Archive: this exhibition ran in 2018. The Green Man Gallery closed to the public in December 2024.
In 2018, The Green Man Gallery hosted art and poetry by people then on death row at San Quentin Prison, California. Artist Nicola White and penfriend Viv Doyle brought the work to Buxton. The gallery described it as the first UK exhibition of this work outside London.
The works were created through ArtReach, a programme providing a platform for the artists to exhibit their work.
About the ArtReach programme
California’s corrections department transferred some people with death sentences from segregated units during a 2020–2022 pilot and expanded the programme in 2024. The transfers did not change their sentences.
The ArtReach programme believes that art and poetry ‘has the power and ability to transform thinking, consciousness, behaviour and lives. In doing so, it also helps to connect and engage these artists with the outside world. It also aims to humanise the people incarcerated on death row, utilising art as a vehicle to raise awareness, and to generate debate and discussion about capital punishment.’
The gallery reported that ArtReach had held seven UK exhibitions and one in California in the two years before the Buxton show.
The exhibition aimed to humanise the artists and encourage discussion about capital punishment.
The gallery said that most artists were self-trained and that the work was created in their cells.
How did this exhibition come to arrive in Buxton?
Buxton writer Viv Doyle began writing to Luis Maciel, then a prisoner on death row at San Quentin, through Lifelines, which arranges penfriends for prisoners in the United States. After 16 years of correspondence, she visited him in 2018.
Through Lifelines, Viv connected with artist Nicola White, who had worked with prisoners at San Quentin since 2015 to help them exhibit their work. Together they arranged the Buxton exhibition.
Nicola said, “These prisoners have been discarded and are considered of no use to society, thrown away, forgotten about, and I try to give them another chance, to show them that from a very dark place, some light can get out.” – Nicola White.
The original review described the colour and emotion of the work and the insight it offered into the artists’ experiences.
The exhibition included information about the artists and their work.
The original report said the show would run until 25 September 2018. The gallery’s final public opening was on 22 December 2024.
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