Thomas J Price and Dr Gus Casely-Hayford | Frieze Masters Podcast
The fifth episode, On Power, is now available, presented in collaboration with dunhill
The fifth episode, On Power, is now available, presented in collaboration with dunhill
In On Power, London-based multidisciplinary artist Thomas J Price is in conversation with Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, the inaugural Director of V&A East. Together, they reflect on how monuments created for the public realm are not just aesthetic objects but artefacts often bound up in values, ideologies and power systems. Price, in his words, wants to convey ‘the sense of another person’ and has spent the past two decades creating large-scale figurative sculptures of everyday, unidentified Black individuals, often located in public spaces: such as the commission honouring the Windrush Generation in London’s Hackney.
You can also find this episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Visibility is one thing, but understanding is another. I think that desire to be understood is so primal and so urgent and so necessary within all of us and I think for a long time, people of colour had to do without that reality. – Thomas J Price
Find works discussed in this episode here:
Thomas J Price, Licked, 2001. Courtesy: the artist
Thomas J Price, Man 7, 2006. Courtesy: the artist
Thomas J Price, Mixed feelings about Bus Drivers, 2004, ‘Thoughts Unseen’, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2021. Courtesy: the artist; photo: Ken Adlard
Thomas J Price, Within the Folds (Dialogue 1), 2020, ‘The Distance Within’, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2021. Courtesy: Art Gallery of Ontario
Thomas J Price, Witness at Studio Museum Harlem, 2021-2022, film still. Courtesy: Rava Films and Studio Museum Harlem
Thomas J Price, Numen (Shifting Votive Two), 2016, ‘Thoughts Unseen’, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2021. Photo: Ken Adlard
Thomas J Price, Moments Contained, 2022, at Centraal Station, Rotterdam, 2023. Photo: Monsieur Paro
Thomas J Price, Lay it Down (On the Edge of Beauty), 2018, ‘Thomas J Price at The V&A’, 2023-2024. Photo: John Phillips, Getty Images for The V&A
Thomas J Price, Tasman Road, Figure 2, 2008, ‘Thomas J Price at The V&A’, 2023-2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths
Thomas J Price, Hand Arrangement (The Complex Journeys of a Simple Form), 2023, ‘Beyond Measure’, Hauser & Wirth Downtown LA, 2023. Photo: Keith Lubow
The New Entrance Hall at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Photo: © Olivier Hess
The new main entrance hall at the National Portrait Gallery, London, featuring Reaching Out by Thomas J Price (2021), Nelson Mandela by Ian Homer Walters (2008) and Louis François Roubiliac attributed to Joseph Wilton (1761). Photo: © Gareth Gardner for Nissen Richards Studio
Footage of Licked, 2001:
Thomas J Price, Licked, 2001, digitised DV documentary footage © Thomas J Price
Thomas J Price is a British artist celebrated for his large-scale figurative sculptures. ‘Thomas J Price at the V&A’ presents the artist’s work in dialogue with the V&A’s historic collections, until May 2024. Dr Gus Casely-Hayford is the inaugural Director of V&A East, appointed in March 2020, as well as a curator and cultural historian who writes, lectures and broadcasts widely on culture.
About Frieze Masters Podcast
The Frieze Masters Podcast is now available, bringing you our annual programme of live talks – the Frieze Masters Talks programme – curated by the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Dr Nicholas Cullinan. These conversations between leading artists, writers, museum directors and curators all reflect the ethos of the Frieze Masters fair: looking at the past with a contemporary gaze.
The Frieze Masters Talks programme and the Frieze Masters Podcast are brought to you by Frieze in collaboration with dunhill, the foremost British luxury menswear house.
Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is a Reduced Listening production. The producer was Silvia Malnati and sound engineer was Andy Fell.
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