Inside Out: Creative Reflections on Art by Justice-Impacted Artists

A replica of a two-person prison cell, built from muslin and to scale, sits at the centre of a new immersive experience, Inside Out, at UNSW Art & Design. The immersive environment, an arts-based health research for knowledge translation output, turns the artwork of people with lived experience of incarceration into a surreal, dreamlike world that you can enter.

Inside Out is the result of an arts-based health research project, created by Dr Patricia Morgan in the Justice Health project at UNSW. It draws from the virtual exhibition Drawing Free, which is one of three outputs of her project about the harms of incarceration. From 9^th to the 13^th of September, UNSW Art & Design’s Paddington campus will host this self-guided immersive environment, created by UNSW students, Xinyue Zhou, Julia Wong, Joshua Chen, Yuxuan Yan, and Holiday Wang, under the mentorship of Dr Morgan.

The students began by reflecting on the artworks in the Drawing Free exhibition, which were created by nine artists with lived experience of incarceration. Rather than illustrating that experience literally, the students reworked the original imagery using surrealist and dream logic, transforming each artist’s self-portrait into a mythical being. Woven together with 2D and 3D animation and sound, those figures now inhabit a non-narrative world the visitor can be immersed in.

The physical immersive space itself is designed to communicate as much as the imagery within it. The room is built to the approximate footprint of a “two-out,” or two-person cell in the NSW prison system. Corrective Services NSW does not publish detailed cell floor plans, so the dimensions are estimates, but the intent of this space is deliberate, allowing visitors to register the physical scale of confinement before encountering any text. These dimensions are also significant because they align with published research on prison overcrowding, which shows cells of this kind are routinely used to hold up to four people, who can be confined for up to 23 hours a day.

Inside Out is a unique example of arts-based health research for knowledge translation in part through its content and medium. It uses creative practice to share and mobilise research findings about incarceration with a broader public. The exhibition translates Dr Morgan’s research on the social and health impacts of incarceration, including its disproportionate negative effect on First Nations communities and on people living with mental illness or disability, into an experience that can be felt as well as understood. The surreal visual language, layered soundscape and non-linear structure are deliberate choices, designed to hold the complexity and seriousness of this subject matter while remaining accessible. In doing so, the project reflects a broader ambition within arts and health research and practice, to use creative methods not only to generate knowledge, but to communicate that knowledge in ways that build empathy and awareness, invite dialogue and support more informed public understanding of serious health and social issues.

Details:

UNSW Art & Design, Paddington, Room D106, The Black Box, Block D

9 to 13 September 2027

Opening night: 9 September, from 5pm (event starts 6pm)

10 to 11 September: 12pm to 6pm | 12 to 13 September: 12pm to 5pm

Find out more:

Drawing Free exhibition: https://drawingfree.com.au/

Justice Reform Initiative, Jailing is Failing: https://www.justicereforminitiative.org.au/jailingisfailing