On one Tuesday in June, 72 years ago, the HMT Empire Windrush completed its 8000-mile journey from the Caribbean to Tilbury in Essex. Many young men and women getting off board eager to work hard into the British economy. After World War II, Britain found itself with a critical labor shortage; these young people were actively encouraged and invited by the British government to travel to the UK and take up the overabundant job vacancies on offer that hadn't been filled. Overall, between 1948 and 1970, nearly half a million people moved from the Caribbean to Britain. These people were later referred to as 'the Windrush generation.'

Many artists and writers have commented on this event in their work, Veronica Ryan is an example of this.

Veronica Ryan is a British artist and sculptor who was born in 1965 in Plymouth, Montserrat (a Jamaican island). She moved to London with her parents when she was young, and she quickly developed an interest in art during her school years; saying she remembers making a Christmas tree in infant school. Ryan was inspired by the creative use of materials in minimalistic ways- this trend carried through to her later art career. From the beginning, she was eager to break out of the mold of British modernism as it was usually taught by drawing on a wider range of female sculptors and artists of color.

The relationship between the container and the content is a very key feature in Ryan's work and she feels her small studio apartment in New York could be considered a representation of a container too. Almost like it is a sculptural setting of which the preoccupations are the daily accumulations: dirt, dust, and everyday deposits. Through her work, Ryan depicts a combination of personal experience, ancestral history, and the natural environment. As a product of the British-Caribbean diaspora, she particularly comments on the origins, memory, and belonging in relation to place and landscape. Her ideas of maternity and the role of women in society are also sometimes portrayed through her artwork.

On October 1st, her work Custard Apple (Annonaceae), Breadfruit (Moraceae), and Soursop (Annonaceae) showing three Caribbean fruits and vegetables were uncovered in the London Borough of Hackney as a permanent public monument celebrating the Windrush generation. The positioning of her work is strategic as these sculptures are minutes away from the local market, which sells custard apples, soursops, breadfruits, and food items alike. This means people can appreciate her work and realize that it still has connections and relevance to us today.

The Windrush is a key historic event and artists like Ryan aim to reflect on this and appreciate the hard work this generation put in to be contributing members of society.