A striking three-meter bronze sculpture depicting a Black woman has been unveiled at Sydney Harbour's waterfront, marking the beginning of an ambitious new annual public art program. The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) revealed "Ancient Feelings" by acclaimed British artist Thomas J. Price on September 25, positioning the gleaming bronze figure on Tallawoladah Lawn with commanding views over Warrane/Sydney Harbour.
The monumental sculpture represents the inaugural piece in a groundbreaking series of annual public works, made possible through a major gift from the Balnaves family on behalf of The Balnaves Foundation. The program honors philanthropist Neil Balnaves AO, who championed the belief that art should be accessible to everyone. This initiative will bring large-scale sculptures to one of Sydney's most historically and culturally significant locations over the coming years.
"Ancient Feelings" serves as Price's debut public commission in Australia and deliberately challenges traditional heroic monuments. The fictional woman stands with majestic authority, her golden bronze form raising profound questions about representation and power in public spaces. "Ancient Feelings raises questions about who gets to be seen and who gets to be valued," Price explains. "To have a fictional representation of a Black woman, beaming in this golden bronze at a scale that is only associated with power, praise and high standing, I hope it will be an absolute joy for many people and for others it may provoke discomfort, and that tension is precisely where the work finds its strength."
The sculpture arrives following a remarkable year for Price, whose large-scale works have recently commanded attention in New York's Times Square and Florence's Piazza della Signoria. By working in bronze—a material historically associated with permanence, power, and commemoration—Price deliberately subverts tradition, celebrating stories and identities that public art has systematically overlooked. The golden-toned figure transforms the harbor foreshore into a space for contemporary dialogue about monuments and memory.
For MCA Director Suzanne Cotter, the new Tallawoladah Lawn Commission extends beyond mere aesthetic enhancement of the harbor. "Art in public space is unique in its ability to create dialogue; everyone has an opinion about the art they might experience," Cotter states. "In an era where the role of the monument has never been more hotly debated, this annual public sculpture series offers propositions and time for reflection from living artists engaged with our contemporary world."
The museum has developed an extensive program of talks, workshops, and walking tours to accompany the sculpture's seven-month residency, which runs until April 2026. These educational initiatives aim to deepen public engagement with the themes behind the work, encouraging visitors to examine their own relationships with public art and commemoration. The programming reflects the MCA's commitment to making contemporary art accessible while fostering critical conversations about representation in urban spaces.
"Ancient Feelings" has already begun generating the kind of public discourse that Price and the MCA hoped to inspire. Positioned in one of the city's busiest precincts, the sculpture is impossible to ignore, standing with quiet confidence as it invites passersby to reconsider who deserves celebration in public monuments. Whether viewers find the work awe-inspiring, unsettling, or somewhere between, the piece succeeds in its mission to provoke thought about art's role in shaping cultural narratives and urban identity.
