Assignment 5
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Introduction:
One Year
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Transcending prison walls.
One Year is the outcome of a correspondence initiated with a friend and local preacher who was arrested on his fiftieth birthday for a crime he committed in his mid-teens. The resulting project documents a year spent in prison in Britain in 2016.
This project takes a very different look at life in prison based on the account that a prisoner gives of the year he spent in HMP Dartmoor. During this period inside, Ian and his fellow inmates signed up for a wide range of courses and activities to improve their abilities and skills sets which would enable them to re-integrate into society on their release. The fact that those in prisons like HMP Dartmoor are doing this and are not spending their time drugged-up or fighting is never covered in documentaries on British TV or in the press.
In an increasing number of prisons, gardening is becoming more and more important as it is considered a form of therapy for the inmates' wellbeing. The Royal Horticultural Society, for example, awards the Windlesham Trophy annually to the best prison garden in England and Wales. As is the case with developing prisoners' skills sets,you will not see this in the mass media because it is not a sensational topic.
Leaves and bracts are used to exemplify the pages of the letters which are transient, like the time and seasons spent in prison as covered in the letters.
Bracts are leaf-like petals of a flower, in this case a flower on a Handkerchief tree. Just as you cannot tell the difference between a dried bract and a dried leaf, you cannot tell the difference between a person who has been in prison and one who has not, unless you know both well. Furthermore, just as the bract is not what it seems, the depiction of prison in the mass media is not the whole story of incarceration: this project is one which gives a perspective of personal growth and development in prison.
White dominates in the project because the correspondence shows that there is light in prison in the form of opportunities offered to inmates to progress in their life’s journey, that there is goodness in their being. More and more artists, writers, criminologists, and prison governors realize that the answer to society’s ills is not to build bigger prisons, and fill them, like warehouses, with the worst parts of all of us.
Set in a Victorian prison, One Year is a very human story which highlights frailty, passion, vulnerability and resilience. The bracts and leaves sit next to the letters in much the same way as a pressed flower would sit inside a book. Some of them are brittle, some are in a state of change, while others are hardy, evergreen, even exotic, and all are subject to the elements.
Artist's statement:
Blurb book PDF
I have inserted images printed on vellum tracing paper (150gsm) into this Blurb book between the double pages of the letters. I have also printed a bookmark which has Agape: spiritual love written on it in case readers are not familiar with the term.
The bookmark is printed on both sides on vellum tracing paper.
This is the last page in the book which has one of the leaves glued to a sheet of vellum tracing paper. Its haptic qualities, not evident here, mimic the 3D effects of some of the other images printed on vellum tracing paper.
Prison images submitted for assessment:
Self evaluation
The way forward
I have booked an exhibition space called "The Cells" in the Devonport Guild Hall Plymouth,for this body of work, for the first 2 weeks in July 2019. My tutor Wendy McMurdo has suggested that I include my progress on this so far. The blueprints below are the paperwork preparation for the exhibition space maquette which my husband has cut and glued for me.
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The owners of the gallery are delighted that I am putting up work on prisons and prisoner identity in their space.
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The OCA SW exhibition I co-curated in November last year (see my blog of 7th December, 2017) was a good pre-run of what I am going to do here. Whereas I used cardboard to construct last year's exhibition because it was there and I needed it in a hurry, this year I am using a much sturdier MDF which I might display in the exhibition itself.
It was suggested that last year's maquette also be part of the OCA SW exhibition but the gallery owner went against that idea, possibly because it was not a very attractive construction. I used it because I thought it would speed up the hanging time since I knew exactly what was going to be exhibited and the actual sizes of the pieces so it was a matter of organising it into items which went together in a cohesive whole. I don't have that issue for this exhibition as there is only one theme and the images form a cohesive & coherent unit anyway but I suppose I like to play!
This is a PDF of my drawings in preparation of constructing a 1:25 maquette of the space.
Devonport Guild Hall, Plymouth where The Cells Gallery is situated. (Copyright Google Earth 2018)
Steve Goodchild cut the MDF pieces and glued them together to form the maquette:
Photograph of one of the two identical cells.
Mouse eye-view from the entrance.
Photograph of the entrance to the exhibition space.
View from the end of the corridor towards the entrance.
View along the corridor towards the back.
Bird's eye-view of the gallery.
At my tutor's suggestion, I am submitting this with the rest of the BoW prints for assessment.
I have added a miniature image of the lectern holding the Blurb book to the maquette - just as an experiment.
As it stands at the moment, the work exhibited is not the full BoW because the space is limited. I therefore propose to hang just 5 of the nine letters with transcripts below them for those who have difficulty reading the hand-written letters.
The book, which contains all the letters, will be on a plinth, on a lectern by the entrance so those who wish to read all the letters can do so. The book will not be for sale.