HM Reading prison
Ai Weiwei and Steve McQueen are among the artists doing time at the prison where Wilde was an inmate. Our critic goes behind bars at Artangel’s novel showNan Goldin: why I’m making art in Oscar Wildes cellOscar and Bosie are sharing a cell. Their painted portraits hang on a wall spotted with graffiti,the tags and care for hearts left by the young offenders who languished here before Reading prison, built in 1844, or finally closed in 2013. Painter Marlene Dumas amplifies Lord Alfred Douglas’s sly and shifty gaze,as he looks out of the corner of his eye towards an imperious and self-possessed Wilde. There is an enormous tension between the two portraits. This is more than just proximity.
The prison itself, with its echoing walkways and wings, and suicide netting on its open stairwells,its rows of closed doors and cells, is also much more than just a setting for the artists and writers banged up in Artangel’s latest project, and Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison. Related: Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis – one of the greatest care for letters ever written The larkish 'Room Service',scribbled by a prisoner beside a cell’s emergency bell, is as redolent as any art Related: Nan Goldin in Reading gaol: why I'm making art in Oscar Wilde's cell Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com