Holocaust monument 2000
Place village 2009
untitled monument 2001
Embankment 2004
House 1993
Rachel Whiteread is a was born on April 20 1963 in the country town of Essex, England. Her mother was an artist and the death of her had a profound effect on whitereads work. Whiteread firsty trained in painting at the facutly of arts and architecture, Brighton Polytechnic, breifly at cyprus college of art and then finally studied scultptue at London's Slade school of Art. She first began to exhibit in 1987.
Whiteread's work is much to do with Space, objects, materials and presence and absense. She uses domestic object of the every day and casts the negative space; solidifying the void of the objects. Whiteread generally uses plaster, concrete and rubber however she utilises these materials on everday found objects. One of her work titled 'place village' is an entire collection of old dollhouses which she has organised to create a small community.
Whiteread is famously known for her 1993 work 'house'. This work was a concrete cast of the inside of an entire victorian terraced home that had been scehduled for demolition. The work was publicly exhibited at its original location, 193 Grove Road East London. The production of the work caused great controversy amongst the public and the locals did not like the immediate groups of people coming to see the work. It generated extreme mixed responses. For example: Whiteread's work 'House' won her both The Turner prize for best young british artists in 1993 and also the K Foundation art award for worst british aritst. 'House' was demolished on the 11th of janurary 1994 by London council, which in itself caused more publicity and controversy.
In 2004 whiteread was offered a commission to produce a piece for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall which she delayed acceptance for six months to ensure she could actually conceive a piece that could occupy the massive hall space. Titled 'Embankment' the work consists of approximately fourteen thousand white polyethylene boxes stacked in different ways. The various stacks enable any veiwers to walk around the room and around the different stacks to be overwhelmed by not only the size of the hall but the space her occupies. They represent the greif of when her mother died and the period of packing boxes of her things and moving them. Whiteread also cites the end scenes of 'The raiders of the lost arc' and 'citizens cane'.
In 2001 Whiteread became the third artist to provide a sculpture for the empty forth plinth at trafalgar square in london. She made an eleven tonne resin cast of the plinth itself which stands upsidedown making a transperant mirror image of the marble plinth 'Untitled monument'. The piece took eight attempts to make as a result of the resin cracking. The entire project cost over one hundred thousand pounds to produce and unusually for public work, Whiteread rasied the funs herself by selling small models of the piece. Whiteread descirbes this work as 'as pause...a quiet moment'. The piece conjures heaviness and lightness and as Ned Denny from new statesman explains 'She sees it not as a space to be filled, but as an absence to be acknowledged'.
For Whiteread's work, 'place village' unlike her other works, she has collected handmade english dollhouse and has configured them into a minature community. The work was presented in Forster gallery, Boston in a small dimly lit room behind a black curtin. Inside the small homes she has placed a light that reveals the emptiness of the houses and their lack of funishings. The entire room is only lit by these subtle lights inside the houses which draws the viewer in to inspect whats inside. The entire work almost has a certain sadness to it as this visually thriving little town has no sense of life or anything-once again Whiteread is approaching the idea of absence and memory.
Whiteread was commissioned 'Holocaust monument' in 2000 and it was Austria's first memorial to the sixty five thousand Jewish Austrians that were killed during the holocaust. The work essentially is a concrete cast of rows of books that have been turned so the spines are hidden and the pages are facing outwards. They are placed in the shape of a room with at the front two negatively cast doors with no handles or hinges. The piece is symbolic of the large number of victims and their untold stories of their lives.
Bibliography:
Townsend, chris. 'The Art of Rachel Whiteread'. Thames and Huson, London, 2004.
Mullins, Charlotte. 'Rachel Whiteread/ Charlotte Mullins'. Tate, London. 2004.
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