“Who gets to be seen as holding a full life?”: Thomas J. Price on his alternative sculptures

ON THE TALLAWOLADAH LAWN in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), a giant golden sculpture of a Black woman’s head will overlook Warrane Sydney Harbour from now until April 2026. At just over three metres tall, her braided hair tied in a bun, she will never meet her audience at eye level; instead, her serene gaze is fixed above the hub’s commercial activity. 

She is Ancient Feelings by the British artist Thomas J. Price. Price describes his “sculptures about statues” as “an alternative” to the colonial monuments that dot this landing site of the First Settlers, for instance, and his native London too. And across the Commonwealth, for that matter. Price plays with the status of scale that sets these narratives into perpetuation; Ancient Feelings, like all his sculptures, is not based on a real person. With his alternative effigies, Price wonders: “Who gets to be seen as holding a full life?”

Price strives to capture what it means for people of colour to simply be. Growing up in Camberwell in south London, the son of a Jamaican father and a white British mother, he learnt early on that smiling was “to reassure people I do not know that I am not a threat”. At 44, Price is exhausted by the daily performance, but has spent his career as a sculptor unlearning it through his subjects: fictional amalgams of people he has observed in public. People, he describes, in “honest, off-guard moments”, like scrolling on their phone at the bus stop.

“I’m often asked why a character isn’t beaming a smile,” he says. “Because that’s performative in my mind. I talk about ‘freedom’ a lot, and this idea of real equality is the ability, the luxury, if you like, of not having to present one’s best self as if you’re on stage. Because to fail in that regard would then open you up to all sorts of negative responses or actions from somebody.

“I don’t see that as an ideal I want to put out into the world and make people try and live up to. These works are a rejection of all the pressures, all the weight of expectation that’s placed upon people of colour, in terms of how we’re supposed to present ourselves in order just to be accepted on the very first rung of the ladder . . . So, beyond the trope, beyond the stereotype, who gets to live a rich life where you are allowed the same abilities and dreams as the people we see atop plinths normally in our monuments?”

It’s a hot spring morning when I meet Price, the beating sun working a treat on Ancient Feelings as her golden bronze alloy glows against the unbroken sky. There are Captain Cook Cruise tours coming in and out of the harbour; Cook’s bronze statue is not far away in Hyde Park where it’s routinely scrubbed for bird droppings and protest graffiti with taxpayer dollars. 

Cast using a lost wax technique and assembled in Switzerland and Shanghai before being shipped off to Sydney, Price was given $1 million by the MCA Neil Balnaves Tallawoladah Lawn Commission to bring Ancient Feelings to the public realm, making it his first public work in Australia thanks to the private foundation.

Earlier in June, Price unveiled Grounded in the Stars in New York’s Times Square, where foot traffic revolved around a 3.6-metre tall Black woman with her hands placed at the back of her hips. Price visited the MCA a year ago en route to the Melbourne Triennial (before the commission was proposed) where he presented two works on Federation Court: a woman texting on her phone (Reaching Out, 2020) and a man in a hoodie with his hands stuffed in his sweatpant pockets (All In, 2021). 

How these contend with your usual ‘bronze hero-on-plinth’, Price’s poses – neutral stances in shifted weight on bent knees, dropped shoulders, averted eyes – invite an entry point to the interiority of his characters. The choice of a monumental bust for Ancient Feelings, however, offers a tranquil presence, like a deity, in part influenced by the some 900 Benin bronze heads he loves to visit in the British Museum.

“There’s this self-assuredness and centred nature to it,” he says. “I wanted to create this feeling of balance, a sense of stillness and refuge within that presence of the head. So using the symmetry [of the MCA building], the scale, the golden material, and the forward gaze is a way to create this neutral landing site, if you like, for the viewer to be able to feel themselves.”

As rush hour picked up, commuters disembarking from ferries could instantly spot the gleaming entity; sweaty office workers speed walking past stopped in their tracks to snap a photo; a group of women could be heard effusing, “She’s so beautiful”. The choice of a female subject informed the work’s name. “When I talk about Ancient Feelings, it implies some sense of origin or source,” says Price, “And I think she just seems so beautiful and so tranquil with her hair.”

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