Anne Barlow – författare

An insightful and much-needed introduction to the life and work of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, a textile artist dedicated to celebrating the vibrant heritage of the Romani community.Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (b.1978) is a Romani artist and activist who is best known for her colourful textile collages. Made from materials gathered from family and friends, and often created in collaboration with other women, these works depict the everyday life of the Romani people to challenge stereotypical representations and form what she calls ‘microcarriers of history’.This fascinating introduction explores the life and work of Mirga-Tas, contextualising her practice within Romani culture and the community in which she was raised. Bringing attention to the Romani people – their relationships, alliances and shared activities – through her visual storytelling, she also re-imagines artworks from across the centuries that have presented Romani identity in negative ways and transforms them into vibrant images imbued with strength and dignity. These works, informed by her feminist perspective and a sustained engagement with her community, combine realism with visual motifs of Romani culture, and offer a rare opportunity to see and celebrate the Roma on their own terms – both as a contemporary community and as a people with a rich heritage.

​The family justice system in England and Wales has undergone radical change over the past 20 years. A significant part of this shifting landscape has been an increasing emphasis on settling private family disputes out of court, which has been embraced by policy-makers, judges and practitioners alike and is promoted as an unqualified good.Mapping Paths to Family Justice: Resolving Family Disputes in Neoliberal Times examines the experiences of people taking part in out-of-court family dispute resolution in England and Wales. It addresses questions such as how participants’ experiences match up to the ideal; how recent changes to the legal system have affected people’s ability to access out-of-court dispute resolution; and what kind of outcomes are achieved in family dispute resolution.This book is the first study systematically to compare different forms of family dispute resolution. It explores people’s experiences of solicitor negotiations, mediation and collaborative law empirically by analyzing findings from a nationally representative survey, individual in-depth interviews with parties and practitioners, and recorded family dispute resolution processes. It considers these in the context of ongoing neoliberal reforms to the family justice system, drawing out conclusions and implications for policy and practice.

ePDF and ePUB available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Recent legislative changes in England and Wales have eroded children’s ability to exercise their article 12 UNCRC rights to information, consultation and representation when parents separate. However, children’s voices may be heard through child-inclusive mediation (CIM).Considered from a children’s rights perspective, this book provides a critical socio-legal account of CIM practice. It draws on in-depth interviews with relationship professionals, mediators, parents and children, to consider the experiences, risks and benefits of CIM. It investigates obstacles to greater uptake of CIM and its role in improving children’s wellbeing and agency. Exploring the culture and practice changes necessary for a more routine application of CIM, the book demonstrates how reconceptualising CIM through a children’s rights framework could help to address barriers and improve outcomes for children.

Unmarried heterosexual cohabitation is rapidly increasing in Britain and over a quarter of children are now born to unmarried cohabiting parents. This is not just an important change in the way we live in modern Britain; it is also a political and theoretical marker. Some commentators see cohabitation as evidence of selfish individualism and the breakdown of the family, while others see it as just a less institutionalised way in which people express commitment and build their families. Politically, 'stable' families are seen as crucial - but does stability simply mean marriage? At present the law in Britain retains important distinctions in the way it treats cohabiting and married families and this can have deleterious effects on the welfare of children and partners on cohabitation breakdown or death of a partner. Should the law be changed to reflect this changing social reality? Or should it - can it - be used to direct these changes?Using findings from their recent Nuffield Foundation funded study, which combines nationally representative data with in-depth qualitative work, the authors examine public attitudes about cohabitation and marriage, provide an analysis of who cohabits and who marries, and investigate the extent and nature of the 'common law marriage myth' (the false belief that cohabitants have similar legal rights to married couples). They then explore why people cohabit rather than marry, what the nature of their commitment is to one another and chart public attitudes to legal change. In the light of this evidence, the book then evaluates different options for legal reform.

A significant British artist, Warren's exuberant, roughly-worked sculptures and neon vitrines engage with the canon of art history. Warren first came to prominence in the 1990s and exhibits widely in Europe and the United States. This new exhibition will draw connections between her practice to date and the geographical context and artistic legacy of St Ives. This publication includes texts by Anne Barlow and Laura Smith and an in conversation between Laura Smith and Rebecca Warren.

