Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread is a sculptor and a leading member of the new generation of British artists. Born in 1963, Whiteread trained as a painter before going to the Slade School of Art for sculpture. The first woman to win the Turner Prize,Whiteread's sculptures are casts of ordinary objects or everyday structures from unordinary points of view – a container’s interior, or the underneath part of furniture. Her first solo exhibit was in 1988. For the Tate's Turbine Hall, Whiteread created Embankment, a room full of 14,000 translucent white boxes stacked up indifferent configurations. In describing this work, she said she had been informed by images from the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Citizen Kane. The effect was one of walking through a huge collection of memories -- tangible, but at the same time untouchable. Her other works include Snow Show (2004), Untitled Monument (Plinth) (2001) for the setting in Trafalgar Square, Holocaust Monument aka Nameless Library (2000) in Vienna, and Water Tower (1988) in New York. Cast type works include Untitled (One Hundred Spaces) (1997) for the Sensation exhibit in London and New York, which consisted of a series of resin casts of the space underneath a chair; House (1993) was the cast of a Victorian house's inside exhibited at the location of the original house; and Ghost (1990), which was purchased by Charles Saatchi for his collection.
