Right to Dissent | School of Abolition Billboards

554/556 Royston Road | Glasgow | G21 2DJ

Documentation courtesy of Bart Urbanski

For this public artwork, we have commissioned artists Alberta Whittle and Tania Bruguera to create two distinct yet harmonious artworks which are displayed on two out of the three billboards on Royston Road. The third and final billboard was originally intended for an artist, who is unable to participate in this commission due to their current incarcerated status. Instead, we have used a quote by Audre Lorde as a placeholder for this particular artist to demonstrate the need for radical change within the criminal justice system.

The commission forms part of the School of Abolition, a year-long action research project that draws on contemporary art and activist practices to challenge Scotland's prison industrial complex and think through ways in which we can respond to harm and crime without policing or imprisonment. 

This public artwork finds itself at an odd juxtaposition between a housing estate, an industrial site, an allotment, and HMP Glasgow which is currently under construction just behind these billboards. The images of these artworks are scaled up and made visible to thousands of community members, commuters, labourers, and factory workers in and around this part of the city to highlight the plight of those that are fiercely against the construction of a new prison in Scotland.

Both artists have approached the commission in different and distinct ways, through explorations of dissent, environmentalism, censorship, Black liberation and neocolonialism. Yet no matter their differences, these artworks including the placeholder stand together in solidarity against the ways in which nation-states impose oppressive power over disenfranchised peoples through various forms of carceral control.

Plantations are the new Prisons | Alberta Whittle

Alberta Whittle’s commission 'Prisons are the new Planations'  takes an image from her groundbreaking film 'between a whisper and a cry (2019). Hinging on memory, trauma and the afterlives of colonialism, the film combines archival footage, contemporary stories, happenings and events, narrative texts and voices, using sound and oral histories as forms of knowledge. 

Whittle reuses this image of a Caribbean plantation overseer riding a horse, with text stating 'Prisons are the new Plantations'. The work indicates the many ways Black and POC's lives have been and continue to be surveilled, brutalised and governed through neocolonial systems of control, extraction, and capital. From historical Slave Codes and runaway slave patrols in the US and the Caribbean, to present racialised stop and searches to the construction of new prisons in post-colonial Jamaica and Nigeria as a condition of UK 'aid' packages, Whittle reminds us that carceral colonialism is ever-present and is constantly being remade within the legal parameters of the criminal justice system.

Additionally, the slimy yellow text on a sickly green background signals to the construction site of the new HMP Glasgow. The prison has been approved to be built on the highly polluted, disused Provan Gas Holder Station site. Environmental reports have identified localised toxic contaminants such as arsenic, lead, copper, zinc, and widespread asbestos at levels deemed a potential health risk to those imprisoned, their families, and those employed by HMP Glasgow. 'Prisons are the new Planations' is a nod to the necropolitics at play in which life is strategically subjugated to the power of death.

Manifesto on Artists’ Rights | Tania Burguera

Tania Bruguera's work dissects aspects of power and control, often confronting the political landscape in Cuba. In 2009 she performed Tatlin's Whisper no. 6 at the Havana Biennial. A stage was set up reminiscent of the Fidel Castro 1959 victory speech on the night of the Cuban revolution. Members of the audience were invited to take to the stage and speak uncensored for one minute, an act fiercely denied in Cuba. Visitors flocked one by one to the stage to openly address governmental abuse of power, censorship, and the denial of personal liberties. Two hours before the performance, Tania was arrested and subsequently served an eight-month prison sentence.

Ten years on, thousands of Cubans have taken to the streets protesting against hyperinflation, growing inequality, and the Government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic in one of the largest mass protests the country has ever seen. The protests built on rallying calls for a freer, more liberal Cuba and have been led by dozens of artists, including Tania Bruguera, all of which have been arrested or detained over the past few years over anti-government pro-free speech performances.

With the recent UK crackdown on artistic freedom of expression, such as a police raid on Antepavilion, an east London arts complex or councillors in Southend-on-Sea, who succeeded in removing the installation How to Make a Bomb: An English Garden by the artist Gabriella Hirst or our fundamental right to protest coming into question. We have displayed the first page of Tania Bruguera's 2012 manifesto on Artists' Rights that was used during a speech she gave at the 2012 Geneva Summit on Human Rights and Democracy. The work on display draws parallels with Cuban cultural workers as an act of solidarity and asks the viewer to think about the role of artist’s in society and their right to dissent.

Please note that Tania Bruguera was under house arrest at the time she was approached about this project. We, therefore, cannot thank her and her studio enough for their dedication in the face of such adversity. 

You can read the full manifesto here.

Image designed by Design Maeve Redmond 2021.

A note from the curator

The third billboard is dedicated to an artist currently inside the UK prison system. I first encountered their work as part of an arts organisation's annual exhibition on prison art in 2020.

After six months of negotiations with different levels of management within the prison and the arts organisation that arranged the exhibition, I was, unfortunately, unable to work with this artist. I thought about what it meant to be denied such basic liberties. How creative incarcerated people are used as another form of extractive labour by the state, yet are denied participation in discourse that actively encourages the abolition of the very structure that oppresses them.

As I cannot show you her work, I instead use a quote as a placeholder from self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde. The quote 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House'. is derived from a speech she delivered to a feminist conference in 1979 where Lorde criticised the organisers for excluding race, age, class, and sexuality from the conference topics and discussions. I use this quote to warn those who seek to use the 'right' or 'traditional' channels to achieve true equality and social justice. Instead, alongside Lorde, I argue that we can only bring about genuine change by abolishing those very tools that maintain structures and systems of oppression.

You can read the full text here.

Image designed by Design Maeve Redmond 2021.