Notes from HMP Grendon

By Dean Kelland, Ikon’s artist in residence at HMP Grendon

“Listen to your tiger, see what that tells you.”

60,984 Minutes

“You’ll never guess what I’ve just done?” James, myself and Maraiga were standing on the concourse of Euston tube station and were due at Tate Britain Collections in just 30 minutes to view the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky photographs held in the archive there. Maraiga and I looked with anticipation at James as he went on to explain, “I’ve just put my credit card into the notes slot in the ticket machine…it’s gone and I haven’t got a ticket.” SWiTCH Times change and time changes…I’ve been at the School of Art in Wolverhampton for 15 years as a Senior Lecturer and prior to that I completed my undergraduate degree and teaching qualification there. I have a great deal of pride in what was built and what the students achieved during my tenure as course leader. I’ve been privileged to be involved with groups of people who, time and time again surprise, surpass and scintillate the soul with their creative hearts and minds. My decision to walk away was a decision that could not be taken lightly, and it certainly wasn’t. It felt that it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it, so with mixed feelings my long association with the school would be drawing to a close. SWiTCH “That’s the thing with you. I’ve known you a while now and I can’t think of a time when I’ve felt judged by you, or for that matter seen you judge someone else.” We were busy cleaning etching plates by the sink. Before I could respond the conversation continued as he went around the room naming everyone’s crime that sat working around the table. I had made it a policy from the beginning of the residency to never ask directly about anyone’s reason for being in Grendon. I had never googled them or tried to find any details about them outside of the prison either. For this reason it was easy to interject with certainty and also not react to the list of offences that had been shared. “Who am I to judge anyone here? You’ve been judged, by others…and yourselves. The present is more than the past for me and I prefer to move forward not back.” SWiTCH We were having a lazy evening in front of the TV, there was nothing on of interest and so I had started to trawl the various channel apps. “Shall we watch this?” I clicked the button on the remote control on ITVs latest crime drama, The Suspect, as soon as she responded positively. The screen went black and the following words appeared “ALL PROBLEMS ARE iLLUSiONS OF THE MiND” – Eckhart Tolle SWiTCH I arose slowly, it had been some minutes since the weight of my bladder had forced my eyes into a flicker and once the light from the window had poured into my consciousness there was no resisting the uncomfortable sensation. Returning from the bathroom after a stagger and a half-conscious piss, I slumped back into bed horizontally and lay half asleep and half awake. The thought that entered my head at this point felt like I was dreaming but somehow I was aware of the room around me at the same time. Awake or asleep or neither but both? Whatever the reality, each state impinged on the other and gradually I found myself in a lecture theatre being grilled about my methods and approach to art making. It seemed I was on the back foot and the momentum of the situation I had surreptitiously arrived in was forcing me into a defensive mindset. My dozing head reclining in bed opened my mouth in the theatre and the words started to fall out. “Monkey Tennis” I proclaimed. “That is how I would describe this part of my process…Monkey Tennis!” SWiTCH I operated the lever that lifted the arm that held the needle that transferred the sound from the vinyl to the speakers and through into the room and gently returned it to the start of track two on side one of The Gift by The Jam. I’d listened to the track four or five times in a row now and on this morning, in this moment it seemed to be speaking to me as it had never before. I reasoned that I had listened to it over a thousand times in my life but, today, thinking about Grendon it seemed to be revealing itself far more than ever before. I would listen to it again and again and again over the next hour or so, scanning the lyrics on the inner sleeve over and over, each time the words penetrated my thoughts about the time I have at Grendon, the work I’m making and the people I’ve met. WHY ARE YOU FRiGHTENED CAN’T YOU SEE THAT iT’S YOU. THAT AiN’T NO GHOST THAT’S A REFLECTiON OF YOU. SWiTCH My manager Jane walked alongside me and asked a simple question, “You OK?” I wanted to say yes, I wanted to just let her get on with her day but my words were like greyhounds released from a trap, “not really, I’m struggling with leaving I’m afraid.” SWiTCH My methods have developed over time and my need for sketchbook work, in whatever form, helps me to make sense of the work I’m making. It can be a long process. It is routine, it is repetition, it is asking questions of the ideas as they develop from all possible angles and it is a reciprocal dialogue and exchange between myself and the pages in front of me. However, during the last residency at the BMI I stumbled on a method that helped me capture something that I might call intuition, although this may not entirely be accurate as descriptive label for what actually took place. As I worked through my sketchbooks as normal, something in the back of my head was just nagging at me. I needed to rupture the refined process that I had developed in order to reinvigorate and stress test the practice and I realised that within my notebooks (separate to my sketchbooks) lay all the little ruptures I needed. Every now and again a nagging thought will enter my head and stay there until I make a short, concise note that gets it on to paper in a little notebook. One such example would be a note I made after