Rachel whiteread biography
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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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About Rachel Whiteread
Born in 1963, in Ilford, Essex, Whiteread is a preeminent British artist whose sculptures explore themes of absence, memory, permanence, and how surfaces bear the lingering presence of human use. Whiteread studied painting at Brighton Polytechnic and received her MA in sculpture from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London. She was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) featured in the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1997.
Whiteread is best known for creating casts of the negative space in and around ordinary objects, revealing hidden narratives and forgotten histories. Her early works transformed intimate domestic items—beds, cabinets, hot water bottles—into haunting replicas alluding to memories of their previous lives. Among Whiteread’s most renowned works are House (1993), a concrete cast of the interior of an entire three-story Victorian home; the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial (2000) in Vienna, also known as the Nameless Library for its rows of books, with closed pages facing the viewer, cast in
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Rachel
Whiteread
Everything Rachel Whiteread, CBE, Turner Prize-winning artist, makes is about us: our histories, our lives, our deaths, our absences — cast in concrete. It started with a spoon. Eventually it encompassed a whole house.
At 54, Rachel is working at both scales. Her extraordinary sculptures combine a comforting homeliness with a nightmarish quality. But she is also making quieter “shy sculptures” in remote places. One day she’ll make a map of them. For now, a survey show at Tate Britain plots her work from London’s Archway Road to California’s Joshua Tree National Park. It’s a chance to celebrate the mournful poetry of her monumental take on the world.
When it comes to her art, Rachel Whiteread doesn’t compromise. Rather than see her best-known work, “House” (1993), a life-size cast of a family home in east London, moved from the place it was made for, she allowed it to be destroyed after only 11 weeks, even though she regarded it then – and still does now – as “one of the best things I’ve ever made”. She later endured five years of aggressive questio
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