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From the Inside: The Art of Fremantle Prison
Isa Menzies and Jacquie Brisbout
Menzies, Isa & Jacquie Brisbout 2014, 'From the inside: the art of Fremantle Prison', Fremantle Studies, 8: 96-115.
Introduction
The Convict Establishment, as Fremantle Prison was first known, was built using convict labour from limestone quarried on the site. It was constructed between 1852 and 1859, with the first prisoners moved into the southern wing of the main cell block in 1855. In 1867 the Convict Establishment was renamed Fremantle Prison. The following year transportation ceased with the Hougoumont carrying the last convicts to Fremantle (and Australia). Nearly 10000 convicts passed through the ‘Establishment between 1850 and 1868.
Following the transfer of the imperial establishment to the colony, Fremantle Prison became Western Australia’s primary maximum-security prison, a position it occupied until it finally closed in 1991. It has been a tourist attraction since that time; in 2010 Fremantle Prison and ten other convict-era sites were ascribed with World Heritage status under the collective Australian Convict Sites nomination.
The Prison’s heritage status is supported by the Fremantle Prison Collection, a significant collection of approximately 15000 objects, which spans the years of the Prison’s operational life. Material ranges from convict clothing to modern prison greens; from shackles to shivs, and everything in between.
The Fremantle Prison Collection represents an incredibly rich archive of material that grants a unique perspective on the lived experience of incarceration. When analysed through the lens of the social historian, the Collection reveals an aspect of Fremantle Prison’s history that emphasises “‘real life” rather than abstractions ...“ordinary” people rather than privileged elites, [and] everyday things rather than sensational events.' [1]
There are many insights to be gained from examining the everyday lives of the men and women of Fremantle Prison. It is hoped that shedding light on such stories will prompt audiences to critically interrogate the past, rather than accepting assumptions about prisoners and prison life.
Prison Art
The Fremantle Prison Collection includes a small but significant collection of artworks done by prisoners, including approximately 300 moveable items such as painted furnishings, works on canvas and board, drawings, and sketches. It also incorporates fixed works such as graffiti and murals in yards, chapels and on cell walls. The vast majority of this work was completed during the last half of the twentieth century, in the final decades of the Prison’s operational life.
Prison art is a feature of incarceration across the Western world. In Australia during the twentieth century it appears that each state evolved their art program separately. As Western Australia’s chief maximum- security prison during the twentieth century, Fremantle Prison is arguably the birthplace of the Western Australian prison art genre.
Detail from Cell E33, which was once home to convict forget James Walsh. Photo: Isa Menzies 2012
One of the earliest examples of prison art in the state is the cell of James Walsh, a convict who was sentenced to transportation for the crime of forgery. Born in 1833 in London, Walsh was transported to Western Australia in 1854 at the age of around 21. [2] Though very little is known about him, the standard of his work has earned him a place in the Dictionary of Australian Artists. Both the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the monastic township of New Norcia hold examples of his work. His Fremantle Prison Collection portfolio is represented by the walls of his cell. All four sides of Walsh’s cell are covered in drawings and sketches depicting classical subject matter - the Madonna and child, prancing horses, Greeks and Romans. Comptroller-General of Convicts Edmund Henderson, in his Rules and Regulations, stated that ‘No prisoner shall disfigure the walls or other parts of the prison by writing on them or otherwise.' [3] How Walsh managed to cover three quarters of his cell in sketches without attracting punishment has invoked much speculation; one story that has been told to visitors is that Walsh covered the walls of his cell with porridge in order to conceal the drawings. Another more likely theory is that Walsh was granted permission to draw on his cell walls perhaps in exchange for undertaking private commissions from Warders. Not knowing the circumstances around the creation of the works it is difficult to position them. Are they transgressive: works that deliberately flaunted the rules in the same way that contemporary Prison graffiti does? Or was the Convict Establishment complicit in their creation? In this way the art collection highlights the subtly shifting dynamics of power between prison and prisoner.
