The Portal is a series of work produced by men attending the Art course at HMP Wymott, Lancashire. Working in partnership with the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, 10 men worked with artist Claire Weetman.
Like the men who took part in this project, Richard Dadd was an incarcerated man, and it is this situation that has inspired the Portal. The collages in this book were an important step along the way to completing a hand drawn animation which was exhibited as part of the 2011 Harris Open. The collages here consider what their creators would change in their own lives if they had the magical juice of the love-in-idleness flower that causes such confusion in Shakespeare's play.
Themes of time passing and a desire for luxuries are to be expected from those who have too much of the former and not enough of the latter, but from those basic responses flourish fundamental desires for love, health, family, nature and change, resulting in this appealing collection of artworks.
