Villa Mona: A Proper Kind of House - Marjolaine Ryley

Marjolaine Ryley's photographs are intimate, psychologically charged portraits of domestic spaces, which explore the ways in which we experience family life through familiarity with particular places. 'Villa Mona' is the name of the home on the Belgian coast which the artist's family have had a long association with and which she has visited since childhood. Ryley has returned to the house repeatedly to create a cumulative portrait of both the building and its inhabitants. Each photograph quietly observes the traces of human presence - the residues of past lives - that have accrued there. The artist's approach is, as she remarks, is "like that of an archaeologist, sifting, revealing and preserving through the act of visually recording". The images, accordingly, are filled with mementoes and personal possessions accrued over the 20th century. The evocative, elegiac atmosphere which Ryley creates seems to make palpable the passing of time.

Villa Mona: a proper kind of house - publication

'Villa Mona a proper kind of house' is the artists' first monograph and features texts by Camilla Brown, Senior curator at The Photographers' Gallery and Brigitte Ryley, a writer and the artists' mother.

Villa Mona is 90pp hardback with dust jacket, 55 full colour plates, 185mm x 185mm. Price £15.00 Printed in an edition of 1000. ISBN 0-9550945-2-6. 'Villa Mona' is designed by TRACE and Michelle Abadie and produced and is published with the support of Trace Editions.

Launched at The Photographers Gallery Bookshop, 8 Great Newport Street, on 5 October 2006 and on Thursday 21 September 2006 in Sunderland

- Villa Mona is available from the Cornerhouse.

Click here to read an essay on Villa Mona   Click here to read 15th August poem by Brigitte Ryley   Click here to view pages from the book