Education and the Prison Art program
In 1902 Fremantle Prison employed a full-time schoolmaster, a Mr George Ward. In 1903 Ward approached the authorities with a request that drawing be added to the Prison curriculum. The Superintendent, however, did ‘not think it necessary for young men to draw ... chairs teapots &c, being that so many are backward in reading & writing &c &c’. [4] The Schoolmaster defended his request, arguing that the results aimed at are not so much mechanical as self-initiative, in producing scholars more amenable, thoughtful, self-respecting and self-controlled. Drawing is a main link in the chain of a more perfect development of the mind, and has a direct refining and humanising influence. 5
We are yet to learn whether or not Ward’s argument was successful, but it is clear from the Collection that prisoners continued to produce art, whether it was part of the official curriculum or not.
A notable highlight of the Prison’s art collection is an unassuming little sketch book, which contains poems and drawings that were almost certainly produced outside the classroom environment. Done by a female resident of the Women’s Prison during the early 1940s, the Works identify their creator as a witty and clever young woman, though as a female prisoner she did not have access to the educational opportunities provided to her male counterparts. Even at the time they vacated Fremantle Prison in 1970, female prisoners were only provided with a single teacher for one half-day per week.
Page 9 of this 1943 sketchbook by female prisoner ‘P.E.J.’ features a poem titled ‘Short Shirted’, where the artist laments that ‘my night-shirt, the peak of my suffering here/does not even come to my knees.’ (Fremantle Prison Collection. ©retained by the artist. Photo: Janet Vost 2013)
The male prisoners, on the other hand, benefitted from the addition of an arts and crafts section in 1957, [6] and this is reflected in the art collection, the majority of which dates from the 1950s onwards. As well as the formal introduction of arts and crafts, the 1950s brought other changes to Fremantle Prison, changes that would continue to influence the Prison until it closed.
The Carrolup School
Aboriginal representation among Western Australia’s prison population has been disproportionate throughout the twentieth century, [7] however in the 1950s a number of factors caused a jump in the number of Aboriginal inmates to be found at Fremantle Prison. These included the closing of the Rottnest Native Prison, as well as the closing of many native settlements, due to the implementation of increasingly assimilationist policies. These factors, in conjunction with legislative discrimination such as restricted access for Aboriginal people to towns and cities (including Perth), [8] led to a rise in the number of Aboriginal men and women held at Fremantle Prison. It was during the 1950s that the proportion of Aboriginal men and women in prison reached 40%, [9] and this figure has changed little in the intervening years. 10
One of the unexpected consequences of the influx of Aboriginal inmates to Fremantle Prison during the 1950s is the widespread influence of the Carrolup School in contemporary Aboriginal prison art. The Carrolup Native Settlement was located in south-west WA, near the wheat-belt town of Katanning. From 1946 until the Settlement closed in 1951, a man named Noel White served as the headmaster of the Carrolup School. White and his wife Lily encouraged the students to draw and paint as a method of fostering learning. While it began in essence as a means to an educational end, the art produced by the Carrolup children became, for a brief period, world famous. Depicting the landscape of the south- west, often with traditional hunting or corroboree scenes that the children themselves would never have witnessed, the beautifully executed artworks convey a sense of longing for a time and place that no longer existed. 11
Detail from a Carrolup-style painting by former Carrolup student and later Fremantle Prison inmate Revel Cooper. The full piece is mounted surrounded by hunting tools. Fremantle Prison Collection (©Revel Cooper, 1972. Photo: Isa Menzies 2012)
In many respects Walsh’s cell drawings also fit within this paradigm, in that the work transports the viewer to an idealised past not known by the artist himself. In the late 1940s, a visiting soroptimist named Florence Rutter noted the talent of the Carrolup children, and began to champion their cause internationally, touring the works and raising the profile of the talented young artists across the globe. She even delivered a book of their work to the Queen of England. [12] This recognition signalled a period of hope for the Carrolup children; one student, a 14 year-old boy named Reynold Hart, wrote to Florence Rutter:
The native children in the past wasn’t given a chance to learn, but since Mr White took over the teaching at Carrolup we are now getting people to respect us and our drawings ... [12]. Before Mr White came to Carrolup nobody ever heard the name of Carrolup, but now it is nearly known all over the World. So now I am getting older I would like to take my place in this world amongst other people and be respected as a decent citizen of Australia. I’d like to work as a Commercial Artist or have a sheep farm of my own. 13
Sadly, Carrolup was closed down by the Department of Native Affairs in 1951, viewed by many as a victim of its own success. [14] Unfortunately many former students of the school later found themselves behind bars in Fremantle Prison.
