Rachel Whiteread:Untitled (Torso)
1995
Plaster
9 1/4 x 7 x 3 1/2 inches
Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) came to prominence in the early 1990s as a cohort of artists, known as the YBAs, began to radically reshape the landscape of contemporary art in Britain. Whiteread was the first female recipient of the acclaimed annual Turner Prize, which she won in 1993 for her work House. The concrete sculpture presented the eerie cast of the interior of a Victorian terraced house in East London. This fascination with casting negative space and creating physical manifestations of that which we frequently overlook has remained central to the artist’s practice.
Though best known for her works on a monumental scale, at the outset of her career, Whiteread focused on small, familiar domestic objects, such as hot water bottles, loo rolls and other paraphernalia. This work, executed in 1995, is taken from the interior of a hot water bottle cast in plaster. Whiteread has returned to the subject frequently producing her ‘torsos’ in resin, rubber, plaster, wax and other materials. The plaster is poured into the hot water bottle which is sealed and the plaster left to set, it is then cut open and peeled away to reveal the final work. While the sculpture may appear as the familiar outline of a hot water bottle, it is in fact an inversion of the object, representing the interiority of the object that we do not usually see. By giving presence to the negative space of the hot water bottle, Whiteread highlights the absence of the object itself.
In her torsos, the neck and shoulders of the hot water bottle replicate that of a human figure; rendered with a smooth surface and curvaceous line Untitled (Torso) speaks to sculptures of classical antiquity. In this way, the sculpture is not just a physical trace but also a historical one. Describing these works as torsos, the artist points to their connection with the human body, lending the work an intimacy. Throughout her oeuvre, Whiteread has hinted at the presence of the figure, without ever depicting them. In presenting the spaces and objects with which humans interact, Whiteread’s practice interrogates the object/figure relationship.
in context
Rachel Whiteread became the first woman to ever win the prestigious Turner Prize in 1993 for her monumental sculpture ‘House’. The work is the cast of a terraced house; the original building, situated in east London, was earmarked for demolition in the early 1990s, whereupon Whiteread chose to transform the structure into a work of art. The sculptor cast the interior of the home in concrete wall by wall, before removing the outer structure of the house. The remaining sculpture is entirely devoid of utility and cannot be entered. Subsequently, the work garnered much attention and became a point of controversy within the art world.
Rachel Whiteread distinguished herself among her contemporaries (known collectively as the Young British Artists) for her innovative use of sculpture. Her works, which are often created with concrete or plaster, are quiet and aesthetically refined, inviting contemplation.
Whiteread’s sculptures are often subversions of traditional casting processes. Sometimes, the artist casts the interior of the object, avoiding a veracious representation of the original object; in other instances, Whiteread casts the area around the object, creating a sculpture of negative space. In the case of ‘Untitled (Stairs)’, the artist inverts her cast of stairs in order to overturn the notion of utility, a common theme in her works.
Whiteread is one of the most celebrated artists working today. A major retrospective exhibition of her work was held at Tate Britain, London in 2017, bringing together works from across the artist’s decades long career. ‘Untitled (One Hundred Spaces)’, installed in the Duveen galleries, presents one hundred multi-coloured resin moulds of the undersides of chairs, all varying in shape and size. These objects offer the viewer a ‘negative’ sculpture, and invites us to imagine, rather than simply the object itself, the space surrounding the object.
B. UNITED KINGDOM 1963
Biography
One of the most significant contemporary sculptors, Rachel Whiteread’s works range from the intimate to the monumental, using industrial materials – plaster, concrete, resin, rubber – to cast everyday objects and spaces. She records the negative space within or around structures to generate sculptures that are at once mimetic and abstract. Her focus is often domestic, concerned with documenting “the residue of years and years of use”.
Born in London in 1963, Whiteread studied painting at Brighton Polytechnic and sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art. She rose to prominence as part of the YBAs, alongside artists like Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. In 1993, Whiteread was the first woman to win the Turner Prize. The same year she made House, a life-sized cast of the interior of an east London Victorian terrace house, which was controversially demolished only a few months later. In 1997 she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale. Her public commissions include the Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, Austria, which was completed in 2000. Whiteread was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2019 for services to Art. Whiteread has exhibited internationally, with major retrospectives at the Tate Britain, London and National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Her works are held in numerous contemporary art collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.