HMP Spring Hill’s Artist in Residence, Jessica Ostrowicz, presents work developed during a twelve-month residency at the Category D open prison.

With an interest in repetition, ritual and inherited trauma, over the past three years Ostrowicz has focused her practice on the idea of home. This includes investigating what home means for incarcerated people and the role a cell can play as a site for performing homeliness.

Time and Time Again includes a series of photographs, entitled Moving Unrest (2025), featuring prisoners wearing a cuckoo bird mask. Ostrowicz sees the cuckoo as a signifier of displacement – an unwelcome guest, marking time through its call – to grapple with the dynamics of space and power. The collaborative sound piece Shared Sentence (2025-26) is composed of prisoners reading a sequence of words gathered over months of shared studio time. Other work in the exhibition emerges from conversations, workshops and shared making, reflecting on how people construct a sense of home while held in prison.

Join Ostrowicz for an artist talk at Discover Bucks Museum on Thursday 26 March, 5-6pm. Find out more.

Art at HMP Spring Hill is funded by the Rothschild Foundation.