5 things to know about Koestler Arts: No Comment

The words of John Costi, one-time prisoner and latterly, alongside Jeremy Deller, co-curator of the 17th annual Koestler Arts exhibition, showcased here at the Southbank Centre in 2024.

Koestler Arts is the UK’s oldest prison arts charity; their aim is to inspire prisoners and people with experience of the criminal justice system to change their lives by participating in the arts, be it visual art, music, poetry or performance. 

Each year, around 4,000 budding artists from across the UK’s criminal justice system enter their work into the annual Koestler Awards scheme, to be in with a chance of winning awards and certificates and receiving prize money. Alongside these Awards, Koestler Arts also present this work through a public exhibition, for which a guest curator is invited to take on the task of picking through the thousands of pieces submitted, and choosing, at most, a couple of hundred works to be showcased.

In 2024 the artists given that sizable challenge were John Costi and Jeremy Deller, and here are five things to know about the resultant exhibition, No Comment, which was shown here at the Southbank Centre.

The exhibition charts a journey

The co-curators’ strong involvement with Koestler Arts and work in the criminal justice sector is reflected in the design of the exhibition. No Comment charts a journey through the prison system, beginning first of all with works that represent silence or emptiness; highlighting the removal and withdrawal from everyday life; the feeling of a lack of a voice.

Beyond this is a section of works that celebrate finding art and the role that art classes and education can play in helping individuals rediscover that voice. Within this space Costi details his own experience of engaging with the arts whilst in prison. And this leads into the final section of the exhibition, one which features artworks that reflect and represent the freedom of expression that the arts offer, and celebrate the boundlessness of imagination.

It featured works in unusual materials

Access to the traditional materials of visual arts, in prisons in particular, can be limited. And so instead artists turn to materials which though unusual, are more readily available. Within No Comment were works that had been created using bread, seeds, soap and tea-leaves; even an artist’s own clothes had been turned into a colourful canvas. Among the sculptural works of unusual materials were a helmet constructed using slithers of milk cartons; a suit created from playing cards, and a collection of tiny animals carved from wooden Jenga blocks.

The artists behind the works come from a huge breadth of backgrounds

On the wall of No Comment was a number counter. The number depicted is that of the current prison population across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it is updated each week. More pertinently it is important to remember that this is a number of people, a number of individuals, a number of potential artists.

But the works of No Comment did not come solely from prisons, they were also from people held in secure hospitals, secure children’s homes and immigration removal centres, as well as those on probation, community sentences and youth offending teams. The work on display reflected this disparity and diversity – there were poignant works which reflect on the nature of sisterhood and womanhood and there were a significant number of works from younger artists, reflecting the journey of Costi who himself entered the criminal justice system as a young man.

The curators are strongly connected to all that Koestler Arts does

‘We met in Venice, which does sound quite romantic,’ says Deller of his and Costi’s connection that began in 2013 when the former was exhibiting at the Biennale, and the latter working as an arts handler for Koestler Arts. Costi’s art career began behind bars, as he explains in our video accompanying the exhibition, ‘it took me going to prison to realise that art was for me’. His connection with Koestler Arts began as a participant in their art programme and as an entrant into their annual awards. Since his release, with the help of Koestler Arts, Costi has become an artist, whilst Deller has supported Koestler Arts, and its participants, for more than 15 years.

To help with their curation and the process of transforming over 7,000 entries into an exhibition of 200 works, Costi and Deller invited six creatives with different roles in the art world to help with the process; bringing different perspectives and expertise to the process. These six guests, Abbas Zahedi, Aindrea Emelife, Larry Achiampong, Dr Nicholas Cullinan OBE, Jonny Banger and Zakia Sewell could be seen in the opening to the exhibition in portrait form, having each been depicted by Koestler Arts entrants.

An unusual tower reinforced this was no ordinary exhibition

If you went behind the scenes in a gallery or any space hosting an exhibition of visual arts, the chances are you’d find a huge number of sturdy packing crates, each one carefully lined to protect the works that travel inside. This is a world away from how the works submitted to Koestler Arts travel from secure facilities across the country; instead they arrive at Koestler Arts’ building in everyday cardboard boxes, many of which are being reused. 

Cardboard was a recurring theme in No Comment; not only was it used to initially transport the works featured, it’s also a material, owing to its wide availability, that many artists elected to use and repurpose in their actual works. In the centre of the exhibition Costi and Deller have placed a towering sculpture of some of the boxes which the works arrived at Koestler Arts in, illustrating the difference between this and other exhibitions, and cementing the connection between where these works were ultimately displayed and where they came from.