Rita Long
Scoby (Series)
DESCRIPTION
A series of works combining natural found objects and home grown Scoby from Kombucha mixed with Red Bush Tea and and sugars, when you make this you are left with a film which floats on the surface of the mix, a Scoby is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, I wanted to combine dead matter with a living organism which is naturally formed in this fermentation process.
A lot of my work is about decay , decomposition, I am fascinated by science and alchemy and how it sits in our world of Fine Art and Photography and my practice.
A Scoby can communicate, as funguses do , the characteristic growth patterns of fungal mycelia as an interconnected network has a major impact on how cellular events operating on a micron scale affect colony behaviour at an ecological scale, they communicate with the natural world, for example they
can warn of danger to trees and plants.
I one of the images in the series I have stitched the Scoby to the plant work, I am trying to repair nature
AUTHOR
I have completed a BA in fine art and achieved a first class honours degree at The University of Gloucestershire as well as studying photography which was mainly wet room photography. I have had several exhibitions of photography and art and I have recently been selected for for The Glasgow Gallery of Photography in Scotland for two exhibition in April and June 2024 and February 2025 ,some of my work has also been published in The Guardian Newspaper and Frames Fine Art Photography Magazine as well as being recently being selected for 101 Contemporary Artists publication by Collect Art, I have been shortlisted for the Guardian Travel photography awards as well as Pink Lady Food Awards.
I exhibited at the Museum in the Park Stroud Gloucestershire and twice at and Lansdown Hall and Gallery Stroud, also Lanacre gallery on Exmoor .
A few years ago The Director of the Tate Modern GB picked a photograph that I had taken to be published in the Observer Newspaper.
I have also won the PJ Crook Arts Award for Outstanding Work for my final degree show-2017
I am now Ambassador and Workshop Lead at Hundred Heroines Photography Museum in Nailsworth Gloucestershire .
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