Ralph Fiennes, Maxine Peake and Ben Whishaw among line-up for Oscar Wilde season at Reading Prison

A project entitled Inside – Artists and Writers in Reading Prison, will see Reading Prison – which closed in 2013 – open to the public for the first time in its history.

Produced and commissioned by Artangel, the event will see artists and performers from around the world create a series of works in response to the prison's most famous inmate, Oscar Wilde.

Wilde was incarcerated at Reading Gaol from 1895 to 1897, leading to his renowned works De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Writers and performers including Ralph Fiennes, Kathryn Hunter, Maxine Peake and Ben Whishaw will pay homage to Wilde by reading De Profundis in the prison chapel every Sunday in September and October.

Artists including Marlene Dumas, Steve McQueen and Wolfgang Tillmans will produce new works in response to the prison’s architecture and history which will be installed in the Victorian prison’s corridors, wings and cells.

Contemporary Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is among a host of artists who will compose letters about state-imposed separation from loved ones, which visitors will be able to listen to and read in some of the cells of the prison.

James Lingwood and Michael Morris, co-directors of Artangel, said: "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."

Tickets are available on the door from £2 for children and £9 for adults, with De Profundis reading tickets available at £20.

Inside – Artists and Writers in Reading Prison runs from 4 September to 30 October 2016.