How a thriving art scene came to life in the Portuguese countryside

Braga, a city of churches in the northern countryside of Portugal, about an hour north of Porto, might not seem like an obvious hotspot for contemporary art. But since 2019, Duarte Sequeira has been working to change that perception. The headquarters of his titular gallery are built around his childhood home, just outside of the city: two contemporary buildings, designed by Braga local Carvalho Araújo, host a vast, all-white exhibition space and studios, as well as lodgings for a flourishing artist residency programme.

And that’s not all. The buildings themselves are surrounded by an extensive sculpture garden, where a diverse and ever-changing collection of artworks nestles among the lemon and persimmon trees. See: thorny aluminium foliage by UK sculptor Jesse Pollock, a gleaming “fat car” by Erwin Wurm, and permanent, locally-inspired artworks by longtime friend of the gallery Julian Opie.

On the inside, Duarte Sequeira currently hosts an exhibition of dynamic paintings by the British painter Patrick H Jones, titled Target. In Target, multicoloured racehorses career across large-scale canvasses toward the miniature bullseyes that give the show its name, inspired by the colourful abstractions of Pop Art.

The subject matter is a familiar one for Jones, whose horses – alongside swans, bulls, and fish – mark moments of intense movement, frozen in time. These are emblematic of the rush and panic of everyday life in the 21st century, he suggests, but also the desire to pause and reflect on where we’re going, or where we’ve been.

But the paintings paintings in Target also mark a left turn in Jones’ approach. Born out of a time of deep introspection for Jones himself, the series was prompted by the death of his dad, as well as the experience of becoming a dad himself for the first time. These drastic changes are recorded in a marked aesthetic shift: the colour palette, originally planned to be dark and moody, like most of Jones’ recent work, is bold and saturated, reflecting the newfound clarity and optimism of parenthood.

A thematic link emerges in a breakout space within the gallery walls, where black-and-white photographs by Luca Brown contrast and complement the paintings next door. Centred around the Garrison, a horseracing track in Barbados, Brown’s images explore the formation of community and selfhood, a stark opposite to the intense competition and rivalry of Jones’ paintings. 

As Jones and Brown chatted about their respective works ahead of the exhibition – holding the images side-by-side on their phones – they found themselves drawn to the ways that they intersected and diverged. The result is a debate made of of images and ideas, played out across the gallery itself.

Of course, it’s these kinds of generative conversations that form the foundation of any thriving art scene. And, as Duarte Sequeira brings more and more global artists together in Braga, providing them with new research opportunities, studio time, and space for creative debates, it’s easy to imagine that the Portuguese outpost has a bright future ahead of it.

Target runs at Duarte Sequeira until November 30.