Contents
Rachel Whiteread
Casting empty spaces into solid sculptures and becoming the first woman to win the Turner Prize.
Ghost · House
- Born
- 20 April 1963
- Birthplace
- Ilford, England
More people
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread turns the interiors of rooms, furniture and buildings into sculptures. Her work makes absence tangible, from a demolished London house to a memorial for Austria’s murdered Jews.
Early life
Ilford
Born in Essex and raised in London, with an artist mother and geography-teacher father.
Art school
Studied at Brighton Polytechnic and the Slade School of Fine Art.
Career
- 1988
First solo show
Exhibited casts of domestic objects at London’s Carlisle Gallery.
- 1993
Public breakthrough
House brought her sculpture into a fierce public debate; she won the Turner Prize.
- 2000
Vienna memorial
Completed the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial.
- 2017
Retrospective
Tate Britain surveyed three decades of her sculpture.
Selected work
Ghost
A plaster cast of the inside of a living room.
House
Concrete preserves the interior of a condemned East London house.
Nameless Library
A Holocaust memorial whose books face inward, keeping their stories unreadable.
Beyond work
Family
Her long-term partner, Marcus Taylor, is also a sculptor; they have two sons.
Public honour
Made a dame in 2019 for services to art.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Artangel — House ↗Photo: Christian Zürn. CC BY 3.0 · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
