Abbi's design responds to the theme ‘Stolen Legacy: The Rebirth of a Nation’, which brings to life how Britain was transformed and enriched as a result of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and the free labour of the enslaved. It explores the legacy of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans in building the financial and trading power of Britain; strengthening the Church and the might of universities; and establishing dynastic influence and power.

Bruised Showers acts as a tapestry, illustrating stolen histories. Similar to the way rain divides a city, conversations around slavery’s ongoing relevance continually shows people’s ignorance. Even after abolition, it has trickled down into racism in education, employment, security, housing and wealth. However, like the flood, rain also makes us observe, exposes the hidden and cleanses.

When exposed to rain, copper corrodes; a common theme in the piece due to Swansea’s production of copper bars and manillas as currency in the trade in enslaved people at the White Rock works. Their involvement with wealth extraction is captured, retelling how rubber was stolen from Congo’s forests, exploiting our lands as well as our bodies.

My motif of the black dot encircled in white symbolises British colonies, with many territories still under colonial rule. Look at this image in two ways: the West's hold on Africa and the Caribbean versus holding the West accountable for their crimes in our homes. My 20 red figures draw light to the £20million – equivalent to £17billion now – that compensated slaver instead of the actual former enslaved and their families, contributing to inequality in the systems we have in place today. The current ethnicity pay gap is large, with Black African and Caribbean households holding around 15p for every £1 of White British wealth, shown by the physical divide on the golden raindrops.

I wanted to emphasise the importance of healing being a form of reparations: through our joy, self-care and freedom. The words of Malcolm X became my muse for this piece as he summarises my message clearly, “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made.” 

Abbi Bayliss is a digital illustrator and visual artist. Abbi has exhibited at Tate Britain with Tate Collective, Bristol Light Festival’s Banksy installation, Lush UK and had a regional exhibition tour of her Black Portraits Project exhibited across the South West to Carnaby street. Working within Bristol’s Art sectors such as Arnolfini and RWA, she’s also a Rising Arts Agency creative and the youngest member of the Visual Arts South West Steering Group. Alongside this, she’s a published illustrator of two children’s books, been commissioned by the BBC and has written podcasts for the National Trust, earning her title by Rife Magazine as one of Bristol’s most influential people under 30.

www.blackswanarts.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/black-swan-arts-open-2022/abbi-bayliss

GE's design responds to the theme ‘Abolition & Emancipation’, which shares the story of the campaign for abolition, its key events, heroes and allies. It also lays bare the full, messy motivations and process of abolition, which were not as pure as often represented.

“All persons are equal by law, so that no person can hold another as a slave”, Charles Sumner.

My piece was inspired by the Back to Africa Movement which helped spawn the Abolitionist movement. In 1787, the British Crown founded a settlement in Sierra Leone called the Province of Freedom where freed slaves could start over. 

Sierra Leone is one of the world’s largest fishing grounds and its main resources are diamonds, rutile, gold, iron ore and bauxite. My piece aims to bring to life not only the pain and sadness of this dark period, but the sheer beauty of Sierra Leone.

GE is a mixed media artist based in Swansea. She came 3rd in the Glyn Vivian’s Art Gallery Swansea open 2021.

Joanna's design responds to the theme ‘Still We Rise’, which recognises and honours the enslaved and their descendants who resisted, who succeeded, and who broke new ground. We honour the well-known and celebrated, and shed light on untold legacies and events.

For my globe, continents and oceans are the intricate scaled patterns on a butterfly wing. Butterflies have many meanings. A symbol of migration, freedom, the returning souls of the dead. Their metamorphosis has been seen as a metaphor for puberty, transformation and societal change. I have chosen one of the world’s most common butterflies; the painted lady (Vanessa Cardiu), because they are found in most parts of the world, and travel vast distances at high altitude in cyclical migratory patterns, travelling further than any other species of butterfly; an annual distance of 12,000km, which is equivalent to crossing the Sahara Desert twice. Butterflies have inspired artists and scientists the world over. 

