'No Comment' exhibition at the Southbank Centre

I’ve just been to see ‘No Comment’ at the Southbank Centre, an exhibition by artists who are incarcerated. Jeremy Deller is curator alongside a friend of mine, John Costi, an amazing poet and artist and clearly a fantastic curator. When I get there, by complete chance, John is there giving a tour and I get to eavesdrop my way around the exhibition, bouncing from anecdote to anecdote. I am really grateful to hear the inside stories of everyones lives, my feedback to the exhibition being that I wish we had longer information cards next to each piece.

The show is a glorious, raging, cheeky, deeply sad, profound and self aware provocation. To walk around it you have to confront the truth - we live in a society were there are approximately 97,800+ people living in prison, a number that ticks up weekly on the walls of the exhibition. I have no doubt that that number will soon hit 100,000.

The dark truth that good things come from bad things curdles in my stomach, it is so unfair that the process of survival is so regularly where any of us realise we are artists. John on his tour speaks of how it was in prison he realised he was an artist, and speaks of how many others come to find themselves as artists whilst confined in their cells.

For me, so much of my work was born of violence, of abuse and homelessness, and I quite regularly reflect on that with resentment in my heart. One thing I will say, though, is that I have made my finest work whilst cared for and supported. When I walk around ‘No Comment’, I am amazed by the capacity of the work, but we must never forget that every single one of those artists would be happier, more creative, and more empowered if they were not incarcerated, if they were given the very simple human right of freedom.

Prison is a threat that looms over the heads of so many, notably the most marginalised in our communities. For every one of those nearly 100,000 people, there are families, friends, loved ones, neighbours on the outside who feel that loss. This exhibition gives a voice to the voiceless, but also reminds me of the real fear I have of seeing my love ones imprisoned and kidnapped from their communities, held hostage to be abused and belittled by wardens and workers alike. Whilst we cannot let our fears of incarceration prevent us from action, I am grateful for spaces that treat prison with the severity I feel it should be viewed with. For every 1000 people there are in prison, 852 will self harm. There were 73,804 incidents of self harm in 2023 alone - this tells you all you need to know about the conditions inside.

The show is only on til Sunday, and its free, so I really recommend going to see it and spending some time with it. In the most recent edition of The Pig Catcher (Issue II) we printed tips on how to support friends through the criminal justice system, and Bent Bars, a letter writing project for queer prison penpals. As more and more of our immediate community take action for Palestine, for their communities, for trans healthcare and beyond, as more of our communities are racially targeted and abused in the streets by the police, we must never give up our fight for the aboliton of the prison system, and whilst we fight for it, we must never forget everyone whose lives it touches.