The house opened in April 2024, in a small building on Rua da Bica, after two years of thinking about what kind of gallery we didn't want to run. We wanted to keep the work near the hands that made it. We wanted to pay before the sale. We wanted a place that felt more like a working studio than a white cube — because the work being made here is, mostly, still being made.
We're not a commercial gallery in the usual sense. We do sell work, and we do take a share — that's how rent gets paid — but the economics are inverted. The artist is paid first, in full, from the house's own capital. The sale reimburses us afterwards. If nothing sells, we absorb it. We've done this from the beginning and it has not broken us.
The house is not a gallery that also does studio visits. It is a studio that also hangs the work.
Six or seven of our twenty artists are in long-term residence. The rest visit for a show, a season, a commission. A few are old friends we've known since before the house existed. A few are artists we met because they came to a show and stayed late.
We publish the workshop log — every month, one letter from the studios — because we believe that the work of making art is interesting in itself, not only as a path to a finished object. We publish the ledger — every quarter, real names, real numbers — because if we're going to claim we pay artists first, we have to show it.
The house does not plan to grow much beyond its current size. Eight shows a year, twenty artists, two people running the place. We think this is roughly right. If you want to know more, write to us directly — we answer, usually within the week.