Like warm shores, you will feel me…
Two figures create a protective corner facing away from Hackney Town Hall towards Hackney Empire, where I grew up going to Oliver Samuels shows. To be standing here today at a statue so black it reflects the blue of the sky, with straight back cornrows, beside a female figure holding such honesty within the stature that again, I see so many of my own experiences. I of course am a fan of Thomas, but more so, I’m a fan the way he allows the souls of many to flow through him and be represented in singular bodies of work. Thank you for this work; the space these two figures have created to protect each other, protects me and my legacy as a descendant of the Windrush generation.
I see a woman who wasn’t afforded a girlhood, wasn’t allowed the simple privilege of growing from a child to an adult in peace, yet a woman who continues to shape-shift between roles, except one that would allow her to release the tension that is woven tightly between her desires and her reality.
Her stance carries such weight, a pain, moments in which my mother cries out in anguish and tells me that no one will ever know what she has been through. Yet the stance is still standing, maybe fractured, but never broken. The stance I recognise as pained, a body where many wounds have landed but have been sealed with determination, and frankly, necessity to stand up.
In his face, I read, or project frustration. Where her energy to be seen has been passed on to the many people who in some way she has mothered, he stands with an air of “you will see me, you will see me, you will see me, and you will feel me.” His presence and stature magnificent, carrying the fire of those who came before with the burden of making it all worthwhile, but with the entitlement of deserving what they didn’t have.
Titled ‘Warm Shores’, the piece is reminiscent of where we came from, and what our parents hoped for on their arrival. Thomas’ ‘Warm Shores’ creates a new shore in Hackney as a place that we finally receive the welcome that we were promised.
These are just my first thoughts.. and I look forward to sharing more space with this work. Thank you @thomasjprice__ 🖤