tracey Emin had (joyously, brilliantly) selected for us. For it was Tracey Emin who had selected Bianca as part of the inspired annual Artist of The Day thing that Flowers do. A series of daringly ambitious one day exhibitions, a different artist every day over a couple of weeks in the summer at their Cork Street Gallery, a totally impracticable stupidly ambitious and ultimately brilliant set of daily exhibitions from what is after all one of those mainstream commercial establishment galleries we’re supposed to rail against.     

“Flowers Gallery is pleased to announce its representation of Margate-based artist Bianca Raffaella and the upcoming debut of her first major solo exhibition, Faint Memories, from 12th February until 15th March 2025. A recent graduate of the Tracey Emin Artist Residency (TEAR), Bianca Raffaella creates evocative paintings, working from memory and sensory cues rather than direct observation. As a partially sighted artist, her ephemeral and floral paintings 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 features a collection of textural flower paintings that evoke the artist’s experience of beauty in braille, which was how she first learned to read and write. Raffaella relies on touch in her painting process. Never losing contact with the canvas, she blends delicate hues of blue, beige, and dusty pink until they become an ethereal impression, cloudy details made with fingertips, brushstrokes or scrapes of a palette knife”.

It is almost very nearly not the most important thing that Bianca Raffaella is a (severely) partially sighted artist, it is important to look at her work as that of just another artist, another painter trying to use her language in that unique way any challenging artist does. Now let me qualify all this for I to am an artist with lots of sight problems, completely blind in one eye, I lost that one as a 17 year old art student, followed by a rapid loss of sight in the ‘good one’, and well, after far too many operations, fluctuations, come backs, including a point early last year where an operation was 50/50 in terms of what the result would be and well, that might have been that for my vision and my art making (I spent the day before the operation with Mr Turner in the Tate just in case it was the last time I’d ever see them). I tell you all this just so you know I am not being flippant, so you know that when I say it is almost very nearly not the most important thing that Bianca Raffaella is a (severely) partially sighted artist, it is not just a throwaway careless statement. Sure, it might still be a careless statement but you get my drift, I think I’m kind of qualified to say these things and yes on the days I can wear my very hard contact len in my “good” eye then I can obviously see far more than Bianca can, on the days when I can’t wear a lens I can see or do very little, I still paint on those days and I still have no idea how it is for her other than what I can gather from what she communicates to us both with her glorious use of paint and when she talks so well about her life and her practice. This is me trying to say I’m not being flippant when I say that It is almost very nearly not the most important thing that Bianca Raffaella is a partially sighted artist. The most important thing here surely is that Bianca Raffaella is an exciting artist with things to share, things to say and these paintings are powerful, they’re exciting to see up there on the gallery wall. Seeing what she sees and how she communicates is emotional, it is beautiful, it touches on being thrilling, Bianca Raffaella is a beautifully exciting painter a poetic painter…

I love these paintings, I love her faded blur of (almost) lines and stems and leaves, her Faint Memories, the delicate strength, the hints of flowers, the emotion in the shapes of leaves or storks, the commitment in the flickers of almost electric blue, the way things float in and out, I love being able to walk right up to them and talk to her via her linen canvases, and these paintings really do talk back, they tell us so so much, they’re intimate, they’re bold, they’re very personal, they’re big in more than just the size. And of course we’re all fascinated in terms of how she actually does it but I almost don’t want to know about the mess she gets into or the practical realities, I just want to see the results, the intensity, the delicateness, the strength of the paint, the flowers she can’t see are at her feet but somehow does…     

“Raffaella’s method is an intensive and spontaneous practice. She navigates the canvas with quick, expressive movements, capturing impressions of flowers as she explores themes of memory, perception, and fragility. As each painting unfolds, the viewer is invited to slow down, look closer, and engage with details that might otherwise go unnoticed. While deeply personal and complex, Raffaella hopes the exhibition sheds light on her experiences as a visually impaired artist and aims to make her work accessible and relatable to all viewers”.

