Reaching Out (sculpture)
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Thomas J Price (born 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 British African-Caribbean people or British Afro-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom. They are British citizens or residents of recent Caribbean heritage who further trace much of their ancestry to West and Central Africa. ...
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 town hall in Hackney was a private house, erected i ...
. Price studied at
Chelsea College of Art Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art and design university in London, England. It offers further and higher education courses in fine art, graphic design, interior design, produ ...
and the
Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...
. 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 ...
, the
Yorkshire Sculpture Park The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is an art gallery, with both open-air and indoor exhibition spaces, in West Bretton, Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, England. It shows work by British and international artists, including Henry Moore and Barb ...
, and
The Power Plant The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery is a Canadian public art gallery located at Harbourfront Centre in the heart of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Gallery is a registered Canadian charitable organization. Initially established in 1976 as ...
Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. On May 8, 2025, Price's 12-feet bronze statue of a black woman, ''Grounded in the Stars'', was unveiled in New York City's Times Square. It is on view until June 17, 2025.


Works

* ''Grounded in the Stars'' (2025)


''Reaching Out''

The statue is tall and weighs 420 kilograms. "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. The sculpture was on Three Mills Green near Stratford, east London. This was the first statue in the UK of a black woman by a black artist. ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' reported that there are only two other statues of black women in the UK. Price wrote in ''
TIME Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' about the legacy of colonial monuments and the removal of the
statue of Edward Colston A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size. A sculpture ...
. 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."


''Moments Contained''

In 2022, 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 Rotterdam Centraal station (; ) is the main railway station of the city Rotterdam in South Holland, Netherlands. The station received an average of 112,000 passengers daily in 2019. The current station building, located at Station Square, was of ...
in
Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...
,
Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
. 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." At the unveiling the statue, the former mayor of Rotterdam
Ahmed Aboutaleb Ahmed Aboutaleb (; born 29 August 1961) is a Dutch politician of Moroccan origin. A member of the Labour Party (PvdA), he has served as Mayor of Rotterdam from 2009 to 2024. In January 2024, he announced he would resign the post later in the ...
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." Not all responses to ''Moments Contained'' were positive.
Rosanne Hertzberger Rosanne Yente Hertzberger (; born 9 September 1984) is a Dutch microbiologist and politician of New Social Contract (NSC). Early career Hertzberger was a microbiologist, working as a researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She was a colum ...
, 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", and that the statue is "offensive to people who have actually done something heroic". 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." Public response to the statue was strongly positive and it became an immediate attraction.


Gallery

File:Signals by Thomas J Price, Victoria and Albert Museum 03.jpg, ''Signals'', 2021, Victoria and Albert Museum File:Lay It Down (On The Edge Of Beauty) 02.jpg, ''Lay It Down (On The Edge Of Beauty)'', 2018, Victoria and Albert Museum File:As Sounds Turn to Noise by Thomas J Price 02.jpg, ''As Sounds Turn to Noise'', 2023 File:Numen (Shifting Votive One) by Thomas J Price 04.jpg, ''Numen (Shifting Votive One)'', 2016, Victoria and Albert Museum File:Tasman Road, Figure 2 by Thomas J Price 02.jpg, ''Tasman Road, Figure 2'', 2008, Victoria and Albert Museum


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Price, Thomas J 1980s births Year of birth uncertain Living people 21st-century British sculptors Alumni of Chelsea College of Arts Alumni of the Royal College of Art Black British artists British contemporary artists British sculptors