Thomas J Price (born c.1981) is a British sculptor. ''Reaching out (2020)'', Price’s first individual full figure representation of a woman, is currently on show between Bow and

West Ham West Ham is an area in East London, located east of Charing Cross in the west of the modern London Borough of Newham. The area, which lies immediately to the north of the River Thames and east of the River Lea, was originally an ancien ...

, as part of the art project

The Line Line most often refers to: * Line (geometry), object with zero thickness and curvature that stretches to infinity * Telephone line, a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system Line, lines, The Line, or LINE may also refer to: Arts ...

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 Hackney Town Hall is a municipal building in Hackney, London. The town hall, which is the headquarters of Hackney London Borough Council, is a Grade II listed building. History The original civic facility in Hackney was a private house, erect ...

. Price studied at Chelsea College of Art and the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

. There have been major exhibitions of his work at the

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...

, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto.

''Reaching Out''

The statue is 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. It has been installed on

Three Mills Green The Three Mills are former working mills and an island of the same name on the River Lea. It is one of London’s oldest extant industrial centres. The mills lie in the London Borough of Newham, but despite lying on the Newham side of the Lea, ...

near Stratford, east London, and is part of

, the city’s only dedicated public art walk, which follows the Greenwich meridian. 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 one of

Mary Seacole Mary Jane Seacole (;Anionwu E.N. (2012) Mary Seacole: nursing care in many lands. ''British Journal of Healthcare Assistants'' 6(5), 244–248. 23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a British-Jamaican nurse and businesswoman who set up t ...

outside St Thomas’s hospital and a representation of black motherhood in

Stockwell Stockwell is a district in south west London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. It is situated south of Charing Cross. Battersea, Brixton, Clapham, South Lambeth, Oval and Kennington all border Stockwell. History The na ...

. Reaching Out would have been the fourth if the artist

Marc Quinn Marc Quinn (born 8 January 1964) is a British contemporary visual artist whose work includes sculpture, installation, and painting. Quinn explores "what it is to be human in the world today" through subjects including the body, genetics, ident ...

had succeeded in persuading authorities in Bristol to keep his pop-up sculpture of Jen Reid, the

Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...

protester, longer than 25 hours. Prior to the installation of Quinn's piece, Price had been invited by

TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

to contribute an article discussing the legacy of colonial monuments and the removal of the Colston statue. 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."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Price, Thomas J. 1980s births Year of birth uncertain Living people British sculptors British contemporary artists 21st-century British sculptors