5 things to know about Koestler Arts: Night Owls and Abstractions

As a poet and playwright whose work often explores themes of identity, migration and displacement, Inua Ellams was a natural choice to curate the 18th annual Koestler Arts exhibition.

Each year thousands of artists from across the UK’s criminal justice system enter their work into the Koestler Awards scheme, to be in with a chance of winning awards and certificates. Alongside the awards, Koestler Arts also presents a public exhibition of the work, and in 2025 it was Ellams’ unenviable task to whittle down the thousands of entries – 7,576 to be exact – into a final show of around 200 pieces.

The result was an exhibition which aimed to subvert expectations and reflect the hope, creativity and inventiveness that persists in the UK’s criminal justice system. The exhibition, Night Owls and Abstractions, was at the Southbank Centre from October to December 2025, and here are five things to know about it.

The night owls

The theme of flight is one that appears a lot through the exhibition due, in part, to a large number of works having been created in response to the themed category of ‘wings’ – one of 53 categories available to artists to submit their works for the Koestler Awards. Yet even within this, Ellams was struck by the number of pieces which depicted owls and what they might represent to people in a criminal justice setting, leading to the title of the exhibition, Night Owls and Abstractions. ‘To me,’ he says, ‘these night birds are symbolic of what it means to be behind bars, looking out, thinking and searching for clarity that often only comes at night.’ The owls presented in the exhibition flit between acting as comforting sentinels, to serving as a reminder of the constant surveillance present in the space in which some of the works were created.

Poetic presence

As a poet, Ellams naturally wanted his curation of Night Owls and Abstractions to highlight the written word, and so the exhibition includes a space to sit and read and listen to submitted poetry. Poems can be read throughout the exhibition, with submitted works such as ‘Fractured Time’, ‘Behind These Walls’ and ‘A Liar’s Gambit’ presented alongside succinct reflections on the exhibition from the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective offered in the form of haiku. The exhibition’s central vestibule also includes phrases selected by Ellams from several submitted works written large on the gallery walls as a backdrop to other works.

A colourful transition

Through his curation Ellams hopes to change the public’s perception of the kind of artworks they may expect to see from people in the criminal justice system. To illustrate this he chose to let the energy of the exhibition be determined by the vibrancy of the artworks. And so the exhibition begins with works such as ‘The Last Time I Felt’ and the sculpture ‘Black Sails’ which use monochrome palettes and reflect a heavier atmosphere. But as you move through the exhibition the palette becomes brighter as works begin to burst with colour and display humour and humanity, reflecting the spectrum of life and hope that exists in prisons and secure settings.

Famous faces

As with any edition of the annual Koestler Arts exhibition there are a large number of portraits to be found on the gallery walls. This includes self portraits showing the artists at different times in their own life, portraits depicting family and friends, and also a significant number of portraits of famous faces. The people depicted range from singer Amy Winehouse to cyclist Geraint Thomas to landmark literary and activist figures such as Maya Angelou, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Marcus Garvey. There are also a number of cartoon characters featured in amended settings, including a surprising amount of Minions – a notable recurrence which stood out to Ellams during his curation and so, like the owls, is replicated in the exhibition.

Lost landscapes

‘There is a theme running through this exhibition of travel and flight and journeys,’ says Ellams. ‘As an immigrant, as a migrant worker, which I am, that’s very key to my practice, so when I was looking at all the art work this was just leaping out at me.’ Beyond the many depictions of flight we’ve already touched on, this theme of travel and journeys is also evident in the works depicting landscapes. The antithesis of the world in which they were created, the landscapes include settings both rural and industrial, both real and imagined.