SMALL CREATURES SUCH AS WE

September 23–November 5, 2023
Gallery 169
Santa Monica, CA

Excerpt from the Press Release:

Gallery 169 is proud to present a solo exhibition of small and large scale photographs by the British/Swiss multidisciplinary conceptual artist Richelle Rich. SMALL CREATURES SUCH AS WE marks Rich’s Los Angeles debut.

The exhibition features a selection from the artist’s most recent body of work Comeflor, a Spanish word for “eats flowers,” which is used in a derogatory manner to describe weak politicians. Rich explains: “The photographs of poisonous flowers, stolen knives, glass recovered from ancient shipwrecks, custom made objects, mannequins, and other objects I have collected are presented in the style of a cabinet of curiosities, infused with personal, cultural, and political subtext. I am fascinated by the ways in which these everyday objects are magically contaminated by our stories, emotions and memories.”

Working in the studio, Rich obsessively documents objects, ephemera, artifacts that she has collected, examining them meticulously and repeatedly through the camera’s lens, uncovering existing and creating new narratives. Meta-narratives emerge of her concerns with social inequity, reproductive justice, motherhood, and trauma. Her explorations yield images that either evoke the still life traditions of the Dutch masters, or often abstracting her collected objects to the point of transcendence through the use of an infinitesimally shallow depth of field.

The title SMALL CREATURES SUCH AS WE derives from a quote by Ann Druyan widely misattributed to her husband Carl Sagan in the book they co-authored, Contact: “She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” It became the title of their daughter Sasha Sagan’s book on ritual in daily life.