Saturday 6 March 2021

create escape

With an expertly spliced narration from Bob Ross’ own affirming Joy of Painting, Banksy (see previously) shares the making of his latest mural of a jail-break taking place on the walls of Her Majesty’s Prison in Reading where Oscar Wilde was incarcerated for the crime of gross indecency with the poet scaling the outer wall with knotted bedding anchored by a typewritten manuscript and typewriter.

“But we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.  We have nothing else to think of.  Suffering―curious as it may sound to you―is the means by which we exist, because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the evidence, of our continued identity,” said Wilde of his time behind bars. The prison confirms that the graffiti will be a permanent feature as the artist claims the work as his own.