Marjolaine Ryley’s work explores ideas of memory, history, familial
relationships and archival narratives.
The images in the series entitled ‘Résidence Astral’ are
all taken in the apartment of the artists grandmother, an archetypal bourgeois
dwelling in Brussels, which Ryley has visited since early childhood and
which she has documented since 1993 on regular visits from England with
her mother. The images explore the interactions between people and space,
capturing the psychological charge of the domestic environment, exploring
the duality of experience within the familial realm that encompasses the
closeness and comfort, as well as claustrophobia and ambivalence that we
may feel towards members of our family. These rich and contemplative photographs
span a twelve-year period and form part of the artists own family photographic
archive
Ryley undertook a fellowship with the Photography
and Archive Research Centre (PARC) at London College of Communication which
looks at the effects of digital technologies on family photography and
the shifting nature of these archives in the digital age. As a result a
new website research project The Last Picture Show,
was launched at the time of this exhibition. The site
will bring together photographic archival collections, writings and artists’ projects,
acting as a link between analogue and digital uses of family photography.
Résidence Astral is also published as Field Study 7 by PARC.
“Throughout my work there is a strong interest in history
and memory both of the individual family and its relation to wider culture.
Working with multiple images, grid structures and the book format, allows
me to explore the temporal and transient, the indexical and the archival
nature of photography. The moving image work brings together past narratives
with present places, conflating the two as documentary evidence, while
the still images cumulatively narrate familial histories, relationships,
exiles and returns.”
Her practice uses photography, super 8, digital video, text,
objects and found photographs to explore a range of themes and issues that
look at linking her own personal experiences to broader social and political
narratives which lyrically move between the personal album and the social
document.
Ryley is currently a Senior Lecturer in Photography at the
University of Sunderland. Her first monograph ‘Villa Mona – A
Proper Kind of House’ was published by Trace Editions in 2006.
Exhibition event: Val Williams and Marjolaine Ryley were in discussion
- Sat 17th November
