Beginning something beautiful, artist Aalayah puts prison behind her

Wiradjuri woman Kelly Flanagan says the only thing she used to care about was drugs; art was not on her radar.

‘I never did anything creative before,’ she says. ‘I had no love for self or anything like that. When I went to prison and I sobered up, this came into my life and it’s saved me from the pain.

‘It makes me so happy. I could put everything down the way I feel it.’

Kelly’s ‘artist name’ is Aalayah. She explains that people often take artist names while they are in prison. ‘It’s sometimes better not to use your real name. You need to be mindful … if you are earning income … that you may be stood over for it.

‘You choose your own name, but then when you get out, you might start working under your real name.’

I always have a place as long as I have canvas.

Kelly’s work is part of the Confined 16 exhibition at the Glen Eira City Council Gallery in Caulfield—400 artworks by 400 First Nations artists whose lives have been affected by incarceration. Her painting, Beginning of Something Beautiful, sold on opening night.

‘It was a really good way to express myself. After being in a dark place—obviously, being in prison—it was a good way to express myself in a more colourful way,’ she said in a video interview by The Torch, a not-for-profit arts organisation that provides support to First Nations people in, or recently released from, Victorian prisons.

‘I feel like I’ve really captured it here. The circles represent a different part of that journey. Some days it’s a walk in the park; other days it’s miserable. But at the end of the day, I always have a place as long as I have canvas.’

Kelly started painting after making contact with an Indigenous arts officer from The Torch, which runs an Indigenous Arts in Prisons and Community program across all Victorian gaols.

According to the organisation, recidivism rates have more than halved for those taking part. The Torch attributes this to its support in reconnecting First Nations people to culture. It also helps artists to earn an income from their work.

The Victorian government’s 2016 Aboriginal Arts policy allows people taking part in The Torch program to sell their artworks while still in custody. The not-for-profit facilitates sales through art exhibitions like Confined 16.

Kelly says she was handed some paint and a canvas, and her identity as an artist was born.

‘No art lessons, no one teaches you anything,’ she says. ‘Some of my works from early on are just “blech”, you know, and as you kind of get better going through, stuff gets more intricate.’

She considers her work to be female-centric. ‘It’s very girly and it’s very light. There are a lot of male artists, but there’s not too many female artists, so I like to make sure that we all keep each other upbeat.’

The official statistics are grim: Indigenous people are 3 per cent of Australia’s population but nearly a third of the prison population. Indigenous women are 25 times more likely to go to prison that non-Indigenous women.

We need to take care of them; they’re in pain.

Kelly’s understanding is that Aboriginal women are also more at risk of going to prison than Aboriginal men and usually for relatively minor drug- and alcohol-related offences. ‘It can be due to domestic violence as well, like a misinterpretation of who’s the victim—it happens a lot. The police come and they initially just think that she’s the problem.

‘It’s quite sad, because we have a lot of women in there who are really lost, you know, and they would benefit from being out in the community trying to put some love back into their life rather than just being locked up. We’re not meant to be in cages.’

Kelly sees the solution as lying in a better understanding of women’s situations, and more services. She says the housing situation for ex-prisoners is so dire that many women end up back in prison within weeks of being released. ‘We need to take care of them; they’re in pain,’ she says. ‘It’ll break your heart to see how many women in there just need help.’

The day Melbourne Catholic caught up with her, Kelly was the artist in residence at the Confined 16 exhibition. ‘I’m pumped to be here,’ she says, as she works on her next painting and chats to curious visitors.

She explains that she paints her own story, initially her past but now about her present and what she wants for the future. The latest painting has a calming blue backdrop and a series of red circles representing different things she has going on.

‘These are all my circles that I have to fit into my life right now, what I’m building from,’ she says. ‘So yeah, sometimes it can be about what’s happening now; sometimes it can be what happened before. But I’ve noticed since I started painting, a lot of the stuff I did before was a lot darker, there was a lot more darkness behind it.

‘Now a lot of the stuff I do, especially the one that’s on the wall [Beginning of Something Beautiful], it’s really light and beautiful and just hopeful.’