Texts by Brigitte Ryley and Camilla Brown

Marjolaine Ryley here presents photographs of a family home in Belgium, a place that stood in stark contrast to her life in Britain where she grew up in squats and lived as part of transitory communities with her parents.

Her fascination with Villa Mona is inscribed through these pictures, which present the artist as something of an anthropologist examining social behaviour in a strange land, even as it involves her own family. Throughout the book, in text and images, recurs the figure of Ryley’s mother, negotiating the relationship of daughter to mother through a series of photographs.