On a low whitewashed outbuilding in the grounds of HMP Grendon, close to double rows of high barbed wire fences, an image of Elvis as a cowboy with the orange head of David Bowie cuts a surreal figure. The image heralds a new studio-cum-art gallery in Europe’s only fully therapeutic prison, where 260 prisoners – 70% of whom are lifers – spend five days a week in therapy to come to terms with their crimes. “We are the only prison in the country that does not have a segregation unit, but we do have an art gallery,” said Richard Shuker, Grendon’s director of clinical services.
Bowie/Elvis’ work is part of an exhibition entitled Imposter Syndrome by artist Dean Kelland, the fruit of a nearly five-year residency organized by Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in the all-male Category B prison, located at the Buckinghamshire countryside. A group of us went through the huge mesh fencing, past the security gates and a sniffer dog to visit Kelland’s show, alongside a presentation of the prisoners’ artwork. Despite all these precautions, there is a festive atmosphere as prisoners, prison staff and guards enter, chat and admire the works.
Paintings by Noel Gallagher, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, vibrant hummingbirds, rainbow flowers, peace sign prints, sketches of moths and bees crowd the walls, salon style. A disturbing canvas depicts a shaved head, with bars growing through the skin of the face and twisting into a grimace. “It’s about how the prison environment becomes woven into you, no matter how you protest against it,” says the creator, N from the D-wing. The men are very articulate about their work, which is no surprise given the time they spend in small groups forensically dissecting their crimes, which range from armed robbery and rape to child abuse and murder.
High above our heads, a large black-and-white self-portrait shows a prisoner removing the faceplate from his face, revealing a frightened child clutching his knees in an empty prison cell. Another canvas shows a handcuffed prisoner with a hammer in a brick head as he fights his way to freedom. “I made a series of paintings about what’s on the inside, behind the masks we wear all the time,” said a prisoner identified as B from C-wing.
B has been in institutions since he was eleven. But Grendon is different, inmates say: It lacks the hierarchies and violence of regular prisons. “There is no arguing here, people can express themselves,” says a prisoner who writes poems. “In other prisons you would be seen as weak for that and expose yourself to bullying.” Founded in 1962 as a radical carceral experiment, Grendon is divided into five wings (communities) of around 40 people plus an induction unit. Inmates must apply to be admitted to the prison and be assessed for up to six months before they can begin the intensive four-year therapy. Some cannot break through the extreme scrutiny and request to return to what they know, but statistics from criminology studies show that inmates who complete at least 18 months of therapy in Grendon are 20 to 25% less likely to reoffend than in conventional prisons.
“Prison can re-traumatize people and if you don’t do something about it, it will continue,” a female therapist (or facilitator, as they are called in Grendon) told me. “You have to believe that people change. I’ve seen it.” Shuker agrees: “The unique thing here is that everyone feels like they are part of a common goal. They want to make it work. At Grendon we say, ‘This is your prison, you are responsible for making it safe, settle your differences.’”
Every decision is made democratically, through voting – including the choice of the resident artist. Kelland talks about his interview with the men before he was accepted into the scheme. “One of them asked me what my work was about and I told him ‘flawed masculinity, cycles of failure’. And he said, ‘Well, then you’re in the best place. You won’t find more flaws than here. ”
But Kelland, who describes himself as ‘a working-class lad from Great Barr’, has come without judgement, with a remit to support the prisoners in their artistic pursuits and make work about the experience. The prints, collages and films they developed together testify to the trust he has managed to build in the prison community. Masks are a core motif in Kelland’s show, partly because of the requirement to anonymize the men in it and because he is interested in the idea of social veneer, which ties in nicely with the fact that much of the psychodrama that the men having to undergo masks. .
One of the most powerful works in Imposter Syndrome is a multi-channel video installation, Absolute Beginners (2022), featuring portraits of the men wearing neutral masks. The film was shot in semi-darkness and shows the moment when everyone confronts themselves in the mirror, after, in some cases, not seeing themselves for years. Most men have difficulty holding their own gaze through the eye holes of the white mask and quickly look down or away. “It was really disturbing,” says N. “It felt like I was being stripped naked. I felt a pang of sadness because I have worn the armor and masks all my life.” At Ikon, where the main version of Impostor Syndrome is on display, the images of the men are projected onto a monolithic black cylinder and the viewer is required to walk around it to see them, mimicking the circular flow of the prison grounds .
The prisoners’ engagement with Kelland’s work is evident in a dialogue wall the artist set up in Grendon and reproduced at the Ikon show. You can see how ideas materialized and spread there as Kelland pinned down notes and pictures and the men wrote down their answers. Elvis has been an important touchstone, embodying both the masculine ideal and its failure. Photos of the singer alongside Grayson Perry, Boy George, Tupac Shakur and Bowie indicate an intense exploration of male role models. However, David Beckham didn’t make it and has a giant cross through his face.
The filmed performance So the Days Float Through My Eyes (2023) marks the culmination of Kelland’s collaboration with the prisoners. A group of men wearing screen-printed Bowie masks (including Kelland) stand in a silent line. They in turn step forward and hold up signs with the lyrics from Bowie’s 1971 hit Changes that seem to resonate poignantly with their captivity: “I never glimpsed how the others should see the fake” and “So I turned myself towards me. ”. Kelland originally planned for the men to throw away the signs, but they told him that didn’t work. “For me, it’s those little victories where they felt like they had authorship and could say, ‘No, Dean, do it this way,’” says the artist. “That was huge.”
The residency for artists in prison was launched in 2011 by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust and Ikon came on board in 2014. Since then, the gallery has expanded the program’s reach by installing a producer in prison, James Latunji-Cockbill, who, along with Kelland, led the creation of the art studio and gallery in Grendon. It has changed the goalposts and ambition of the project, says Latunji-Cockbill: “We have seen traditional prison arts and crafts almost fall aside as our group’s artwork has become more like a fine art practice.” In addition to helping the inmates paint and draw, Kelland set up a screen printing press and invited other artists to teach them how to etch. Now that I have seen the enormous benefits, Ikon hopes to roll out this workshop model in other prisons.
At a symposium held after the exhibition, several prisoners will give speeches about how working with Kelland has changed their art and their lives. “Every Wednesday when I come to the workshop, I am reminded that I am not just a transgressor – I do indeed have a voice through art,” says M van A-wing, who has won silver in the past two years in the annual Koestler prison art awards for his textile works. M’s entry this year was a pair of blue fabric therapy chairs onto which he had stitched bright yellow words that he used during counseling sessions. “For me it was about the chairs talking about all the people who sat in them and talking about their lives. Those chairs hold so many secrets,” he explains. Likewise, B of C Wing movingly talks about how valuable it has been to receive constructive feedback about his art. “Prison is a tough place – normally people will say, ‘Fuck off dick’ – but working with someone in the arts is beneficial and nourishes the soul. This is what pulls us forward, to be part of something much bigger than us.”
As we are herded out of the prison complex under towering, triffid-like lights, rabbits run incongruously across the manicured grass verges. It seems irrefutable that art and therapy can play a major role in rehabilitation. For his part, Kelland is happy with what he and Ikon have achieved: “What we have are prisoners who will leave after working with us, who will see the opportunity to work in the creative practice and perhaps even call themselves artists. I will succeed.”