And these big pieces do pull you in, you do have a need to explore the detail, the movement, the fading in and out of what she sees, the brief moments of focus before it is (probably) all gone again, You do have to stand there and give them more that a passing glance, you have to properly let her share with you.

Today, Bianca Raffaella is in conversation with curator, writer and art critic Hettie Judah. Early Saturday afternoon on another cold wet rainy day in February, there’s been so many days like this this year, the gallery is packed though, all seats taken. A quick headcount has it at about only ten percent male, wonder why that is? Just a side observation. The two of them talk for a very rewarding hour – “Join us in the exhibition Faint Memories for a conversation between artist Bianca Raffaella and writer and curator Hettie Judah, reflecting on disability and accessibility in the visual arts and within Raffaella’s practice”. Bianca is a good talker, this is the second time I’ve sat in this gallery listening to her, last time was with Tracey Emin during the aforementioned Artist of The Day thing and both times she has patiently beautifully carefully explained so so much that she could easily just bottle up. There are some artists you can listen to again and again as they talk about themselves and their art, there are others you just don’t want to hear anything from because it detracts so much from their art you love, Bianca talks about art and about her own art so so well. And today she and Hettie talk of John Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale and how that poem has apparently almost been an obsession while she was painting these pieces, how she listened to Benedict Cumberbatch Reciting it (via YouTube) again and again…

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
         Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
                Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
                        And mid-May’s eldest child,
         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

The two of them talk of many things, about how she paints, why she paints, about how wet her canvas is and where those blue flickers within the pieces are from, they are what she sees – those of us who don’t have “perfect” vision see all kind of strange things. They talk of working with Tracey Emin, about Bianca’s time as a fashion student and how that might have been a wrong move (I was a textile student, a weaving loom was impossible and no one had the patience!). Actually Hettie Judah deserves praise, she coaxed a lot out of Bianca without pushing too much. Could have maybe done with less about the accessibility of the arts world(s) to visually impaired artists or to art fans, that felt like it needed to be for another time and place, there are massive debates to be had there and a lot of people not listened to – like Bianca, I’ve never heard of special openings of galleries for visually impaired people. Like I said, Bianca Raffaella is first and foremost an artist, a painter, an exciting painter, I for one am here because she is just that, I was here to see the art and hear her talk about it, she and Hettie Judah talked so brilliantly about her art, about Keats about the why of flowers, the fragile short time that a flower is there before it is but a faded memory.

And these are intriguing poetic paintings, paintings that flow with her movement, with the emotions of painting, the emotion of actually doing, the emotion and the fleeting moments of flowers and how nothing lasts forever, paintings that flow with her (and our) memories, her different way of seeing the world, her touch – she such painterly movement, her movement, the pastoral. if you can then please do get to that gallery, these things can’t really be photographed, they can’t really be written about, that’s what makes art such an obsession, it really is as simple as just standing there quietly by yourself in front of paintings like these. A big thanks to everyone involved, so easy to take these things for granted, that’s the second Saturday afternoon in a row that Flowers Gallery have enriched things and not asked for anything, not even a penny in return, thanks Flowers, art is a force for good, the angry me has taken another day off… (sw)  

Flowers Cork Street is found at 21 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LZ. The Gallery is open Monday to Saturday, 10am until 6pm. The Bianca Raffaella exhibition closeson Saturday 8th February.

Previous Flowers coverage on these pages

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…

ORGAN THING: David Hepher at Flowers Gallery’s big East London space. A celebration of the austere grandeur of high-rise concrete, of the reality of life and of course, a celebration of an artist…

ORGAN THING: On a wet Friday in London part four, Jakkai Siributr’s thrilling textile pieces at Flowers Gallery, those recent Danny Romeril paintings at The Redfern Gallery, the Sojourner Truth Parsons exhibition at Pilar Corrias Gallery…

Bianca Raffaella on Istagram / website / Flowers Gallery / Hettie Judah

As always, do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show