In a fortuitous turn of events, Noel White also came to Fremantle Prison. He was employed at the Prison school as Headmaster from 1961. [15] White’s experience teaching art at Carrolup was a significant factor in his employment, [16] and it appears he continued many of the traditions he had established there. For example, while at Carrolup, White had organised displays of the children’s work at local agricultural shows, and this he continued when he began working at the Prison. Prisoners were encouraged to paint or decorate small furnishings for exhibition and sale at the local agricultural shows. 17
Noel White teaching at Fremantle Prison, 1960s. (Berndt Museum Collection \/VU/P1578O © University of Western Australia Berndt Museum, used with permission)
Revel Cooper was one former Carrolup student who served time at Fremantle Prison. [18] In spite of his criminal record, Cooper’s art stands as highly influential to a generation of Aboriginal artists across Australia, including Lin Onus. [19] Cooper’s versatile talents led him to produce works in a number of styles, and in 1976 he illustrated Mary Durack’s book Yagan of the Bibbulman. While he was behind the walls of Fremantle Prison, Cooper produced many Carrolup-style works while in prison. One example from the Collection, painted in 1972 on a large piece of masonite, is surrounded by traditional wooden hunting tools such as boomerangs, spears, and a spear-thrower. The acrylic work at its centre depicts two men, clad in loincloths and body-paint, hunting kangaroos among the grasstrees and eucalypts of the south-west. If the works produced by the children of Carrolup expressed a longing for country and an attempt to escape from their institutionalised world, [20] then this must be equally true, if not more so, of the works they produced as adult prisoners.
The works produced at the Carrolup school represent some of the earliest examples in Australia of Aboriginal people re-connecting with their culture through art and this cultural connection continued in Fremantle Prison. The influx of Aboriginal prisoners from the south-west, as well as the continuing influence of Noel White, has led to a distinctive style of art among Aboriginal prisoners which was heavily influenced by the art of Carrolup. This style of work was so popular that the Collection includes works emulating the Carrolup style by non-Noongar Aboriginal artists. Even today, the biannual Prisoner Art exhibitions held by the Department of Corrective Services in the Prison Gallery include examples of grasstrees and sunsets, though this style is certainly not taught in prison art classes. [21] Noongar artists beyond the Prison system have also been influenced by the Carrolup movement, though the style has evolved to a greater extent outside the prison environment, with artists such as Shane Pickett moving from figurative landscape into much more abstract imagery. 22
A Carrolup-style work exhibited in the Summer 2011/12 Prisoner Art exhibition, Fremantle Prison. (©retained by the artist, used with permission. Photo: Isa Menzies 2012)
Steve Culley and the 1970s
By the late 1970s a number of shifts had occurred in penology in Western Australia. One key factor was the appointment of Colin Campbell to the Directorship of the Prisons Department in 1966. Campbell spearheaded a program of penal reform implementing many new programs and introducing psychologists and social workers into Western Australia’s prisons. Another influence was the increased exposure to drugs and counter-culture, reflected by a rise in drug-related sentences. This in turn heralded an increase in prisoners from middle-class backgrounds who brought with them an awareness of social justice issues. [23] Meanwhile, within the walls of Fremantle Prison the production of art works and painted furnishings continued under a succession of art teachers. Evidently, at some point, the art program began to be seen as an activity for the Aboriginal prisoners and non-Aboriginal participation declined [24] until by the late 1970s there were no non-Aboriginal students in the class at all. 25
This all changed in 1978, when the Prisons Department employed a young and relatively inexperienced art teacher by the name of Steve Culley. Arriving at the Prison during this period of social upheaval allowed Culley to capitalise on his long-haired hippie credentials with the prisoners, while simultaneously enjoying the support of the ‘old guard’ prison officers who knew his family as the locals who ran Culley’s Tea Rooms on High Street, Fremantle. 26
His classes proved popular with prisoners of all races though according to Culley the first non-Aboriginal participant, Johnny Chester, had to fight his way through the ‘heavies’ in the yard to attend. [27] The art class was moved several times during Culley’s tenure at the Prison, each time to accommodate the growing number of students until eventually around 60 men were participating at any one time. [28] Culley created an environment described by one prisoner as a place where ‘ideas unfold in the mind and lock into the creator’s hands, as each pursues his own style of art’. [29] Unfortunately the art classes, along with other educational and social welfare programs introduced during that era, were seen by some prison officers as a privilege that prisoners did not deserve.
