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Turner prize

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Five Things to Know: Rachel Whiteread

1. Her work makes the invisible visible

Whiteread’s work typically takes the form of casts, which are formed when a liquid material is poured into a mold and allowed to solidify. Using materials like concrete, resin, and even snow, her sculptures take the shape of everyday objects: mattresses, hot water bottles, stairwells, and the like.

But more often than not, Whiteread’s casts are of negative space, or the space between, under, or otherwise around things. The space that surrounds and defines an object is what we see in her sculptures. Look closely at Untitled (Book Corridors), and you’ll see that what initially registers in your mind as books on shelves is actually a cast of the spaces between shelves. There are no books or shelves left in the work, only the ruffled edges of pages torn out. It’s the invisible spaces around us that Whiteread has turned our focus to.

2. She was the first woman to win the Turner Prize

Whiteread was awarded the Turner Prize in 1993 following her project Untitled (House), a life-sized cast

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Rachel Whiteread

English artist

Dame Rachel WhitereadDBE (born 20 April 1963) is an English artist who primarily produces sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She was the first woman to win the annual Turner Prize in 1993.[1]

Whiteread was one of the Young British Artists who exhibited at the Royal Academy's Sensation exhibition in 1997. Among her most renowned works are House, a large concrete cast of the inside of an entire Victorian house; the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, resembling the shelves of a library with the pages turned outwards; and Untitled Monument, her resin sculpture for the empty fourth plinth in London's Trafalgar Square.

She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2006 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to art.[2]

Early life and education

Whiteread was born in 1963 in Ilford, Essex.[3][4] Her mother, Patricia Whiteread (née Lancaster), who was also an artist, died in 2003 at

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Born in 1963, Rachel Whiteread studied painting at Brighton Polytechnic and shifted her focus to sculpture as a student at London's Slade School of Fine Art (1985–87). In the early 1990s she began to receive international attention as part of a stylistically diverse group referred to as the Young British Artists. Among her contemporaries, Whiteread has distinguished herself for creating an innovative body of work that reflects a quiet, contemplative spirit, receiving such accolades as the Tate Gallery's Turner Prize in 1993 and a medal at the 1997 Venice Biennale. Throughout Europe and the United States, her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in museums and galleries, and she has realized several public art projects. Most recently, in the summer of 2001, her work was featured in a retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery in London, and a public sculpture entitled Monument was unveiled in Trafalgar Square.

 


Rachel Whiteread. Photo by Gautier Deblonde. © Gautier Deblonde.





















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