Patches of everyday life: textile arts and criminological aesthetics

• In Event: Uncovering Histories of Crime, Violence and Victmization

Abstract

The role of images and arts in the criminal justice system has a long and complex history. Evaluation of images was once restricted to considering whether media pictures of offenders were unedifying stereotypes perpetuating myths about people and situations.  However, Young's (2014) ‘criminological aesthetics’ requires us to consider the relationship between the looker and the image.

This paper will explore how we view and respond to textiles made by prisoners. It will closely examine the HMP Bullingdon Cell quilt; a life-sized art quilt representing a birds-eye view of a two-man cell. It can be read as both a collaborative work expressing identity, ‘affective memory work and pragmatic advocacy’ (Adamson, 2013: 227), and outsider artists’ voice appropriation by creative elites. This is done through a medium culturally associated with traditional notions femininity: the politics of craft are complex, especially with they contain ‘a message of anger, activism, or social commentary’ (Chalmers, 2014:59).  This paper will question whether the quilts are political pieces, and cannot be divorced from the context in which they are made, or if their aim to ‘help customers have a better understanding of the reality of prison life’ (Fine Cell Work), can be neutral.   

Author

• Charlotte Bilby, Northumbria University