In her fieldwork, social historian Jacqueline Wilson encountered widespread support among prison officers for Aboriginal prisoners taking prison art classes, but concluded that this was ‘for paternalistic reasons which are themselves subtly racist, in that they express and perpetuate the patronising undertone of vestigial colonialism.’ [30] Academic Sylvia Kleinert challenges this notion, arguing that prison has become a locus of cultural heritage for Aboriginal people, and that by occupying, transforming, and co-opting the physical fabric of the prison, they have subverted the role of being passive victims of colonial stereotypes. 31
In fact, it is possible for both of these assertions to be true. The inherent racism of many prison officers did not preclude Aboriginal prisoners from subverting the system by taking advantage of that paternalism.
The educational opportunities offered to the white prisoners, on the other hand, garnered the greatest resentment among prison officers as in many cases the non-Aboriginal prisoners occupied the same social class and educational background as their gaolers. [32] However, fortunately for the prisoners, prison art had become a well-established part of the prison institution. Culley’s approach was to offer art as a viable economic alternative to crime [33] and he encouraged prisoners to exhibit and sell their work. He organised several well-received exhibitions while he worked at Fremantle Prison, a tradition which continues to this day.
The most famous student to have worked under Steve Culley, and arguably Fremantle Prison’s most famous alumnus, is Jimmy Pike. A Walmajarri man, Pike was convicted of murder in 1980 and sent to Fremantle Prison. It was prison that provided Pike with the tools and the time to focus on producing art. Though he had grown up carving designs in wood [34] his participation in the Prison art class was his first experience of formal tuition. The story goes that Pike took a stack of blank lino blocks back to his cell over a weekend and emerged the next week with works that had both Steve Culley and the printmaking tutor, David Wroth, enraptured. In Culley’s own words, this was ‘the moment when the genius became absolutely undeniable.' 35
An early Jimmy Pike work from the Fremantle Prison Collection. (©retained by the artist, used with permission. Photo: Isa Menzies 2013)
It was from the unlikely origins of the prison art class that the Desert Designs brand was born, co-founded by Wroth and Culley and using images licensed from Jimmy Pike. The brand heralded the height of the Aboriginal cultural renaissance bringing Aboriginal design into the households - and wardrobes - of thousands of urban Australians. The Fremantle Prison Collection is fortunate to hold two early Pike paintings.
