Rachel Whiteread is a British artist and sculptor, who represents Conceptual Art movement. Her sculptures are concerned with the negative space present between humans and the places they inhabit.
Background
Rachel Whiteread was born on April 20, 1963 in Ilford, Redbridge, United Kingdom. She is a daughter of Patricia Whiteread, an artist, who was involved in important exhibitions of feminist art at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts in the 1980's, and Thomas Whiteread, a Geography teacher, who supported artistic career of his wife and converted part of their house into a studio, where Whiteread remembers helping to install a concrete floor as a child. When Rachel was seven, she moved to London together with her parents and older twin sisters.
Education
In 1982, Rachel entered Brighton Polythechnic (present-day University of Brighton), where she remained till 1985. While she was at Brighton, she studied under British sculptor Richard Wilson, who taught her the casting technique, that would be so vital to her later career. In 1985, Whiteread enrolled at Slade School of Fine Art, graduating with Master of Arts degree in 1987. Also, she briefly studied at Cyprus College of Art.
In 1997, Rachel received Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Staffordshire University.
The following year after graduation from Slade School of Art, Rachel had her first solo exhibition at a small London gallery, where she showed just four pieces. These included casts of the interior of a wardrobe and the space underneath a bed, works, which marked the beginning of her mature period.
In 1990, the sculptor made her early masterpiece "Ghost" and was subsequently nominated for the Turner Prize. Two years later, in 1992, one of her works was presented at the prestigious Documenta IX exhibition. In October 1993, Whiteread completed her most important and most debated work, entitled "House". It was a cast of an entire Victorian terraced house in London's East End. On January 11, 1994, Tower Hamlets London Borough Council demolished "House". However, this decision caused some controversy.
In 1995, Rachel represented the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The same year, she was commissioned to make a memorial to the holocaust in the city of Vienna. In order to deep her understanding of the issue, she travelled to Germany and Eastern Europe to visit the sites, where Nazi atrocities took place. The sculptor also visited cemeteries and battlegrounds. It took her five years to finish the work. After that, Whiteread received commissions from around the world.
In spring 2004, she was offered the annual Unilever series commission to produce a piece for Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall, delaying acceptance for five to six months until she was confident she could conceive of a work to fill the space. Throughout the latter half of September 2005 and mid-way through October, her work "Embankment" was installed and was made public on October 10, 2005.
After 2007, Rachel started to introduce more color into her work, where white, grey and organic colors had previously predominated. Also, she took on a number of commissions, creating casts of small sheds for locations, including London, New York City and Norway.
Currently, Rachel Whiteread lives and works in a former synagogue in east London.
Quotations:
"I think the difference between me and some of the other YBAs (Young British Artists) was that I was ambitious for the work, and not ambitious for myself."
"I don't want to make plop art - sculpture that just gets plopped down in places. I wouldn't want to litter every corner of the world with my sculpture."
"It's my mission to make things more complicated."
"I studied painting as an undergraduate, and then as a postgraduate, I studied sculpture. When I applied for postgrad, I had applied to one school for painting and the other for sculpture. I got into both and decided that sculpture was the thing."
"Making art early in my career was kind of like being sick - better out than in. As you get older, you try to keep some of that, but you're obviously much clearer about what you're doing."
"There's a lot more space for women to be artists. Women are more successful than ever before. Still, the prices women command are far smaller than men. It's extraordinary really. How does that still happen?"
Membership
Rachel is a member of Young British Artists group.
Connections
Marcus Taylor, a sculptor, is Rachel's partner. They have two sons.