© 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 lives and works in London. He received his education from Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art London. As an artist he has amassed a multi-disciplinary practice which includes sculpture, drawings, paintings, photography, performance and video art. He is especially known for exploring questions regarding representation, identity, historical presentation, tradition and presence. Price has held solo exhibitions at a number of institutions, like The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; The National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK; V&A Museum, London, UK; Royal College of Art, London, UK; and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, UK. Price’s work is held in collections such as The Studio Museum in Harlem, Government Art Collection, London, UK, and the Rennie Collection, Canada. Price was commissioned by Hackney Council to create the first permanent public sculptures to celebrate the contribution of the Windrush generation and their descendants in the UK – immigrants to the UK from the Caribbean Commonwealth Nations between 1948-71, unveiled in June 2022. In March 2025, Price’s works were installed across multiple venues in Florence, including Time Unfolding in Piazza della Signoria. In May 2025, his sculpture Grounded in the Stars and his stop-motion animation work Man Series, were temporarily installed in Times Square, New York.
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.
Price first gained notoriety in 2001 with the performance work Licked, where he explored the concepts of physical presence by licking the walls of the gallery’s exhibit room. He is most known for his sculptural work with figurative busts and monumental public sculptures where he depicts black people in everyday situations.
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.