A sample from the Desert Design fashion range - Corroborree, c.1988 cotton jacket and dress, Desert Psychedelic: Jimmy Pike exhibition installed at artisan, April 2009. (Photo: Romy Willing 2009)
The Prisoner Voice
In many cases the artworks produced by the prisoners of Fremantle are objects of beauty, however, their importance goes beyond the aesthetic. The significance of the Prison’s art collection lies in the fact that unlike the majority of the Prison Collection these objects speak to us in the largely unmediated voice of the prisoner. In reference to the Prison’s treatment of its own convict-era development, cultural sociologist Toby Miller has criticised the site for focussing on the named and known engineers and governors while only acknowledging the convicts anonymously. [36] Both Jacqueline Wilson and Miller are in agreement that Fremantle Prison creates a distinction between historical criminals and modern criminals, with the former generally being portrayed as harmless larrikins, and the latter either ignored altogether or painted as vicious criminals. [37]
This positioning of the distant past as more significant - that is more worthy of interpretation and interest - than the recent past even permeates the Prison’s conservation. Despite the fact that Fremantle Prison’s national significance stems from its title as Australia’s longest serving prisons, a shelter that was erected in response to growing concerns about prisoner welfare in the aftermath of a 1988 riot was recently demolished to give a greater sense of the isolation of the convict-era Solitary block.
Interestingly, Miller argues that this focussing on the convict past allows Fremantle Prison to assure the visitor that the kind of treatment colonial criminals faced is firmly anchored in the past thereby completely disengaging the Prison site from contemporary issues of incarceration and penology. [38] This entrenched short-sightedness regarding the historical significance of contemporary prisoners is perhaps best demonstrated by the following example. In 1991, at the time that Fremantle Prison closed and when the site had already been earmarked as a historical monument, the Battye Library commissioned a program of oral histories to document the Prison’s story. Of the 30 oral histories undertaken only four are from former inmates. The rest focus on staff and high-level officials.
This certainly gives credence to Wilson’s criticism of the historical prisons of Australia, including Fremantle, for consistently denying the voice of the prisoner in interpretation. [39] Wilson argues that inmates as historical entities have been ‘othered’, their histories lost or neglected. She writes:
This othering occurs, in the first instance, as a seemingly unavoidable consequence of their criminal status, but is perpetuated by the mode of interpretation of many sites, due to the continuing influence of persons and/or groups identified with and representing the ‘Establishment'. 40
These representatives are what Wilson has termed ‘gatekeepers’, those who have a vested interest in choosing and regulating the particular narratives that are associated with a site. An example of their continuing influence at historical prisons around Australia lies in the common practice of employing ex-prison officers as tour guides where their role as gatekeepers is both literal and metaphorical. 41
Fremantle Prison currently employs three ex-prison officers as tour guides though ten years ago as many as half the staff were former Prison Officers. In the time that the government has been running the prison as a tourist attraction, no former inmates have ever been employed in this capacity.
Artful insights
Prison art can provide a valuable and unique insight into the prison experience, reminding us that these sites of incarceration are first and foremost about people, not buildings. [42] Various truths and realities emerge through these works that are not typically visible in other narratives of the Fremantle Prison site. One example is found in a collection of small pen and ink drawings donated by the family of a former Prison Officer who worked at Fremantle during the late 1960s and 1970s. These works, which still bear the marks of the toothpaste that was used to affix them to a cell wall, have been signed only with the pseudonym ‘Cammo’. One of these drawings depicts a hungry prisoner clutching an over-sized knife and fork as he eagerly waits for his meat to be served, literally fresh from the cow, by a portly cook. Around the time this work was created there were two food-related riots staged by the prisoners, in 1968 and 1972.
