Giant new artwork – Justice for Sheku Bayoh – at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall joins the rapidly expanding Mural Trail as Scotland’s artists and arts organisations combine their voices to support Black Lives Matter
Scotland’s Black Lives Matter Mural Trail is expanding rapidly. The addition this week of 5 new artworks at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall takes the total to 24 (across Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness) with over a dozen more planned in the coming weeks, in Stirling and Dundee, as well as Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The latest additions are by Kirkcaldy artist Abigail Mills aka Abz including an impressive 5.5 meter x 6.5 meter print on the Usher Hall’s Glass Wing, and a further 4 images next to Lothian Road.
Striking, colourful and thought provoking, Abz’s work reflects her regular job as a tattoo artist, but goes far beyond that, reflecting her Scottish/Jamaican heritage and self identifcation as a “queer artist”.
The Glass Wing artwork – Justice for Sheku Bayoh – is inspired by the death in 2015, in police custody in Kirkcaldy, of Sheku Bayoh (now the subject of a recently announced public enquiry).
Aamer Anwar, lawyer for the Bayoh family, said: “The family of Sheku Bayoh & his partner Collette are deeply grateful to the artist for this mural which encapsulates for them their long struggle for justice & truth.
“It’s time that those who fly the banner of #BlackLivesMatter realised that there are also many George Floyds in the UK and their families need your support”
Abz’s work joins The Neon Requiem’s 3 portraits of female inspirations in his life – The Healer, The Nurturer and the Teacher, on display at the Lyceum Theatre, text contributions by Annie George at The Traverse Theatre, and a further 6 posters featuring words by some of Scotland’s leading BAME musicians including Emili Sande, Young Fathers and Findlay Quaye, making a remarkable cluster of creative activity by BAME artists/writers, at Edinburgh’s “theatre hub”.
“This is hugely significant, and not just for art and culture” – Cllr Donald Wilson, Culture Convenor, City of Edinburgh Council