It’s no mean feat for a charity to pull off a collaboration between top contemporary artists and UK prisoners. Human Touch currently on show at Sotheby’s is the culmination of a major three-year project from the brilliant Fine Cell Work. It brings together the creations of eight contemporary artists and 24 prisoners who have become highly skilled stitchers, and the result is these works of art in a needlework medium. Reflecting the UK’s prison population, 95% of these stitchers are male. Hard men and needlework might sound an unlikely mix but then again these are prisoners who spend up to 20 hours every day locked in their cells with very little to occupy them. Fine Cell Work offers them the chance to earn money (about £40-£50 per cushion goes directly into their pocket) and has the added bonus of providing a kind of therapy, a sense of calm and a valuable skill for rehabilitation like inpatient drug rehab. This new auction is the first of its kind. Open for public view weekdays from 9am-4.30pm, see the works close-up and marvel at the skill involved. Buyers can bid in the online auction from now until Tuesday 3 March at 4.30pm. Here are some of our highlights:
Ai Wei Wei’s Odyssey in Quilting, 2019 is an enormous work that feels almost biblical with intricate embroidery depicting refugees at sea. Babies are held in the air above boats on choppy waters, and Ai Wei Wei himself is stitched into the scene. In this detail of a patch of the quilt there’s a dead child face down on the shore – the symbolic image of the Syrian refugee crisis. 12 prisoners worked on the project.
Cornelia Parker’s Bitter/Sweet wall-hanging is a dictionary definition of the words ‘bitter’ and ’sweet’ on either side of a piece of linen, so they sit face to face within the fabric. The work was stitched by a single prisoner.
No Man Is An Island, Wolfgang Tillman’s iconic pro-EU, anti-Brexit campaign poster is being re-created as a piece of needlepoint that will become a cushion once finished. It’s on display in a near-complete state since one of the three highly-skilled stitchers (Steve, Mark and Alan) was released from prison during the making.
Annie Morris, Hope From a Thin Line blurs the boundary between the domestic and a work of art. In her own home the sofa and bed are covered in sewn drawings; here a group of stitchers embroidered 10 pieces that have then been upholstered onto an antique chaise longue. Clever curation means the chair is placed alongside her husband, Idris Khan’s work Numbers.
Idris Khan’s Numbers follows a photograph made by the artist in 2016 of smudged tally marks on a chalkboard. This was digitally printed on linen and then embroidered by a single prisoner named Ben – an impressive accomplishment given its size (180 x 210 cm). From a distance the work looks like a charcoal canvas, but up close you can see the hundreds of tiny seed stitches that make up the surface of each scratch – a prisoner’s countdown to freedom from the cell. It took 180 hours for Ben to stitch – as Khan said: ‘we are looking at one thing: time.’
Carolina Mazzolari’s Void explores her fascination with the subconscious. An abstract shape appears liquid, with inky threads pooling and then fading out with interweaving lines. The artist regularly works with Fine Cell Work and many of the tapestries at her most recent exhibition at Tristan Hoare during Frieze were made with the help of their skilled prisoners.
