Call and Response

14 March - 26 April 2009

What have I sacrificed...? my freedom, my family, my friends, …everything…
I’ve sacrificed everything coming into prison.

This exhibition was the outcome of a residency spent at a high security young offenders unit in Suffolk this past summer. Regional artists, Penny Brice and Stella Eldon delivered a series of visual art workshops to male trainees detained at the Carlford Unit, Hollesley Bay Prison.

The residency focused on aspects of memory both recent and past, from inside the prison and outside, recording images and sounds of the trainee’s current environment and recent history. Through examination of these memories; significant places, people, and objects, the artist and trainees were able to reflect on prospective memories or 'future selves'.

Call and Response presented the artists' audio/visual 'response' to the residency. The resultant work was an interplay of spoken and visual media from a closed environment that explored what gets out of the prison environment and what stays hidden. In it, the artists became a medium for communication, a transmitter or tool to facilitate the representation of memories.