Tom Price’s columnar sculptures are playful experiments with form, he attempts to liberate materials from their typical artistic use by encouraging them to behave in unfamiliar ways, exposing new aspects and aesthetics. Price pits resin against tar, observing the conflict as the viscous and viscid jostle for place, creating luminous, fissured environments.
Read MorePrice is perhaps best known for his Meltdown series (2007-2018) - unique sculptural furniture manipulated from commonplace industrial materials with masterful dexterity. The process used has required the development of specialist machinery and tools which are capable of subverting industrial manufacturing techniques by introducing a measure of entropy into what is generally an incredibly controlled process. The resulting metamorphosis is spectacular – reality-defying melted sheens form neat seat-shaped imprints into bundles of loosely knit polypropylene blue rope, cable ties, PVC tubing and discarded clothing.
In Price's most recent series Synthesis (2014-2018) sculptural blocks split and crack. This is a result of careful manipulation during the catalysing process of the resin. The inclusions cluster around and interact with unctuous bodies of tar which loom, suspended in space. The tar initially appears densely black, almost light-absorbent, but upon closer inspection, a network of fine green vapour trails can be seen drifting from a surface partially melted by the exothermic reaction of the curing resin.
Born in London in 1973, Price now lives and works in Mallorca. Since graduating from London’s Royal College of Art, Price has established an international career as an artist and designer with works in major collections and institutions worldwide, including acquisitions by art museums in America: San Francisco MOMA, Denver Art Museum, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and The Mint Museum; as well as the MKG Hamburg, and AmorePacific Museum of Art in Seoul. He has also completed several large-scale sculptural commissions for public and private spaces.
Works from Price's series Synthesis were featured in our 2018 summer group show Looking For U, an exhibition exploring themes of identity and communication in the modern age.