watching the hat shop sequence in Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jnr. It simply reads, YOU SAW TOMMY COOPER DiE LiVE ON TV iN 1984 / BUSTER KEATON HAT SHOP – WHAT WOULD HAPPEN iF YOU COMBiNE THE TWO THiNGS? This note became the film Just Like That that was screened alongside a favourite work of mine, Kevin Atherton’s Video Times at the International Film Festival, About Town. The realisation from this was that whilst I don’t believe these thoughts somehow come from nowhere (they are all in line with my conceptual interests) I didn’t spend weeks exploring and pondering the intricacies of how to make work around this thought. I just accepted it as a ‘what if…’ and embracing a ‘what if…’ for me ruptured the road, so to speak, and challenged me and my process in new ways. In my clouded half dream it was this that I was trying to explain to the group in front of me. I couldn’t see them, they were either students or colleagues or community members from Grendon or Ikon staff but I felt that my explanation of my methods was clear…“If you’ve seen ‘I’m Alan Partridge’ then you know that whilst ‘Monkey Tennis’ wasn’t made, ‘Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank’ was. It’s about embracing the intuitive notion that however improbable an idea might be it could break a chain of thought and become something…” SWiTCH Having finally arrived at the Tate Britain Archive after managing to get a guard to open up the ticket machine and rescue James’ card, we had been given a small folder containing a number of 6×4 colour photographs with a few older black and white images of varying sizes mixed in. As I leafed through the images with protective gloves and image revealed itself from the stack. I fixed on the image of Marie-Louise that pictured her in a small photo-booth format appearing from the ghost train in Brighton. I knew nothing of her as a person and yet this image enticed me closer to her. For the rest of the day the image would reappear in my thoughts, on the train home I looked on my phone at the quick record I had made of it and remained intrigued…Who are you? Are you the woman in all the books? Her eyes burned into me and it felt like this image had connected me to Marie-Louise in a way I hadn’t necessarily felt I had been before, something in the expression of fear, or was it post-fear? A human-ness, a vulnerability that made her suddenly present for me. Maybe a distance that I’d previously felt was being closed by this single image. This is how I get closer to her. SWiTCH “…iT ENTAiLED A RECOGNiTiON THAT iDENTiTY WAS BOTH SOMETHiNG YOU WERE BORN WiTH AND SOMETHiNG THAT COULD BE PLAYED AROUND WiTH.” SWiTCH “I’ve followed your lead and developed a number of characters.” The workshop was a hive of activity and the D wing community members were productively working on their etching plates. “How does that work then?” I asked. “Well, I have given them names and worked on their costumes. For instance, when it’s bingo night on the wing I do the calling as Barry Flopcocker, he’s obsessed with British Standard Institute codes and his voice is really nasal and annoying. I just flatten my hair forward and borrow some glasses and people I’ve been on the wing for years with don’t recognise me. I’ve got a few others too. Just a few extra masks isn’t it?” SWiTCH I rose with a start and my first thought was the half dream I’d just had. I reached for my notebook and scribbled down two ‘what ifs’ and then, closing the book, I wrote on the cover “Monkey Tennis and Chris Eubank Moments”. SWiTCH “I’ve always worked hard and I think I’m driven but my biggest concern is will that drive carry on outside of the school. I’m just exhausted at the moment and there’s no energy there. I’m searching for it, but it’s just not there…it’s never been like that before, I’ve got nothing and that’s scary for me.” Jane responded with kind words, “you are a very talented artist, very talented lecturer, well respected colleague and a nice man. Of course, you’ll feel uncertain, but whatever you do in the future, wherever you go they, whoever they are, will be lucky to have you.” My reply was instant, “those are very kind words Jane, but I’m probably not any of those things really…my mask is just a really convincing one.” SWiTCH Busying myself in the workshop as the A wing community members sat down to begin work, I filled the kettled and turned to ask who wanted tea, coffee and biscuits. Once I had collected the orders I made the drinks and placed them out on the table in front of each recipient. The youngest member of the group thanked me for his coffee. Sometime later I looked over at him and he was seemingly inactive and just staring at the mug of dark brown fluid in front of him, he looked lost in a thought. “You ok?” my enquiry jolted him from his contemplation, “Yeah, thank you for the coffee…” he seemed ready to say something else and I left enough space for him to continue, “I was just sitting here thinking that you’re the first person who isn’t a prisoner to ever make me a cup of coffee.” SWiTCH I got into the car and prepared to set off for Grendon, she stood in the doorway to wave me off and I prolonged my departure by connecting my phone to the car stereo and scrolling through my Spotify playlists. There was only one song I wanted to hear and the one hour twenty-minute journey would be filled with it exclusively. Select Repeat > Select Repeat One. Track Two of The Gift. I pulled off the drive and waved at her as I went. WHY DO YOU TURN AWAY, KEEP iT ALL OUT OF SiGHT. DON’T LiVE UP TO YOUR GiVEN ROLES. THERE’S MORE iNSiDE YOU THAT YOU WON’T SHOW.  