IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: Koestler Arts at Southbank Centre
The latest exhibition from the prison arts charity comes to The Southbank Centre
November 3, 2023
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
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Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
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Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
‘Emergency is a very important word. I wanted to use that word because I think art is urgent and I think it’s a brilliant response to an emergency of any kind’.
Poet, author, and performer Joelle Taylor has long believed in the ‘process of becoming’ through art. With over 20 years of experience working with people in prisons, and delivering literary workshops, she was an obvious choice for prison arts charity Koestler Arts to curate their 16th annual exhibition of works created in criminal justice settings.
Shedding the high-rise cell blocks of the 2022 edition curated by Ai Weiwei, Taylor has placed her selections in glass vitrines. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY may seem less visually striking, and more akin to a conventional white cube exhibition, but this curator’s intentions are clearly more subversive - the cases, provided by the Wellcome Collection, here replicate the separation of prisoners from society and our often voyeuristic relationship with the prison space - a comment too on the nature of display in museums and arts institutions more widely.
With nearly 200 works - whittled down from 8000 - some of Taylor’s favourites are true to their own interests. There are poems printed on prison food trays, as well as ceramic packs of Marlboro cigarettes which wouldn’t look out of place at a Lindsey Mendick installation (especially at the neighbouring Hayward Gallery). Indeed, much space is given to sculpture, in plural forms and scales; five hundred pounds could buy you a detailed model of HM Prison Isle of Wight (Albany), a price which seems disproportionate to the detail, time, and effort demanded of it.
Many of the artists use found materials (an academic phrase for spare, Taylor may prod). In ‘Kicking It’, a work from Cromwell House, a secure mental health unit, the artist paints a footballer atop a dismantled cardboard box, the blurry aspect and colours recalling the contemporary artist Liorah Tchiprout and her sensitive approach to figuration. There are many different intricately carved soap sculptures, some religious in form and subject, while others repurpose the rounded block to replicate the cell space.
One artist from HM Prison Full Sutton uses matchsticks, paint, rice, and seeds, and features in the exhibition three times. Two figures - ‘Quiet Contemplation’ and ‘Though Blind, I See Everything’ - are displayed together, but seem wholly estranged, distinct individuals connected only by their present environment. In ‘Woman and Man’, the same artist produces a raised, textured relief which crosses these boundaries, and challenges the binary between painting and sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition, different textile works recycle clinical waste bags, Snackrite crisp packets, and standard-issue green bed sheets. ‘Sea of Hope’, the recipient of the HM Young Offender Institution Polmont Space Station Sixty-Five Platinum Award for Photography, features a solitary survival craft composed of paper cutouts, alongside rocky waters recreated with torn bits of blue roll.
The plural subjects speak to the various criminal justice settings covered within Koestler Arts, including secure hospitals, children’s homes, and immigration removal centres. Taylor clarifies that few of the artists on display have had any formal education outside of these spaces, and that inside access to resources is unequal. Some institutions may have but a few different materials available for use, whereas others have whole libraries, including reference books.
From both environments come works with clear references to contemporary art and art history. Of the former, we could interpret the Damage Done series, of drawings atop recreated convicted prisoner records, as a response to the work of the now Turner Prize nominee Barbara Walker. Likewise, the clownish aspect of the policeman of ‘Fine Art’ could equally figure in a Glenn Brown painting.
But most references are more direct: ‘Caught Smoking’ reproduces ‘The Acrobat Schulz V’ (1921), a painting by Albert Birkle recently displayed at Tate Modern’s Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany (1913-1933). From HM Prison Peterborough, there’s a rendering of Paula Rego in pencil, which received the Highly Commended Award for Portrait, whilst nearby there are works representing Frida Kahlo and W.H. Auden.
‘Discipline and Punish (After Van Gogh)’, a print of ink and pen on paper, reclaims the well-known image from the perspective of its subject. The clear lines of the post-Impressionist painting from which it draws, and the print that inspired that, are here scrubbed and faded, perhaps a visual representation of the complex experiences of confinement, and the blurred boundaries between restriction and freedom.
Many reinterpret and combine traditional motifs; in ‘Tree of Life Always Watching’, the spiritual subject comes topped with more contemporary surveillance cameras. It is finely detailed, rendered with golden colours that recall both South Asian miniatures and the grand-scale works of Gustav Klimt.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is also a commercial exhibition, in which some of the works are for sale. Koestler assures that all the makers have consented, and receive 50% of the proceeds, with 25% each to Victim Support and Koestler Arts. Merchandise, books, and associated artworks can also be purchased in the shop, to further support the charity. Pencils are pushed on a ‘Buy One, Give One to a Prisoner’ scheme; other crafts support workshops where people can learn how to sell their works on social media and at craft fairs on release.
‘Thank you for seeing us for who we are, and not for what we have done,’ writes one entrant, on a postcard propped up in the shop, ‘that is the greatest prize any of us receive’. Yet the reality of this exhibition is quite the opposite; in some respects, we see only what they’ve done, creatively. The works are displayed not with the names of their makers, but the institutions where they were made, a reminder that we are detached from the people in these settings as individuals, as well as the wider realities of life ‘inside’.
To be clear, few of these works have been produced in collaboration. Rather, the decision to anonymise the art has been taken by the respective institutions, as part of a debate around who owns the materials and means of production, and thus who owns the art.
‘It’s criminal,’ Taylor says, of some prisons’ efforts to claim ownership over the artworks of their occupants, and it is. And this exhibition - with its title, and allusion to breaking glass - should alarm us into doing something about it.
Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is on view at the Southbank Centre until 17 December 2023.
