Rita Long
An Act of Remembrance
Opening Times
13th-14th June 11am-5pm
20th-21st June 11am-5pm
Directions and Contact
Hundred Heroines Photo Museum, Unit 19 Nailsworth Mills, Avening Road, Nailsworth, GL6 0BS
07831 487606
i: @kuplenko2023
i: @hundredheroines
Avening Rd to Nailsworth Mills. Left at mini roundabout . 250 yds on left hand side.
Rita Long
In this body of work, Rita Long turns to the fragile remnants of plants gathered from her mother’s garden after her passing.
What might appear at first glance as simple botanical studies unfold instead as layered meditations on mortality, inheritance and the endurance of connection. Each photograph witnesses the slow disintegration of petals, stems and leaves.
Organic forms soften, collapse and darken under controlled light. Yet even as physical structures fail, they seem to hold an echo of something persistent.
For Rita, decomposition becomes a language through which to think about genetic lineage, shared gestures and the subtle emotional architectures formed between mother and daughter over time.
Her practice is grounded in an intimate dialogue between what remains and what is lost. The fading botanicals operate as mirrors of the body itself: vulnerable, finite, but also continuous within broader cycles. DNA travels forward. Memory reshapes itself. Grief shifts from rupture to resonance.
Through stillness and close attention to detail, Rita transforms the garden into an archive of lived experience.
Photography becomes both witness and vessel, holding the tension between disappearance and survival. In these images, mourning is neither sentimental nor sealed. It is material, evolving and generative. What can no longer be physically held is carried forward in light.
Part of the museum will be converted to an installation as an artist studio exhibiting Rita's work. Running in parallel will be a gallery show of young photographers who have been working with Rita.
