The End of the Sentence
Film, Photography and Archival Research, 2020 ongoingHMS Holloway (1852-2016) was the largest women’s prison in Western Europe and the only women’s prison in London. Those incarcerated there were freedom fighters such as the Suffragettes and the Greenham Common women. However, the majority were imprisoned because of poverty and injustice, addiction and abuse. The physical transformations that took place in the architecture of the building from 1852- 2016 reflected shifing views on the nature of women, crime and punishment. The prison was redesigned and rebuilt between 1971 and 1973 with the imposing Victorian panopticon structure replaced by a red brick building resembling more of a hospital surrounded by social house. An ariel map of Holloway in its later years looks like the intestines in the human body – a series of corridors known as the trolley route connecting different areas of the prison to another. In 2016 HMS Holloway was decommissioned and the 10-acre prison site purchased by Peabody Trust in 2019. In response to the closure of HMS Holloway the coaliton group Reclaim Holloway was formed in 2016.
In the making of the work Price’s approach has been to draw on local and consensual knowledge and situate her research in the particularities of a place and collective interaction through groups and organisation’s working around Holloway. This has included her continued activities with the coalition campaign group Reclaim Holloway, whose members include ex-prisoners, forensic Psychotherapists, NGO’s such as Women in Prison (WIP), Women’s Resource Centre (WRC), Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS), Sisters Uncut, local residents, artists, architects, academics, museum curators, who together have identified a range of inter-connected social issues and needs in using the land of the decommissioned Holloway prison for public good. To this aim they have called for the construction of social housing, green spaces on the land and a dedicated Women’s Building as a transformative justice project rather than criminal justice project in addressing the legacy of the Holloway and help vulnerable women stay out of the criminal justice system.
The first iteration The End of the Sentence was a solo exhibition at the Stanley Picker Gallery which presented initial research drawing on relationships developed through the campain group Reclaim Holloway The exhibition reflected on the impact of the criminal justice system on women, featuring new work by Price, archival material, and artists and writers invited by Price including Erika Flowers, Carly Guest & Rachel Seoighe, Hannah Hull, Katrina McPherson and Nina Ward.
As part of The End of the Sentence, Price presented a new moving-image installation The Good Enough Mother in collaboration with Dorich House Museum, which features a bronze sculpture of a baby by Dora Gordine (1895-1991) acquired for the first Mother and Baby Unit at Holloway Women’s Prison in 1948. The soundtrack to the film explores the incarcerated pregnancy, drawing on transcriptions of 28 interviews by midwife Dr Laura Abbott, as well as the field work and writing of forensic psychotherapist Pamela Windham Stewart.
Price’s photographic work included in the exhibition drew on her time spent in the decommissioned prison building, which she lives directly behind, and the wealth of intimate objects from the prison held in the Islington Museum archives. Phoenix Rising shows the griffin mosaic on the base of the swimming pool installed in Holloway in the 1970s redevelopment. It was argued that “the women and girls at Holloway will need adequate exercise not only for their health but also to prevent them from releasing their energy in more destructive ways, but there is also evidence of prisoners swimming with their visiting children in the 1990s. Photographs of hair and a fire hose plug offer a close examination of some of the less obvious traces of prison control – in the event of a fire in a cell at HMP Holloway, the small yellow plug was removed from the door and a hose inserted blasting water into the cell, before allowing the inmate to evacuate.
Price is currently in post production with a long form which brings together 7 years of research, activism, collaboration and filming. The work explores how women’s lives have been shaped by their time in prison drawing attention to the anonymous and forgotten women incaretated in HMS Holloway, as well as political prisoners including the Suffragettes and Greenham Common women.
Genorously supported by: Arts Council England/Elephant Trust, UK/ The National Justice Museum, Nottingham, UK/Stanley Picker Gallery, UK/ Dorich House, UK/Cinenova, UK/ Islington Museum, UK/ Radical Film, Berlin/ Department of Allied Health and Midwifery, University of Hertfordshire, UK/ Kingston University, UK/ Born Inside, UK/ Clean Break, UK/ Women in Prison, UK/ Reclaim Holloway, UK/ Community Plan for Holloway, UK/ Peabody.