READING.- For the first time in its history, Reading Prison will open to the public for a major new project by Artangel. Leading artists, performers and writers respond to the work of the prison’s most famous inmate Oscar Wilde, the architecture of the prison and themes of imprisonment and separation. Titled Inside - Artists and Writers in Reading Prison, the project runs from 4 September – 30 October 2016.

Reading Prison, formerly known as Reading Gaol, opened in 1844 and was a working prison until 2013. Oscar Wilde was incarcerated there between 1895 and 1897,enduring the Separate System, a harsh penal regime designed to eliminate any contact between prisoners. Wilde’s imprisonment led to his last great works: De Profundis, an extended letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas written by Wilde in his prison cell, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, composed after his release.

New works made in response to the prison’s architecture and history by leading artists including Marlene Dumas, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Steve McQueen, Jean-Michel Pancin and Wolfgang Tillmans will be installed in the Victorian prison’s corridors, wings and cells.

Plans and prints relating to The Separate System,late19th century mug-shots of inmates, and work by Vija Celmins, Rita Donagh, Peter Dreher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Richard Hamilton, Roni Horn and Doris Salcedo will also be exhibited.

Each Sunday in September and October, writers and performers including Neil Bartlett, Ralph Fiennes, Kathryn Hunter, Ragnar Kjartansson, Maxine Peake, Lemn Sissay, Patti Smith, Colm Tóibín and Ben Whishaw will pay homage to Wilde by reading De Profundis in its entirety in the prison chapel.

Writers from around the world - Ai Weiwei, Tahmima Anam, Anne Carson, Joe Dunthorne, Deborah Levy, Danny Morrison, Gillian Slovo, Binyavanga Wainaina and Jeanette Winterson - will compose letters from their own direct or imagined experience of a state-imposed separation from loved ones. Visitors will be able to listen to and read their letters in some of the cells of the prison.

To coincide, BBC Radio 4 will broadcast five of these contemporary Letters from Inside from 12 to16 September at 7.45pm, preceded by an abridged version of De Profundis on 11 September at 4pm, recorded in Wilde's cell at Reading Prison.

James Lingwood and Michael Morris, Co-Directors of Artangel, said: “We are excited to be opening up Reading Prison with such a remarkable range of artists, writers and performers responding to the imposing Victorian architecture and the continuing resonance of De Profundis, written by Wilde in his cell as Prisoner C.3.3. Inside – Artists and Writers in Reading Prison will offer the public an opportunity to reflect, in a particularly powerful place, on the implications for the individual when separated from society by the state.

It’s also a great opportunity for Artangel to work with key cultural partners on the first phase of Reading International, a new three-year arts initiative led by the University of Reading.”