Untitled image by ‘Cammo', Fremantle Prison Collection, donated by Deborah, Cheryl and Linda Elkes. (©retained by the artist. Image reproduction: Isa Menzies Z013)
News reports of the ’68 riot gave accounts of residents in nearby Knutsford Street hearing metal plates banging, booing, cheering and clapping. A woman on Hampton Road reportedly heard prisoners rattling pots and yelling out ‘Where’s the cook? We want some food?“
The riots prompted the introduction of a new dietary scale for prisoners which was implemented in 1973. The poor quality of the food was a common and continual complaint among the prisoners at Fremantle and it caused at least half a dozen riots during the twentieth century. [44] Paradoxically, working in the kitchens was seen as one of the best positions within the Prison.“ [45] Kitchen staff had access to whatever food they wanted, received the highest level gratuity and were accorded status within the prison community. It was certainly recognised by both staff and prisoners that decent food was ‘key to keeping the prisoners happy.’ 46
Untitled image by ‘Cammo’, Fremantle Prison Collection, donated particular inmate: by Deborah, Cheryl and Linda Elkes. (©retained by the artist. Image reproduction: Isa Menzies 2013)
A second pen and ink drawing by ‘Cammo’ shows a grimacing mouse, ready to pound a strength tester with a mallet, the words ‘ARE YOU MAN OR MOUSE?’ apparently taunting him. This work can be viewed as an almost whimsical perspective of prison power play with the artist making fun of himself or his fellow inmates. The rusty gym equipment and fitness posters within the Prison’s collection are a testament to the once-prevalent display of muscles in the exercise yards. An ex-prison officer talks of one particular inmate who, at the hint of a fight, would strip down to his boxers and raise his fists in the air ready to do battle. [47] So beneath the humorous guise of a mouse proving his strength, this artwork could be interpreted as a picture of survival; prison is a place where men need to be tough and demonstrating power and influence avoids victimisation. In the words of a former inmate, ‘you have to fight; otherwise you’ll get stepped on." [48] While drawn in a cartoonish style and seemingly humorous in subject matter, the environment in which these drawings were created can be interpreted through their underlying themes.
Another example where humour has been used to highlight uncomfortable truths can be seen in the works of ‘The Magic Pen’, an anonymous inmate cartoonist who was active at Fremantle Prison during the early ‘80s. Magic Pen mercilessly lampooned prison staff and departmental officials through biting satire. While his work gives a direct insight into the everyday lives of the prisoners at Fremantle through topical subjects such as staff strikes and prison food, he also addressed broader issues of the time including caricaturing prison psychologists, the influence of the Purple Circle [49] and the WA Prison Officers Union.
The Magic Pen, 1980s, Fremantle Prison Collection. (© retained by the artist. Image reproduction: Peter Huddleston 2012)
Unlike other forms of art, cartoons can provide a profound insight into how events are perceived as they unfold. Their immediacy offers both entertainment and instruction, [50] while the ephemerality of the medium contributes to its power. This ephemerality is reflected in the fact that the Prison does not retain any of the Magic Pen’s original works. They were so popular they quickly became collectable, photocopied and passed around for the amusement of both staff and prisoners. [56] Fortunately one such collector has enabled us to obtain digital copies of 50 Magic Pen works for the Collection. They represent a remarkable and unique perspective on life inside during this period.
In 2012, Fremantle Prison introduced an Art Tour held once a month and featuring the yard murals, many of the art cells, and some of the graffiti. One of the cells visited on the tour is home to a work known colloquially among Prison staff as ‘The Phoenix and the Dragon’. It was painted by well-known local tattoo artist, Bobby Thornton, as a way of reclaiming some sense of power as an individual. In Thornton’s words, ‘I [was] sick of looking at excretement (sic) stains and snot on the wall, and just the way, it was filth, you know. [52] To avoid detection he started the painting in the corner of his cell, out of view of the peephole in the door but the wall mural was eventually discovered. As punishment, Thornton received a fine of $160 and lost two days remission. [53] As the adornment of cell walls with anything permanent was considered defacement, decorating one's cell whether by painting the entire wall or scrawling a few lines in texta was transgressive and thus contained an element of subversion.
Painted cell wall by tattooist Bobby Thornton, 1989. (© retained by the artist. Photo: Isa Menzies 2013)
One of the most compelling examples is the prison cell that was painted completely black by an Aboriginal prisoner, the idea being that the cell walls would blend with his skin rendering him invisible within that space. [54] It may have been done as a practical joke, however it remains a powerful act of resistance nonetheless.
