Rachel Whiteread

Synopsis: theEYE is a series of interview-based profiles of contemporary visual artists in Britain. Each film provides a survey of an artist’s work and ideas, featuring the artist in discussion and illustrated by sequences of key exhibitions and installations around the world.

Rachel Whiteread has created some of the most remarkable and resonant public sculptures of recent years. House (now demolished) cast in concrete the interior of a terraced house in London’s East End. Monument is a moving memorial in Vienna to the victims of the holocaust in Austria. Yet she also frequently works on a domestic scale, casting in plaster and resin the spaces inside, around and beneath furniture, floors and staircases. Her art is a response to the everyday, and to the haunting themes of memory and mortality.

In this video profile Rachel Whiteread speaks about the ideas that prompted a number of her best-known sculptures, including Ghost, her first cast of the space inside a complete room, and Plinth, which established a shimmering presence in London’s Trafalgar Square during the summer of 2001. She also outlines the complexities of creating her often technically challenging works, and reflects on the controversies that they have sometimes set off.
Series: Theeye, Series
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Year of release: 2002
Year of production: 2001
Subjects: Art
Keywords: art - British; modern art; public art; sculpture; Whiteread, Rachel

Name: Illuminations
Email: louise@illuminationsmedia.co.uk
Web: http://www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk External site opens in new window
Phone: 020 7288 8400
Address: Studio 121, ScreenWorks
22 Highbury Grove
London
N5 2EF
Notes: Illuminations produces and distributes programmes on arts-related subjects, some of which are made for television and others in conjunction with cultural institutions to accompany specific exhibitions. Many titles are available for sale on DVD, including continuing series on leading contemporary and twentieth century artists and modern architecture, as well as a few programmes on religion, drama, history and ideas.

This record has been viewed 417 times.