Artists in Residence November 2023

We are thrilled to announce the next six artists joining the fifth edition of BLANK100 Residency at Craveiral Farmhouse, from November 13th to December 3rd 2023: Alina Vergnano, Austin White, Fabian Treiber, Laila Tara H, Rui Castanho and Sarah Bogner.

We are looking forward to sharing with you insights into the artists’ work in progress and our program during the course of their stay in the Portuguese countryside via our Instagram.

ARTISTS

(from left to right)

Alina Vergnano (b. 1989) is an Italian artist currently based in Norway and Sweden. With drawing as a point of departure her practice is a visual investigation into the fluid and transformational nature of being. Working across mediums such as drawing, painting, installation, sculpture, poetry and sound, Alina is interested in the liminal, the blurred and the manifold. Her work investigates the convergence between the inner and the outer, as her lines do not enclose or define, but leave space for meanings to form, flow and mutate.

Rui Castanho (b. 1986) is a painter based in Portugal. His paintings come from drawings, photographs and digital modified images. The transposition of those images into paintings vary in scale, choice of materials, techniques, and types of methods employed, depending on what he want to do, show, or point to.The physical part, formal aspect, and the content of

his paintings interact on the same level, all parts align, touching on the same nerve and telling the same “story.”

Laila Tara H (b.1995) is based between Tehran and London. Her small-scale paintings on paper draw on the tradition of Indo-Persian miniature painting. Her Iranian heritage, and years spent moving through continents, has informed the language through which she articulates her own history of living in different cultural settings. Symbolic forms and multiple, concurrent narratives punctuate the space. She uses pigments that are either naturally derived including deep blue lapis lazuli, walnut ink, clay earth ochre or from found materials such as crushed red London bricks.

Fabian Treiber (b. 1986) is a painter based in Stuttgart, Germany. He has dedicated himself formally speaking to the subject of the interior and the exterior in his paintings, using it to question subjective projections and our perception of reality. Treiber particulary makes decisions in his paintings formally and not narratively. In so doing, he provokes a conscious break, thus declaring what is supposedly false as the very quality of painting, with the effect that his works somehow might seem not quite right, but are just right.

Sarah Bogner (b.1980) is a German painter, musician and publisher based in Vienna. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and electroacoustic music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Sarah paints light, figure, color and relation. Her subjects are strange centaurs and friendly mares of the Medusa, they dance, smoke and stumble. From their bodies emerge friends and anthropomorphic visages. They are at home in the Caves of Lascaux, on the Tableaux of the Renaissance and in the Salons of the 20th century. They are painted from an unknown future into an unfinished past.

Austin White (b. 1984) is based in Philadelphia, US. His artistic practice explores images that shape our historical memory, drawing on archival research that addresses issues of identity, race, and post-colonialism. Working in a variety of media including rubber, vinyl and screen mesh, Austin has developed a unique approach that interweaves paintings and works on paper with printmaking techniques. His work is currently on display in two solo shows at the galleries Petzel and Derek Eller in New York.

ABOUT

BLANK100 Residency at Craveiral Farmhouse invites artists from different disciplines to spend four weeks in the Portuguese countryside, providing them with a unique platform to collectively explore contemporary issues and experiment with addressing them. The challenge of working in an unknown, rural landscape opens up new possibilities and pushes artists to approach their working process differently. The residency focuses on the implementation of eco-friendly working materials, recycling processes and general respect for the surrounding nature to support artists willing to improve their environmental impact within their practice. The programme includes workshops, open studio events, shared dinners and other common activities focusing on creative exchange and collaboration, but also giving time for self-care, reflection and research. Artists are provided with their own self-catered farm lofts including daily breakfast at Craveiral Farmtable Restaurant, working spaces, material and the opportunity to make use of the extensive vegetable garden and all other facilities of Craveiral Farmhouse.

BLANK100 is a nomadic project supporting artistic exchange, started with the interim use of a former furniture factory in Dalston, London. Within a period of 15 months, BLANK100 hosted various exhibitions, performance events, talks and supper clubs connecting creatives from all disciplines. The concept was based on a strong belief in community and that ideas need to be given the right platform to fully unfold. BLANK100 teamed up with Craveiral Farmhouse for a long-term artist residency partnership, with new exciting projects to be realized within the coming years.

Craveiral Farmhouse is a sustainable quinta in Odemira, consisting of 38 whitewashed self-contained cottages on nine hectares of land. Known for its farm-to-table restaurant, Craveiral Farmhouse further provides four swimming pools, a well-being area, an educational farm with animals, an orchard of trees, a permaculture garden and nature centre. More than a luxury hotel, it is dedicated to leaving a positive impact on the world, providing unique experiences for guests looking to connect with nature and understand rural life.