Thomas J. Price

Thomas J Price (born c.1981) is a British sculptor. Reaching Out (2020), Price's first individual full figure representation of a woman, has been shown as part of the art project The Line in the East End of London. Price has also been selected to create an artwork to be unveiled in 2022 commemorating the Windrush generation for Hackney Town Hall.[1]

Price studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art. There have been major exhibitions of his work at the National Portrait Gallery, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park,[1] and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto.

Reaching Out
Reaching Out, on Three Mills Island

The statue is 9 feet (2.7 m) tall and weighing 420 kilograms. The work is deliberately not based on any particular woman. She is depicted on her mobile phone. Thomas Price says “I want this sculpture to be an opportunity for people to connect emotionally with an image of someone they might not have noticed before,” Price said.[2]

It was installed on Three Mills Green near Stratford, east London, and was part of The Line, the city's only dedicated public art walk, which follows the Greenwich meridian,[2] until August 26th 2022.[3]

This is only the third statue in the United Kingdom of a black woman, and the first by a black sculptor. The other two are the statue of Mary Seacole outside St Thomas' Hospital, and a representation of black motherhood in Stockwell. Reaching Out would have been the fourth if the artist Marc Quinn had succeeded in persuading authorities in Bristol to keep his pop-up sculpture of Jen Reid, the Black Lives Matter protester, longer than 25 hours.[2] Prior to the installation of Quinn's piece, Price had been invited by TIME to contribute an article discussing the legacy of colonial monuments and the removal of the statue of Edward Colston. Within the article, Price noted "White artists are putting themselves forward to create replacement sculptures of slave owners with no sense of irony. That's a saviour complex, and that exemplifies what is wrong, when even the solution doesn't involve the Black experience."[4]

Moments Contained
Moments Contained at Rotterdam Centraal station

In 2023, Price returned to the fictional character depicted in Reaching Out with the statue Moments Contained, which was unveiled at the forecourt of Rotterdam Centraal station in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The statue depicts the unnamed young black woman with her hands in her pockets. Price explained, "You can see the knuckles slightly pressing through the fabric. And I think, there's also this sense of containing oneself. And that potential energy that's there. And the emotion or the psychological tension, that's just ready to emerge from this piece."[5] At the unveiling the statue, the mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed Aboutaleb said he expected it to become the city's most photographed image. "She's not a heroine, a character with an illustrious past. She is the future, our future, and this city is her home."[6]

Not all responses to Moments Contained were positive. Rosanne Hertzberger, writing in NRC, was critical of Moments Contained, describing its subject matter as just "someone ordinary" and that "The group to which she belonged was marginalized and therefore she is now overcompensated."[7] But Marjolijn van der Meijden, project leader at Sculpture International Rotterdam, said, "This is a statue about softness. It doesn't stand on a plinth and isn't an exalted representation of someone exotic. It's just yourself, how you are, not a 'super' version."[6] Public response to the statue was strongly positive and it became an immediate attraction.[6]

References
  1. Thorpe, Vanessa (19 July 2020). "Sculptor unveils 'black everywoman' as UK row over statues and race grows". The Observer. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  2. Brown, Mark (5 August 2020). "Sculptor's black 'everywoman' erected on public art walk in London". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  3. @TheLineLondon (11 August 2022). "Reaching Out by Thomas J Price will be leaving The Line on 26th August. We invite you to visit and celebrate this remarkable piece, the third public sculpture to depict a black woman in the UK, while it remains on our route for the next two weeks!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  4. Price, Thomas (17 June 2020). "Taking Down Statues Isn't Enough. We Need to Radically Rethink How We Celebrate Power". Suyin Haynes. Time Magazine. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  5. "Thomas J Price on 'Moments Contained'". Hauser & Wirth. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
  6. Boztas, Senay. "'It's every woman, it's us': Rotterdam falls for British statue of ordinary black woman". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
  7. Hartzberger, Rosanne. "Het standbeeld van een jonge, zwarte vrouw op Nikes in Rotterdam is een belediging". NRC. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
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