© Thomas J Price, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth / BONO. Photo: © Johanne Nyborg
Reaching Out
- Date 2020
- Unveiled 2025
- Material Bronze
- Dimensions 285 x 90 x 86 cm
«I always say I make sculptures about statues. The idea to use fictional people is trying to subvert this idea of portraiture and the value systems within portraiture, which are then often instilled or carried on throughout this idea of the monument. Portraiture made permanent, perhaps.»
Photo: © Ollie Adegboye
Thomas J Price
(b. London, England, 1981)
Thomas J. Price (b. 1981) is a British artist born and raised in London. He studied art at Chelsea College of Art and at the Royal College of Art London. As an artist he has amassed a multi-disciplinary practice including sculpture, drawing, painting, photography, performance and video-art. He is particularily known for exploring question surrounding representation, identity, presence and historical presentation. He first gained notoriety in 2001 with his performance «Licked» where he explored consepts surrounding physical presence by licking the walls of a gallery room. As the performance went on the artist got cuts on his tongue, which led to several of the walls being covered with both spit and blood. Transforming the walls into a mural of traces from Price's tongue, creating a visual, almost bodily, presence. Today Price is perhaps most known for his monumental, public sculptures where he exhibits fictional black people in every day positions and situations. By doing so he explores questions surrounding both representation and tradition. The sculptures, or statues, are classically made and often cast in bronze. The break from tradition happens in the meeting with the works subject. In Price's monuments we do not meet triumphant victors on rearing horses. Nor do we meet straight postured and proud figures who, in some way or other, have written themselves into history. In stead he shows us everyday people in everyday situations. His figures do not stand in the classical postures we know from traditional sculptural potraits. Their body language is oftentimes relaxed and closed - as if they are entirely oblivous to their own status as monument and sculpture. With their hands in their pockets, or staring down into their phones, they create associations to fleating moments of mundane disassociation most people can relate to. His sculptures also comment on the repeated under representation of minorities in western art history. By casting the sculptures in bronze using a classical figurative form, he also challenges the purpose of the monument and questions who it is that should be eternalized in a sculptural monument; the individual or the collective.
Reaching Out is a monumental and figurative bronze sculpture depicting a young, black woman. She is dressed in relaxed, timely clothes which anchors her to our present time. Her hair is fixed with a knot on the top of her head, and the thin strands of hair by her temple are carefully combed into sculptural whirls. In her hand she holds a smartphone which she appears to be vacantly staring into. Her body language is quiet, contemplative and closed as she stands by herself, momentarily resting in a way that spars associations of fleeting moments of disassociation that most can relate to.
Like most of Price’s monumental works, the sculpture is classically executed, cast in bronze, and is, in this regard, everything one would expect of a figurative classical sculpture. The break from tradition comes in form of the sculpture’s subject. The woman in Reaching Out is no triumphant victor, nor any prominent figure that, through their accomplishments, have in some way written themselves into our history. She is a fictional character standing in what appears to be a common day situation. Although her positioning might look like the contrapposto pose known from classical sculpture, she is neither overtly assertive nor attention seeking. Rather, her pose seems to underline her impermanence, raising the question of whether one would have noticed her at all, had it not been for her monumental height. As such the artist challenges the concept of both monuments and sculpture whilst raising a quiet question about who and what deserves to be eternalized through sculptural monuments.
Guided tours
Experience Reaching out and many of the other artworks in the collection with our art mediators. We offer guided tours for private groups all year round.