Brought up amongst the groves and vineyards of Faedis in northern Italy, the son of an architect and winemaker, Francesco Poiana has exchanged the alluvial plains and terraces of the Mediterranean for the wild and open chalk downs of Wiltshire.
Francesco joined our emerging talents programming following his masters degree at St Martin’s art college in London in 2019. Later that summer he was invited to Wiltshire to spend time in the landscape surrounding Messums. It was a culmination for him of a reverse Grand Tour, that saw him trace a path from Italy to the landscape from which so many of the most legendary tours started. His interest however was in a connection to the landscape far more ancient; in particular he has been taken by the area around Cranborne Chase with its striations and lush gradations of green and the Bronze Age barrow of Win Green that stands high on a ridge above it.