The hunger to erase House so quickly masks an insecurity about the potential for art to communicate in ways which are unheralded and unpredictable. Born and raised in London, the city is at the heart of her practice Rachel Whiteread Trafalgar Square Project 1998 Gagosian Gallery © Rachel Whiteread Rachel Whiteread was born in Ilford, East London, in 1963. The work was a concrete cast of the inside of the entire three-story house, from basement to top floor. Photo: Sue Ormerod Rachel Whiteread was born in London in 1963. The practitioner had been seeking a condemned property in London for over two years to realise a project which was essentially a development upon her Turner Prize nominated sculpture, Ghost 1990 ; a room-sized cast of a bedsit contained in a Victorian property in Archway. The casting took place from August to October 1993, and the work was opened to the public on 25 October 1993. But the marriage at hand, between the art world and the East End, was to be short-lived and volatile.
Whiteread lives and works in London and her work is represented in many private and public collections worldwide. A cast of the commonplace, it reverses the spatial relationships we are used to, but as soon as one has filed it under 'abstract form' out come all the evocative details calling for a naturalistic viewing mode and then the endless ripples of association of 'home' and of 'house' and of 'housing policy' and of 'lives'. Mr Flounders had huffed and he had puffed, and by 11am yesterday he had, finally, blown House down. Personally I think that is arts most invigorating aspect. What was revealed was an uncanny sight — the concrete impressed with the idiosyncrasies of over a century of domestic habitation. Whiteread herself was confounded by her newfound notoriety. Her mother, the artist Patricia Whiteread, was involved in important exhibitions of feminist art at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts in the 1980s.
Each section of the room was reassembled then facing outwards on a steel frame, creating an exact three-dimensional version of the room, but inside out and produced in pale plaster. This is a monument to the house that refused to become a park. Selected Press, continued Her work is about death, about attempting to define and encapsulate the past - as in her 'room' in the Tate, and the house in the East End, which stands monumental and poignant like a great white mausoleum for the collective memory of a dying way of life. After Whiteread took possession of the building in August 1993, new foundations were created to support the new concrete. The books also prompt the viewer to think about memory, and how some forms of loss are too devastating to be expressed in words.
The house was part of a terrace on a road that some of the buildings were destroyed by bombing in the Second World War, and later replaced by. There is no commemoration, no indication whatsoever that from 25 October 1993 to 11 January 1994, it played host to its very own culture war. Or they might trick us into thinking they're something they're not. Then there are those who for a variety of reasons believe that art is a private affair and should only be perused and discussed within the gentle confines of galleries, studios, and museums. We will be brave enough to ignore the fusillade of froth from the arts lobby and remove the monstrosity as soon as the contract allows. There are other nostalgic features, lost but not forgotten, such as a functioning public convenience Gentlemen only. Through its title, the piece refers to a torso, a body without limbs or head, which in turn introduces the idea of the way in the body is fragmented in classical sculpture.
Originally published in the published by Phaidon Press Limited, 1995 Image: Rachel Whiteread's House nearing completion 1993. Its status was even brought to debate in the House of Commons. The work attracted countless visitors but caused an uproar in the popular press and was eventually destroyed by the council. Photographs and working drawings chart the house's life from construction to demolition. The space that surrounds and defines an object is what we see in her sculptures.
Some of her work addresses particular human stories, like the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial, or Nameless Library in Vienna. Work by Henry Moore and Rachel Whiteread will be included. Local builders have called the sculpture 'amazing', people living across the road have said it is 'impressive' and 'wonderful''; a local resident said on Thursday that 'it should stay for future generations to remember what it was like here'. Whiteread is one of the few artists of her generation to have produced important public sculptures, some of which have achieved a monumental status and significance. Despite the fact that House stood for barely three months, its impact on British art is still resonant 20 years on. By the 1990s, the area had a diverse social mix, with churches from three different denominations nearby.
Weavers Fields was part of the plan too, although it was supposed to be bigger than it was. One of the figures assisting in the construction of House was Michael Landy, the artist who created 2001. Photograph: John Davies It would be disingenuous to claim that House excites universal acclaim - locally or nationally. The fact that the debate reached the level of Parliament is a testament to the audacity of the project and the reactions it stirred. Indeed, Whiteread and I had looked at several other terraced houses in North and East London through 1992 without success.
She donated half of the money to the housing charity , and the remainder in grants to young artists. As it transpired, the local authorities were not fans — House would stand for no longer than the grudging 80 days it had originally been granted. The meticulous process involved pumping 193 Grove Road full of liquid concrete and stripping off the exterior — that is, the house itself — so that only the impression of its innards remained. She commented on the unique situation in a 2007 Guardian Magazine. Vicky Park is the oldest purpose built recreation ground in London, conceived to curb disease contracted in damp and cramped conditions and as a means harness working-class wildness. Architraves have become chiselled incisions running around the monument, forms as mysterious as the hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs. There are now so many of these plaques that, peeping through the fence, it looks like they've let in a plague of estate agents to sell off Victoria Park in strips.
Photograph: Stephen White The House in the Park: a psychogeographical response By Iain Sinclair 'What did your street look like in the past? After the curing process the wooden wardrobe was discarded and I was left with a perfect replica of the inside. Artangel is generously supported by and the private patronage of the , , and. The Art Newspaper also understands that Eva Rothschild, Catherine Opie, and Alison Watt are due to make works for the new building. These green spaces took time to realise because of the need to acquire the land by compulsory purchase. House always had the potential to be a contentious work of art. Keep reading — check out these , and the.