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 ancient ...

, 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 are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom. They are British citizens whose ancestry originates from the Caribbean or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afr ...

for Hackney Town Hall. 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 of ...

. There have been major exhibitions of his work at the National Portrait Gallery, 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 Barba ...

, 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 near Stratford, east London, and is part of The Line, 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 name S ...

. 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 brut ...

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, t ...

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."

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