But at the turn of the eighteenth century the British naturalist, James Petiver, employed individuals and used the infrastructures of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and plantation slavery to gather thousands samples of butterflies and other natural specimens, and have them sent back to him in London. His collection became the beginnings of the British Museum and Natural History Museum collections. Petiver was only one of many naturalists and scientists who took advantage of the botanical, medical and scientific knowledge of West African people. 

And yet this legacy has still not been fully acknowledged. 

The scientific hierarchy created by colonialism continues still and decolonising science and the arts is urgent; during Damien Hirst’s 2012 Tate installation, ‘In and Out of Love’, 2012, 9000 butterflies died. And yet as a species and symbol they defy the impulse to conquer, capture and profit, and remain inhabitants of the world, belonging and prized everywhere. 

My globe shows south at the top, challenging the accepted perspective of north-orientated maps used by colonialists to explore and navigate using compasses. With this I hope to challenge this accepted hierarchy. I have titled my globe The Butterfly Effect after the scientific theory which has proven that a relatively small act or event, like this transformative project, can ultimately have an important impact.

Joanna combines painting with variations on the traditional printing techniques of etching and takuhon, digital printing and photography. She incorporates various mediums including oil paint, etching ink, wax and pastel, to create visually striking and ambiguous images which confront the complex relationship between human activity and the natural world.

www.joannacohn.com

The work of making racial justice a reality must be rooted in community – in our individual and collective experiences, hopes and contributions. Kyle’s design was created in response to dialogue and workshops with local communities.

The ideas contained within the Swansea Community Globe – Upside-Down World – came from conversations with Swansea citizens and was quite literally influenced by local people as it was being painted; I worked on the globe outside which prompted all sorts of interesting conversations and questions with passers-by. 

Some shared their knowledge of Swansea’s nickname as ‘Copperopolis’ – in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries Swansea was the world centre of copper and brass production – and many of the products and trinkets produced in the area were used by Europeans to trade for enslaved Africans. 

Many of the young people I spoke to didn’t know of this history, and as I learned, I improved my ability to share what I had learned about the darker side of Wales’s history with them. I grew to understand that the globe could become a powerful means of educating our communities. 

My design shows the World Upside-Down – a world turned upside down in the rush to colonise Africa.

Wales is shown as large as the African continent so we can see the considerable role it had in the wealth that was made in the trade of human lives. We see the mining of slate that created the wealth to buy the plantations in Jamaica. The industrialisation of iron and steel from Merthyr Tydfil that was also used to trade for enslaved Africans.

Africa is depicted with a sad mother, who is literally handing down her crowned baby to the European dominated world, knowing that for centuries to come her children will be enslaved. An example of the unnatural and manipulated nature of things in this period of history.

Welsh people produced the cheapest cotton, so it was used to clothe the enslaved in the Jamaican plantations, owned by Welsh barons. There is a list of the things that were traded from Wales for Africans.

I have painted the looms twice, the cotton stretches all around the globe, showing the severity and mechanism of the middle passage trade. The looms are spinning slowly and dressing the enslaved, who I have depicted as spokes in the ship’s wheels and the slats of the looms.  

Europe is at the bottom of the globe imagined as a slave ship, with its sails boasting an upside-down Britain.  

Using a base of bronze for the countries and silver for the sea shows how the natural resources precious metals of the country combined with the exports led to Wales becoming very wealthy from the triangular trade routes.  

This project has given me much to think about; one important thing I will take with me is that we shouldn't be embarrassed to talking about the horrific past. We can celebrate and remember the good, and teach and understand the bad, so that it can never happen again.

Kyle’s artistry has expanded into several genres from writing and directing for animation, filmmaking, theatre and graffiti murals, as well as designing and making his own graffiti clothing line. Kyle has written, directed, designed and animated four 2D short films for Channel 4 and S4C. He also makes music videos and cover art for local bands. In 2015, Kyle became the first artist in residence for National Theatre Wales. In 2017, Kyle wrote, designed and directed his own play “R.A.T.S (Rose Against the System), which was staged in the roof void at the Wales Millennium Centre. He has also actively contributed to multi-platform artworks for an exhibition that explores the legacy of the Cardiff 1919 race riots.

www.kylelegall.com