The Derek Williams Trust have recently acquired as a gift, an exciting new piece by artist Chris Day titled, Strange Fruit X, 2020, blown glass, terracotta and copper wire.

Chris Day is a graduate from Wolverhampton University.  Many of the skills he developed in his earlier career as a self-employed plumber have directly transposed to the creation of his artworks.  He aims through his art to discuss and investigate the treatment of black people in Britain and the United States of America, with particular focus on the history of the slave trade in the eighteenth century.  The recurring theme of ‘copper cages’ enclosing his glass represents the restriction of movement, both physically and mentally that slave traders imposed on the lives of other humans who they viewed simply as ‘commodities’.  By contrast, Day compares the glass to the human spirit, attempting to break free despite the restrictions that hold it in place.

© Chris Day; photograph © Simon Bruntnell