The Prison’s art tour is taken by a guide who is a practicing artist herself with an academic background in this field. Through the tour she attempts to recontextualise the Prison site by using the art to bring back the human dimension of incarceration. [55] The fact that the tour does break down stereotypes around prisoners is evidenced by repeated comments along the lines of ‘I had no idea there was anything like this here. [56] According to the guide the notion of prisoners being able to produce something of beauty is a novel one for visitors. Interestingly, she says there is a calmness on the art tours that is not evident in other tours she takes and that visitors walk out with a sense of euphoria; why this is the case she cannot say but hypothesises it is because they have seen ‘a little bit of light in a black space’. 57
Prison Art today
As a tool, art has functioned to re-empower the prisoner regardless of whether it has been created illicitly or in the sanctioned environment of a prison art class. Art classes continue in the Western Australian penal system today providing inmates with a chance to creatively channel emotions and to find their own voice. Research shows that prison art ‘provides inmates with the opportunity to construct and anchor an identity based around positive achievement.' 58
Participating in art classes can be a transformative experience for many prisoners; ‘the link between creative education and personal learning and personal learning and rehabilitation. [59] For many inmates participating in art education programs often serves as their first positive experience of learning, and in this way functions as an introduction to further education, both inside the prison system and upon release. [60] Recall that this was this approach taken by the Whites at Carrolup with remarkable (if short-lived) results. The research of David Gussak in the United States, undertaken between 2003-09, found that participation in art programs had a positive impact on prisoners’ moods, attitudes, and locus of control. 61
Created by the prisoners themselves, prison art allows the men and women who have been silenced by the system a voice. In the context of Fremantle Prison the art collection also provides an insightful and much more informed perspective on the lived experience of incarceration. Through sensitive interpretation, the art collection has the potential to reposition Fremantle Prison as a contemporary site of creativity as Well as a place of convict-era punishment.
Presented at the June 2013 Fremantle History Society meeting,
Notes
1 ‘What is social history?’ History Today, http://www.historytoday.com/raphael-samuel/what-social-history, accessed 11 October 2012.
2 ‘James Walsh’, Fremantle Prison Convict Database, http://www.fremantleprison.com.au/Pages/Convict.aspx [Accessed 11 October 2012].
3 E Henderson, Rules and Regulations, The Convict Establishment, 1861, p 15.
4 State Records of Western Australia, File Item No 1903/1156.
5 Ibid.
6 Adult Education in VIM Prisons: An overview of the past Z 00 years, Department of Justice, June 2002, p 13.
7 In 1904 some 34% of prisoners in Western Australia were Aboriginal. See JE Thomas &A Stewart, Imprisonment in Western Australia: Evolution, theory and practice, University of Western Australia Press, 1978, p 90.
8 ‘Kaartdijin Noongar: Sharing Noongar culture’, http://www.noongarculture. org.au/contact-history/impacts-of-law-from-the-aboriginal-protection-act-1905-onwards.aspx [Accessed 24 October 2012].
9 JS Kerr, Fremantle Prison: A policy for its conservation, (revised edn), Department of Contract and Management Services, Perth, 1998, p 13.
10 Data on prisons: Imprisonment rates and proportion of prisoners, Australian Institute of Criminology, http://www.aic.gov.au/en/publications/current%20series/rpp/100-120/rpp107/O6.aspx, [Accessed 24 October 2012].
11 ES Phillips & R Berndt in J Stanton, Nyungar Landscapes: Aboriginal artists of the South- West: The heritage of Carrolup, Western Australia, Berndt Museum Occasional Paper No 3, University of Western Australia Press, 1992, p 14.
12 Tracie Pushman &c Robyn Smith Walley, KoorahCoolingah (Children Long Ago), Berndt Museum of Anthropology Occasional Paper No 8, University of Western Australia Press, 2006, p 51.
13 M Durack Miller 8c F Rutter, Child Artists of the Australian Bush, George Harrap and Co Ltd, London, 1952, pp 67-8.
14 Ibid.
15 Adult Education in WA Prison, p 13.
16 John Stanton, 20 June 2012, personal communication with authors.
17 Ibid.
18 ‘Native prisoner an aspiring Namatjira?', Mirror, 6 November 1954, p 1.
19 S Kleinert, ‘Cooper, Revel Ronald (1834-1983)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooper-revel-ronald-12354, accessed 11 October 2012.