SWiTCH I sat in my gowns applauding the students I had come to know so well as they journeyed across the stage to collect their Masters certificates. It was the hottest day of the year and the punishing temperatures outside combined with the glare of the theatre stage lights and the heavy clothing waged war on my tolerance levels. I felt like I was literally in an oven as the beads of sweat gathered around my brow and collar. As each face came and went I felt a sinking feeling inside, the pit of my stomach fluttered to a twist as I considered my next move. A sense of utter worthlessness washed over my thoughts and not even the immense pride I have in the graduates that passed before me could assuage my uncertainty, “Are you sure?” I asked myself, “all those hours you put in, all those ideas you executed, all those moments you fought for the courses you taught on…what will you be without those things?” The words that were in my head coalesced with the sudden realisation that I’d stopped clapping. My hands reanimated themselves and I admonished myself immediately, the voice in my head raged at my selfishness “it’s not your day, how dare you wallow in self-absorption like this. Grow up!” In that moment, that was it…done. I resolved in an instant to wake up and focus on the good things that I have. I sat privately embarrassed at the way I had been thinking through all of these sudden changes. My mom’s voice entered my thoughts and I could hear her saying (as she often does) “When things are hard, work harder. Get your head down and work until you get to where you need to be. It’s down to you and nobody else.” SWiTCH “ARTiSTS SHOULD ALWAYS BE SEARCHiNG.” SWiTCH I had been talking about the new book I’d brought in by Grayson Perry, The Pre-Therapy Years and we had focused on his early days. Grayson Perry is a popular figure in the art workshops and I’d wanted to share this book as I felt that this popularity may be reinforced by his association with therapeutic practice. SWiTCH It had been the best of days in the workshop, the D and F wing members worked hard on their latest imagery, we had discussed everything from mapping out a rough plan for potential new work around neutral broken masks, Bob Mortimer’s mental health in Gone Fishing, The Strange World of Gurney Slade and the merits (or lack of) in green tea. Without planning to, perhaps disarmed by the jovial flow of the day, I opened up a conversation about my current decision to step away from teaching with a quick aside about job prospects. In the coming moments I spoke about how I felt and they listened. Looking around I realised that what I was getting here was a space to share, a space to talk and a space where total honesty would be the only pervading state of being. As the discussion met its natural end one of the quieter community members sat ready to attract my attention. He hadn’t been a big talker during the time we’d known each other, and that was OK with me. Everyone finds their own moment to speak and whilst some people you can know in an instant, others can take time to trust and be trusted. I’d gradually felt that he was opening up incrementally during the sessions in the workshop and on this day, his piercing blue eyes rested on me before a few moments silence gave way to a question. “I know what I was meaning to ask you, have you ever read a book called The Power of the Now?” My immediate response was a negative, I couldn’t recall that book at all, once I had signalled my ignorance of it he continued. “You should read it. It’s by a guy called Eckhart Tolle…” I gestured immediately to interrupt, clawing the recesses of my recent memory I found the reference from the lazy night in front of the TV, “all problems are illusions of the mind!” I exclaimed. He smiled, “that’s the one. You should read the whole book, I think you’d get something from it.” SWiTCH “ART CAN PROViDE A WAY OF ACCESSiNG THAT FANTASY LiFE.” SWiTCH I had never been to a prison wedding before. Inside I was still overwhelmed with the invite. It was a special service and I noted that this had been one of the most enjoyable weddings I’d ever been invited to. The community member turned groom came over at the conclusion of the ceremony and threw his arms around me before thanking me for being there. “Thank you for inviting me, it means a lot.” They were not empty words, it felt like a milestone in the way I had been welcomed and ‘taken in’ by the communities at Grendon. We compared suits for a moment, we had both opted for blue tonic, three button with 5inch side vents (as it should be) and before moving into the gardens for photos I took a moment to look around the small gathering of guests, the bride smiled at me, she had a reassuring kindness in her face. This was a great day. An important day. SWiTCH I dropped my bag and walked to the turntable, without even thinking I turned on the switches and as the speakers hummed into life I cued the needle to hover over track two of side one. Having dropped the needle I moved into the kitchen and, checking the level of water as adequate, flicked on the kettle. Sitting in the chair I picked up the inner sleeve and started reading the words along with Weller. SO YOU WEAR THAT GHOST AROUND FOR DiSGUiSE. BUT THERE’S NO NEED JUST ‘COS iT’S ALL WE’VE KNOWN, THERE’S MORE iNSiDE YOU THAT YOU HAVEN’T SHOWN. SWiTCH The pub was empty and smelt of a past life that it clearly hadn’t witnessed for a while. I was meeting some PhD students for lunch and as I sat down with my lime and soda water there was clearly an air of uncertainty amongst the group. Carly had been offered a new job, it was her birthday and she was clearly thrown by the decision that was lying ahead in terms of whether she should take the role on offer…stick or twist. I listened as Nova, Lara and Adrian threw supportive suggestions and batted pros and cons backward and forward. I thought I needed to join in somehow. “I have a tiger inside here.” I gestured towards the space between my chest and stomach, “when I need to make a decision he growls at me. Listen to your tiger, see what that tells you.”

Art at HMP Grendon is supported by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust and HM Prison and Probation Service.