Stairway to Heaven: Barbara Long’s Monument to Memory

Barbara Long’s first UK solo exhibition, Stairway to Heaven, opened on 5 March at Ruup and Form Gallery in London, bringing a collection of sculptural and textile-based works that confront ideas of memory, resilience, and domestic space. Running until 29 March, the exhibition offers a dialogue between material and time, personal history and broader themes of transformation.

Barbara Long, Stairway to Heaven, 2025

At its centre stands Stairway to Heaven, a towering structure that began as a staircase of repurposed t-shirts and wool and has since grown into a striking, blood-red monument to resilience. Each of its 64 steps is upholstered in fabric steeped in meaning - childhood muslins, wedding textiles, salvaged cleaning cloths from her late mother’s home - stitched together to form a tactile timeline of Long’s life. The unfinished steps leave space for the unknown, for whatever comes next. A haunting soundscape, In My Beginning Is My End, In My End Is My Beginning, drifts through the space, layering the quiet hum of daily life with birdsong and the echoes of her studio, amplifying the presence of memory in every stitch and fibre.

Stairway to Heaven, Detail, 2025.

On 5 March, Long enacted The 65th Step, a live performance where she added another step to mark her 65th year. This was not just a symbolic gesture - it was an act of devotion, a physical commitment to honouring time’s relentless march. Visitors were invited to witness this quiet yet powerful moment, where the past net the present, and the future remains unwritten. Of Stairway to Heaven, Long says "I offer a meditation on impermanence, resilience, and memory, inviting viewers to step into the past, embrace the present, and imagine the future”.

Stairway to Heaven, Detail, 2025

Beyond this central work, Kitchen Sink Drama presents a poignant meditation on domesticity and the overlooked labor of women’s lives. Born from the process of clearing her mother’s home, this series of embroidered and darned textiles contrasts the delicate precision of 18th-century samplers - stitched by young girls in preparation for marriage - with the stained and frayed dishcloths and dusters that bore the weight of a lifetime’s work. In Long’s hands, these everyday relics become vessels of memory, stitched with phrases like No Place Like Home, at once comforting and claustrophobic, a nod to the tensions of domestic life often explored in British theatre and film.

One darned thing.... 3, 2025, Old Cotton Dishcloths, Threads

Closing the exhibition, Long will lead The Cloths That Bind, a hands-on workshop on 29 March, where visitors can reimagine their own connections to domestic textiles. Attendees are encouraged to bring a well-worn household cloth to incorporate into new creations, forging a direct link between their personal histories and the themes of the show.

Long, an artist, art therapist, and educator, has long explored the way textiles absorb and hold experience. Her work doesn’t just ask viewers to look - it asks them to feel, to remember, to recognise themselves in the folds of fabric and the spaces left unfinished. Stairway to Heaven is not just an exhibition; it’s an unfolding story, waiting for its next chapter.

-

Further Information:

Website: https://www.barbaralong-art.com/

Instagram: @barbaralong_art

Exhibition Details: Ruup & Form

Stairway to Heaven is open until the 29th of March, Wednesday to Saturday, 12-6pm at: