From Isle of Wight to LA: Richelle Rich on Art, Politics, and Making Sense of the World
Have you seen Richelle Rich's work? It's vibrant and lyrical and it unfolds like a colorful tapestry of history and personal stories. In our interview, she talks about using all the materials, fabric, paper, and found objects to create these textured, long compositions. Each part of her work tells a story, which makes them deeply personal, yet universally relatable. I am a big fan, and I cannot wait to see what project she decides to push the green button on next because there's so much exciting afoot here.
Watch our full interview with Richelle.
Born and raised on the Isle of Wight until age 16, Rich moved to London and eventually to Los Angeles a decade ago with her husband. Now, from 6,000 miles away, she feels safe enough to excavate the materials and memories of her childhood home – a place famous for cheap British tourism, Mr. Whippy ice cream, and some of Europe's highest concentrations of dinosaur fossils.
The Archaeology of Memory
"I make art to make sense of the world," Rich explains. "The world makes more sense to me when I'm making something to work through what I'm witnessing or seeing." Her current work centers on the intersection of personal and political history, exemplified by her investigation into Margaret Thatcher's mythical connection to Mr. Whippy ice cream.
The urban legend that Thatcher helped create the soft-serve treat – mentioned even in her eulogy by the Bishop of London – turns out to be false. Thatcher did work as a young scientist for Lyons, making emulsifiers that may have eventually found their way into ice cream recipes, but her direct role in creating Mr. Whippy remains unsubstantiated. For Rich, this intersection of truth, mythology, and collective memory represents the perfect subject matter.
"It takes the personal and the political and they overlap so perfectly," she says, describing her fascination with how stories become embedded in culture regardless of their factual accuracy.
The Transformative Power of Distance
Rich's artistic evolution reflects a pattern of needing distance to examine origins. "It takes a certain amount of escape velocity to get away from an island culture," she reflects. Living in London, she never felt ready to seriously investigate her childhood home. It's only now, from California, that she feels secure enough to explore the chalk cliffs, dinosaur bones, and holiday culture that shaped her early years.
Her work transforms mundane materials into something transcendent. Whether photographing with a macro lens or working with the physical materials of memory, Rich engages in what she calls "transformative distillation" – taking complex political and personal histories and condensing them into objects that invite contemplation rather than demand immediate understanding.
Political Art in Polarized Times
Rich's artistic trajectory reveals a shift from overtly political work to more subtle forms of engagement. Earlier pieces included traveling with an inflatable sex doll for self-portraits exploring objectification and the male gaze, and creating a desert garden spelling "cunt" in flowers for the Bombay Beach Biennale. Now her work operates more quietly, though no less politically.
"I like being part of the transformation process," she explains. "I like the subversive part of it... taking all of the information and all of the stories and the hidden stories and taking them into this one object that perhaps is slightly more ambiguous that people have to lean into."
This approach reflects her response to America's current political climate. Rather than contributing to divisiveness through confrontational art, she aims to "invite conversation" by asking viewers what they see and where their experiences might overlap with others.
The Reality of Working Motherhood
Rich speaks candidly about balancing artistic practice with raising two teenage sons. "Time is just much, much more precious," she notes, often waking at 3 AM to write because it's the only quiet thinking time available. She describes the impossible position many mothers face: "Whichever way we do it at the moment, it's perceived as the wrong way and it's not enough."
During her children's early years, when her husband was frequently on tour, Rich created work from the materials immediately available – baby formula, soiled diapers, Play-Doh – because she "had to keep making" even when traditional studio time was impossible. This period produced some of her most intimate and challenging work, though she's only now considering how to share it publicly.
Truth, Stories, and the Space Between
Throughout our conversation, Rich returned to questions of truth and storytelling. She cites the quote from "He Said, She Said": "There are three sides to every story – your side, my side, and the truth, and nobody's lying." This philosophy permeates her practice, whether she's investigating ice cream mythology or exploring her relationship to place and memory.
Rich sometimes tells fictional stories to London taxi drivers, not to deceive but to explore "whether the truth matters" and how identity relates to what we do versus who we are. This playful relationship with truth extends to her artistic investigation of objects and materials, where she's less interested in definitive answers than in the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences.
Looking Forward
Rich's current work centers on participatory performances where she serves ice cream in exchange for stories and memories. These events represent her commitment to creating spaces for conversation and shared experience rather than simply producing objects for consumption.
Her studio in Santa Monica, hidden beneath those passion fruit vines, serves as both literal and metaphorical space for this work – a place where an English artist can safely excavate the materials of childhood while engaging with the political realities of her adopted home. In Rich's hands, the distance between the Isle of Wight and Los Angeles becomes not separation but perspective, allowing her to transform personal archaeology into universal questions about memory, power, and the stories we choose to believe.
