Terry Ayres

My name's Sue Paul.

I was invited to set up an art class in maximum security at Long Bay in 1986.

Little did I know that I would actually develop, go on to develop the specialist art program, set up the Boom Gate Gallery at Long Bay and I also established the department's art collection.

I didn't realise I'd be there for 25 years.

I'd like to introduce you to the work of Terry Ayres. He was one of the 10 inmates in the art program.

I think I need to kind of just go back a little bit in so much as from time to time I would bring in some photographs just to show the inmates what I was doing. And there was one time when we were talking about spirals, so I bought in a photograph I'd taken of a fossilized shell imprint. And it was quite extraordinary because the next day Terry came up with the idea of creating these circles. And from there it developed into a theme which he carried on for like the next 18 months.

This is an example of one of the one of  his works.  Now although we were discussing spirals, this is actually concentric  circles.  Terry had the idea of creating these concentric circles using  a tin can piece of string and a pencil.  And I just want to show you the way that  he developed the work.  

So in the background you have the tone ranging from  light to to dark, and that's starting to have a  spatial effect with the work.  But to accentuate what was happening with the depth of  the work, he then added an overlay of these small  circles.  By changing the size and by changing the colour, he  was then able to create a lot of depth and  create the effect of a lot of them coming forward  and they're all at different spatial depths. 

So what I think is really successful in the way  that he was approaching the work is that the viewers  eye spends a lot of time exploring the whole surface. 

Terry's work continued to evolve and there's one piece which  the major work that he did with this piece, it's  in the department's art collection and it's a very, very  successful piece in terms of the composition having the the  background spirals or concentric circles and just that overlay. So this is a little detail and it just shows you the complexity of of and detail in the work. 

I took a photograph of Terry in his corner of the room, the corner of the art studio, surrounded by his spirals. And it brings me great joy every time I see this image because it's it's a real celebration of colour. And I find it, it's extraordinary that this is actually in a maximum security prison. And it had such an impact not only on viewers who were seeing his work, but had an enormous impact on the individual. And it was a turning point for Terry in terms of how he felt about himself, how he felt about others and and the direction he'd like to to take. 

I should mention that all the participants in the art unit were encouraged to develop a really thorough portfolio of their work that would, I thought would help them if they wanted to try and gain access to tertiary education once they were released. And I thought also if they were looking for a job, it might help them to be able to actually show people what they had been doing. In Terry's case, it was very successful because he used his portfolio to help him gain entry into the National Arts School in Sydney. And yeah, that was incredibly rewarding experience for someone who'd never actually painted before in his life.

Before I move on from Terry's work, though, I'd like to show you another strand of what Terry was doing. Again, he was quite influenced by another photographer, a type of photography that I was doing.

I used to photograph parts of the prison and often at night and this was an interior shot I took

of the inside the entrance to the the maximum security prison where I worked. I showed this to the inmates to give them an

idea of the importance of light and tone and how how dramatic a sync or an object can be with good lighting. And Terry in true form thought, OK, I can do something like this. So Terry came up with the idea of painting parts of the prison environment, but transforming them through the use of colour. So they became like, almost like a celebration. He, he called this, this particular work was called the Long Bay Hilton Foyer.

And I took stages, 2 stages of the work to also give you an idea. In this work he's showing, it's showing all the flat under painting and then the overlays he's used modelling compound which are piped on, which are piped on to the to the surface of the work. And he told me later on that he got the idea of the piping from watching his grandmother when she used to decorate cakes.

These works of the prison in particular were went on to be selected for exhibition, number of exhibitions. This was a work, a catalogue from an exhibition we did at the Justice and Police Museum in Sydney.

And Terry became quite famous. In fact he was his this image and Terry was reproduced by the media in

many different forms. Prominent Sydney Morning Herald article, another one in the Herald we went on to produce. His work was used for publications, in this case the University of NSW, for one of the magazines, and he also did a range of cards for the Boom Gate Gallery. Just little greeting cards that the public could buy.

I should just also show you one other work which really shows the transformation of the prison. This was a holding cell, rather grim image initially when I took the photograph, but this is an absolute celebration of colour and light and this is another work which is in the department's collection.