21.5 x 33.5 cm acrylic painting on a 29 x 40 cm sheet of paper.

Unframed €75

Mounted (white) €95

Framed €150

Sarah Eva Manson created this piece in 2007 as part of an observational project based in Kilmainham Gaol. Kilmainham Gaol is a former prison in Kilmainham, Dublin, Ireland. It is now a museum run by the Office of Public Works, an agency of the Government of Ireland. Many Irish revolutionaries, including the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, were imprisoned and executed in the prison by the orders of the UK Government. Manson has always had an interest in prisons. Prisons from history and how law enforcement has evolved through the centuries. Torture was a commonplace form of punishment throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. It was mostly used to either extract or force victims into confessing a crime - regardless of whether they were actually guilty or innocent. Today prisons are a subject of many television shows that people watch as entertainment shows like Orange Is the New Black (sometimes abbreviated to OITNB) which is an American comedy-drama television series created by Jenji Kohan for Netflix. The series is based on Piper Kerman's memoir, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison (2010), about her experiences at FCI Danbury, a minimum-security federal prison and reality TV shows like toughest prisons in which A journalist travels to different locations to explore the imprisonment process of various societies. In the Philippines, the featured prison is Rizal Jail, where inmates perform dances and cook for each other. In Poland's Piotrków Prison, he experiences intensive guard and riot training and spends time in Piotrow's most extreme isolation cell. He also discovers what conditions are like at El Hongo prison in Mexico and Danli Prison in Honduras. Other facilities are visited in Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Ukraine and Belize. Throughout the episodes, the host reveals the struggles of each institution as the guard’s attempt to reform criminals and prisoners adjust to life on the inside. It's a strange concept to consider correctional facilities as good television.