Whiteread was born in Ilford, England, outside of London, in 1963. From 1982-1985 she studied painting at Brighton Polytech and then sculpture at the Slade School of Art from 1985-87, where she was introduced to casting in wax and plaster. In 1987 she cast the inside of her closet, based on fond childhood memories of the darkness and warmth of the closet. Whiteread represented England in the 1997 Venice Biennale, the youngest English artist to have had that honor.
Source: News, September October 1997.
Some of Whiteread's sculptures may at first appear abstract. Their forms, however, are cast from real spaces and objects most of which are in our domestic environment. The sculptures are sensuous but also have an industrial edge. Plinth is a cast in rubber of the space between the two elements which hold up a mortuary table. The rubber is amber colored. This creates a sensuous, velvety surface. Moreover, the edges are somewhat translucent and give the appearance almost of glowing.
By focusing our attention on the space beneath tables and chairs or above mattresses, Whiteread makes us aware of everyday spaces we inhabit but ignore. In these works she makes the invisible visible. The works might first seem abstract, but they give form to space that is quite real.
Source: NEWS September October 1997
Whiteread’s sculptures make visible the spaces we inhabit but disregard. She has cast space beneath chairs, inside of closets, an entire abandoned house, as well as more personal objects such as mattresses and bathtubs.
Untitled (Plinth) is a deep-orange, soft rectangular sculpture made of rubber. The color and material combined might suggest the same softness and ruddiness of the human body. When we learn that the sculpture is a cast of the empty space beneath a table found in a mortuary, some viewers might find that their initial reaction to the work changes. Life and death are depicted at once. The physicality of the sculpture paradoxically represents absence and, by extension, mortality.
October, 2020
Exhibition History"Contemporary Projects: Longing and Memory," Los Angeles County Museum of Art, June 4 - Sept. 7, 1997
Published ReferencesDMAC News, Sept./Oct. 1997, ref. p.2, cover ill.
AN UNCOMMON VISION: THE DES MOINES ART CENTER, Des Moines Art Center, 1998, ref. p.284, color ill. p.285
Images (1)
Audio (1)
Rachel Whiteread (British, born 1963)
Untitled (Plinth), 1995-1996
Run Time: 3:13
Recorded by Mia Farrell, Museum Educator / April 2020
Hello this is Mia Farrell, Museum Educator at the Des Moines Art Center. Looking at Plinth by British artist Rachel Whiteread elicits a surprisingly strong response, its form, a large cube with geometric indentations, its color warm amber orange brown cloudy semi translucent, almost glowing in some lights, with a white ashy haze collecting on its surface, its material, a mystery when you approach it. Is it soap, wax, resin? Spending prolonged time with the work rarely answers questions, walking around it only adds to wonder and a felt physical pull to touch it. This work is not asking us to touch it and neither is the artists, as a single fingerprint could cause damage. It is the unknown, the wanting to understand that urges us to explore with senses beyond our eyes its tacil appeal. Well there is no need, the answer is made accessible, check the label under materials – Plinth is cast rubber. Already knowing the texture and materiality of rubber our brains can feel this work without touch, firm but fragile to sharpness, we can imagine if this massive sculpture were lifted and dropped – it would bounce. This work exists in our sensory understanding as much as it exists in our 3D tangible world.
Rachel Whiteread would love us to imagine about this work. It is in her practice to make artwork of things that are not there. Things that exist in memory and experience, not the 3D tangible but the simple spaces that we take up while living. In 1987 she made a casting of the inside of her childhood closet, connected to memories and nostalgia of how the space made her feel. She went on to make casting of the insides of whole rooms, mattresses, and even a public work made from a cement casting of an entire three-story building, her works look modern and minimal out of context. But the shapes we see are empty spaces once filled with life and memory.
In the case of our casting Plinth made in 1995-1996 acquired by the Des Moines Art Center in 1997, it is cast from the underside of two structures holding up a mortuary table. Though Whiteread made castings beneath over 100 different tables in her work, the significance of this specific table has meaning. Whiteread refers to the idea of tombs often, monuments signifying death as much as acknowledging that life was here. Her work is static, solid, untouchable, unmoveable, evidence of space, a reminder of life and a memorial to memories. There nothing physically hidden in this cast cube but there is much buried inside.