This book is both a document of the development of the exhibition and a view into Nkanga's creative process. Starting with a poem written by Nkanga herself, it also includes an extensive selection of her photographs, which author Helon Habila has responded to in the form of a short fictional story. It features a selection of Nkanga's other bodies of work, including existing works such as The Weight of Scars 2015 and From Where I Stand 2015 as well as a new sculpture, performance and wall drawing. Nkanga's finished works are shown alongside preparatory drawings and in-progress photographs, with an interview with Nkanga offering further insights into her practice. Otobong Nkanga is one of the most exciting artists working today. She received a Special Mention at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and was awarded the 2015 Yanghyun Prize and the 2017 Belgian Art Prize, and in 2019 was the recipient of the Ultimas-Flemish Prize for culture. Tate

Born in South Korea in 1971, Haegue Yang is renowned for creating immersive environments from a diverse range of materials. Yang’s sculptures and installations conjure abstract narratives which play with our sensory pre-conceptions of scent, sound, light and tactility. Often using recognisable household objects, her work liberates forms from their functional context and applies new connotations and meanings to them. Interweaving industrially made objects with labour intensive and craft-based processes, Yang articulates her interest in folk and pagan cultures, and their deep connection with seasonal rituals in relation to natural phenomena. For this book and its accompanying exhibition at Tate St Ives, the context of the Cornish landscape and its ancient archaeological heritage is an important point of departure for Yang, whose work combines materials, theories and cultural references to make astute and surprising connections between local contexts and wider geographies and histories. Recurring themes of migration, postcolonial diasporas, political struggle and social mobility underpin Yang’s research, culminating in a body of work that is an apposite comment on our own time.

In 1999, Petrit Halilaj made thirty-eight drawings while living in a refugee camp in Albania during the Kosovo War (1998–9). The Tate St Ives exhibition, Halilaj’s first solo museum show in the UK, stemmed from these drawings; it is perhaps his most personal reflection to date on his experiences of war.In the monumental installation, Halilaj reconstituted elements of his original drawings in new formations, altering their material, scale and relationships to one another; in essence, it was an act of rearranging and taking control of fragments of memory that mirrors a personal and collective trauma that for Halilaj remains unfinished. While distinctive in its form, Very Volcanic Over This Green Feather is connected with a personal visual language that Halilaj has developed through a variety of media including sculpture, video, drawing and text, as well as traditional fabrics and materials.The installation and this book reflect a process of research and analysis that included extensive conversations between Halilaj and Giacomo Poli, the psychologist who had originally encouraged Halilaj and other children to make drawings in the Kukës II refugee camp in Albania more than twenty years earlier. Efforts were also made to track down specific news articles, photographs and media footage, including coverage of Halilaj meeting former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan during his visit to Kukës in 1999. These materials situate Halilaj’s own memories within a larger socio-political context.With writing from Giacomo Poli, Amy Zion, Thomas Keenan, Anne Barlow and Petrit Halilaj himself, this book is a fascinating record of an extraordinary exhibition.

This beautiful book celebrates the first large-scale museum exhibition in the UK of Thao Nguyen Phan’s work, held at Tate St Ives.Thao Nguyen Phan is internationally renowned for her poetic, multi-layered artworks which explore the historical and ecological issues facing her homeland Vietnam, while speaking to broader ideas around tradition, ideology, ritual and environmental change.Phan’s mesmerising work intertwines mythology and folklore with urgent issues around industrialisation, food security and the environment. The threat posed by the destruction and excessive consumption of Earth’s resources is a recurring theme across her practice. Through storytelling, and the mixing of official and unofficial histories, her work often amplifies narratives that are less well documented, or in some cases obscured.Featuring texts by Anne Barlow, Joan Jonas, Thao Nguyen Phan, Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran and Pen Sereypagna, this beautifully illustrated exhibition catalogue explores the creation of Phan’s unique artistic language, bringing painting, sculpture and filmmaking together to generate a sensation of the ‘tangible in the intangible’. It covers both existing works and Phan’s new three-channel video work and painting series First Rain, Brise Soleil, (2021–ongoing).

This is the first large-scale museum exhibition of Outi Pieski’s work in the UK, bringing together early and rarely exhibited works, recent paintings and installations, and a new installation created during her artist residency at Porthmeor Studios, St Ives in January 2024. Pieski is based in Ohcejohka (Utsjoki), Finland, in the region referred to as Sápmi, the traditional territory of the Sámi people that extends across northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Through an artistic practice that encompasses painting, printmaking, photography, video and installation, Pieski explores the relationship between humans and their environment, raising questions around ancestral knowledge and Indigenous peoples’ rights.