Through the Blue is a showcase of artwork, music and writing made in criminal justice settings in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey and entered into the 2025 Koestler Awards.
The exhibition has been co-curated by a group of people on probation in Oxford and Reading, who considered more than 600 works made by people in prisons, young offender institutions, secure hospitals and on probation in the region, and selected around 70 for display.
The co-curators were drawn to intriguing works that resonated with their own experiences and reflected their varied creative interests. Boundaries and thresholds loomed large in their recollections of time in prison and are depicted in many of the exhibited artworks: walls, doors, windows, hatches. Means of containing, but also of seeing and moving through.
“I feel hugely privileged to have viewed the entries. It was like opening a treasure trove of talents.”
Exhibition co-curator
Together, the exhibited artworks explore the experience of navigating a way through obstacles, drudgery, sadness and towards freedom, and both the excitement and fear that prospect can inspire. We also see the potential for creativity to blur and breach these boundaries through works made to share with loved ones and to mark moments of humour and connection.
Many of the works deal with light and dark, in and out, and the space and movement between these states. The colour blue, prominent in the selection and exhibition design, underscores this duality. While blue is associated with cold and melancholy, it is also associated with blue skies and sunny days. It is the frightening, unknown depths of the ocean and an expansive horizon, calm and full of possibility.
We will update this page with further details closer to the exhibition.