20 Phillips & Berndt, p 14.
21 Abdul Abdullah, Arts Coordinator, Department of Corrective Services (WA), March 2012, personal communication.
22 Pushman &Walley.
23 JZ Wilson, Prison: Cultural memory and dark tourism, Peter Lang, New York, 2008, p 115.
24 2012.117 is a provenanced painting, painted at Fremantle Prison by a non- Aboriginal prisoner during the 1950s, indicating that at least during that time non-Aboriginals did participate in the art classes.
25 Steve Culley, 6 July 2012, personal communication with authors.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Steve Culley, ‘Six years without a suicide: Art at Fremantle Prison’, Fremantle Studies, v.6, 2010, p 71.
29 Shackles, prison newsletter, Spring 1984, Fremantle Prison Collection.
30 JZ Wilson, p 124.
31 S Kleinert, ‘Revisiting the Prison: Museums in a penal landscape’, Round Table No 15, History and the Museum: New Narratives? 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Sydney, 3-9 July 2005.
32 JZ Wilson, pp 115-16.
33 Culley, personal communication
34 Victoria Laurie, ‘Two of a Kind’, The Australian, 16 June 2012, http://www. theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/two-of-a-kind-indigenous-artist-jimmy- pike-and-his-wife-pat-lowe/story-fn9n8gph-1226395295498 [Accessed 11 October 2012].
35 Culley, ‘Six years without a suicide’, p 73.
36 T Miller, Technologies of Truth: Cultural citizenship and the popular media, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1998, p 239.
37 JZ Wilson, p 44.
38 Miller, p 243.
39 JZ Wilson
40 Ibid., p 1.
41 Ibid., pp 19-20.
42 Josephine Wilson, ‘Behind Closed Doors: Inside Fremantle Prison’, Fremantle Arts Review, April/May 1992, p 5.
43 ‘Fremantle Warders Shoot in Gaol Revolt’, The West Australian, 5 June 1968, p 1, 9.
44 ‘Fremantle Gaol. Riot in the Prison. The Cookhouse Rushed. Officials Reticent’, Daily News, 21 August 1902, p 1; ‘Prisoners wake neighbours with wild night at Fremantle Gaol’, Mirror, 29 March 1930, p 1; ‘Disturbance at Gaol’, I/Western Mail, 13 May 1943, p 46; ‘Fremantle Warders Shoot in Gaol Revolt’.
45 ‘Arms’, former Fremantle Prison inmate (1969-83), 26 June 2013, personal communication with authors.
46 Ibid.
47 David Campbell, former Prison Officer, Fremantle Prison (1957-91), 22 February 2012, personal communication with authors.
48 ‘Arms’
49 The Purple Circle was an amorphous collective of prison officers who were powerful within Fremantle Prison during the 1970s and 80s. Rumours abound regarding how much power they wielded, though evidence suggests it was largely concentrated on their influence over staff rostering.
50 A Sayers, Behind the Lines: the year's best cartoons 2010, National Museum of Australia, http://www. nma. gov. au/exhibitions/behind_the_lines_the_years_ best_cartoons_2010/home [Accessed 11 July 2013].
51 Colin Whittaker, former Investigations Officer, Department of Corrections (1979-98), 8 August 2012, personal communication with authors.
52 Tit for Tat, documentary film produced by Graeme Isaac in conjunction with the NSW Film and Television Office (Sydney) and the Australian Film Finance Corporation, 1993. 53 Ibid.
54 Kevin Loadsby, former Prison Officer at Fremantle Prison, personal communication with authors, July 2012; Loadsby claims he was held responsible as he approved the prisoner in question taking the can of leftover black paint.
55 Janine DellaBosca, Fremantle Prison Tour Guide, 21 September 2012, interview with author.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 A Djurichkovic, ‘Art in Prisons: A literature review of the philosophies and impacts of visual arts programs for correctional populations’, UTS Shopfront in the Student series in conjunction with Arts Access Australia, 2011, p 11.
59 Ibid., p 6.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid., pp 8-10.
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