The idea for this chair came from a poem by Vanessa Kisuule called Hollow. She wrote the poem after witnessing the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston being dragged down from its plinth and thrown into Bristol Harbour. The seemingly immovable monument that she had walked passed all her life turned out to be hollow.
Vanessa gave me permission to quote a line from her poem in my design,
“But the air is gently throbbing with newness. Can you feel it?”
Voices like Vanessa’s are in the ascendant and I believe a second black
renaissance will come; only this time it will be global…
Can you feel it?
Eventually Edward Colston’s graffitied statue was pulled out of the harbour and put on display, still bound in the ropes that had been used to pull it down.
In 2025 a plaque was installed on the empty plinth that describes Colston, not as a
beloved city benefactor but as a slave trader.