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Of Futility and Depression by HMP Dartmoor inmate |
Unlocking creative potential
A prison sentence can lead to salvation for some inmates.Sunita Rappai reports on the ICA’s exhibition of Insider Art
SIMON Walmsley exudes a maturity that belies his youth. In the cavernous hall at the Institute of Contemporary Art where he is mingling with other guests, he could pass for a schoolboy on a day out.
In fact, Walmsley, 23, is a former prisoner who served a 21-month sentence three years ago for a crime he is reluctant to discuss. He has been invited to the ICA today to attend the opening of a new exhibition called Insider Art, which is dedicated to artwork produced by prisoners.
The works have been produced for the Koestler Trust awards, named after the Hungarian-born writer, activist and philosopher Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), author of the prison novel Darkness at Noon, and one-time political prisoner.
The scheme has been promoting art across the prison service for more than 40 years. Walmsley, from Devon, is a former Koestler award winner, who took up sculpture during his spell in prison.
“I signed up for the navy a week before my 18th birthday,” he says. “But everything started to go wrong. My parents got divorced. There was a death in the family. I did something stupid and I got caught.”
Behind bars for the first time, the young navy cadet who had just turned 20 soon hit rock bottom. “I was all over the place,” he says. “The first couple of weeks were an absolute nightmare. I was just in my own world. I stopped eating and completely separated from everyone. The worst point was realising that I had hit absolute rock bottom but, looking back, I needed to do that to go on.”
Starting a ceramics course in prison was the turning point for him. “I just kept everything bottled up,” he says. “When I started my first sculpture, called Soul, I poured everything into it – the bitterness, the anger, everything that I had felt until that point but been unable to express.”
Simon’s story is one that is echoed time and time again by other Koestler award winners.
Simon Charles from HMP Whitemoor, whose work Autobahn has been selected for the exhibition, says: “Art is my only salvation. I have created victims by my past deeds; whatever I create artistically gives me an outlet to feel more connected to the wider society”.
An anonymous inmate at Ashworth Special Hospital, whose textile art piece The World Cup Glory is also in the exhibition, says: “This is the first artwork I have ever done in my life. It took me somewhere that I have never been in my head.”
Touchingly, a young offender currently at an institution in Warren Hill, Suffolk, says he wanted to tell people he is not a “loser” or a “bad boy”. “I started drawing when I came to prison because I wanted to impress my family and also because prison is a lonely place to be,” he adds.
Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry is one of the curators of the exhibition and is at the ICA’s opening reception. Well known for cross-dressing, he understands more than most what it is like to be on the margins as an artist, to always be on the outside looking in.
“There is something about outsider art and art produced by anyone working out of the professional art sphere”, he says. “This is art that’s spontaneous and creative. There is such a high percentage of work here that’s really interesting – there is a lot of instinctive talent.”
For Simon Walmsley, who remembers being told when he went into prison that it would either “make him or break him”, his experiences have left him convinced that prison was the best thing that could have happened to him.
Currently planning a move to Cornwall to start an HND in ceramics, he says: “It’s difficult for me to look at prison as a negative thing. For me it was ultimately all positive. It got me where I am today so it was a blessing in disguise.”
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