Artist Richelle Rich will be collecting stories from visitors in exchange for ice cream at Dimbola on the 7th August
British urban legend has it that Margaret Thatcher, prior to becoming Prime Minister, worked on the emulsifier for soft serve ice cream. Iconic within popular culture and visual storytelling Rich uses the ice cream to create narratives exploring systems of power. Highlighting high and low culture, who is included and who is left behind, the ice cream facilitates a deep interrogation into people, place, class, and the politics of nostalgia. Since 2023 Richelle Rich has created numerous participatory performances in the US and UK, sharing soft serve ice cream with the public in exchange for stories that are documented on handwritten postcards, video, and with a vintage Polaroid camera.
The ice cream becomes a memory machine, provoking deeply personal stories of love, regret and belonging. These ever expanding narratives utilise the specific to expose the universal experience and the fallibility of memory. Rich exposes her Polaroid films to security x rays on her travels increasing the fragility of an already unpredictable medium.

I wonder about Lady Thatcher’s hair and if it was an Elnett infused fire
hazard as she lent over, warming her test tubes on her bunsen burner,
and working out that perfect ratio of air and oil and sugar that would
make ice cream taste creamy with the minimal use of cows, and would
feed a million holiday makers lying oiled and sandy next to bright striped
windbreaks, canvas deck chair seats puffed into little arcs by the wind
below flapping Union Jack flags.
I’m thinking about damp gritty bikini gussets. Sand in sticky crevices.
‘Kiss Me Quick’. Bumper Cars. Two little ducks.
Tongues sticky from stamps pressed on seaside postcards home.
Candy floss fingers writing ‘Wish you were here’.
RR

Richelle Rich is a British/Swiss artist born in London in 1967. She received her MA from the Royal College of Art in London 1997, and a BA (1st) from Central St Martins in 1995. She moved from London to California 12 years ago and now lives and works in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, with her musician husband, Harry Waters, and their two teenage sons.

Rich is the creator and curator of The Art House JT in Joshua Tree, a creative retreat, domestic exhibition and residency space in the remote desert of Joshua Tree, as well as the editor of The Ice Cream Stories Substack and The Art House Files newsletter.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including shows at SPRING/BREAK Art Show (New York), Hirschl Contemporary (London), Michael West Gallery (Isle of Wight), Standpoint Gallery (London), The Royal Academy (London), NCK Gdansk (Warsaw), and Soft Core LA (Los Angeles) among many others. She is a published writer and the winner of the Augustus Martin Prize, Falkiner Fine Paper Award, and was shortlisted for FACK Arts Prize. Her work has been featured in Art Forum, Artnet, Art Review, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Times (London), The Independent, Contemporary Magazine, Time Out (London), Harpers, and QuQuick Clicks

Website : richellerich.com
Email : studio@richellerich.com
Instagram : @richellerich