Rachel Whiteread
September 2004
Educated at Brighton Polytechnic (1982-85) and the Slade School of Fine
Art (1985-87), Rachel Whiteread is best known for her controversial
sculpture House (1993). Her major concern for 'negative spaces of
domestic objects (which) evoke feelings of memory and mortality' (1)
became somewhat overshadowed by the media circus which surrounded her
Turner Prize success in 1993 and the eventual demolition by Hackney
Council of the piece a year later. Yet Whiteread has persisted in her
exploration of the absent presence. Producing work of great sensitivity
and increasing stature, Whiteread's most recent and controversial
project has been the Holocaust Memorial for Judenplatz in Vienna which
still remains unrealised.A lesser known aspect of Whiteread's work is
her constant working practice of photography. She photographs gaps,
chasms, chinks, grids, objects, rows of crosses in a cemetery, girders
and tower blocks. Tower blocks hold a particular fascination for the
artist. In an earlier print Whiteread made for the London Portfolio
(1992), she used an image of a mausoleum under construction and likened
the grid formation to 'a block of flats, buildings that you constantly see
being constructed or demolished...'(2). Intrigued by the idea of 'sick
building syndrome' and J.G. Ballard's novels, Highrise and Concrete
Island, the artist explained
It's as if we're building these mausoleums for ourselves. We don't know how to deal with these buildings that are almost living and breathing, they have their own viruses: Legionnaire's Disease is transmitted through air conditioning systems. They are almost organic - you go into a building and it hums - it's the computer lines, the lights, the heating - this noise which seeps into it (3)
Demolished shows, frame by frame, the ghostly space once occupied by the tower blocks, captured by the artist as they disappear into gradual non-existence. Whiteread originally photographed each image in colour, but then decided that she wanted the images printed in black and white as this was deemed more appropriate. A mezzotint separation process was used to print Whiteread's photographs. In order to print an image from continuous tone (ie. a photograph) into a 'printable image', the photograph is projected through a mezzotint screen (4) 'which can create the half tone effect without its mechanical feel. It is screened with a random but regular grain which will imitate the original tone without evidence of a strict grid'.(5)
1. Contemporary British Art in Print (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. February - April 1995), p.50
2. Interview with Iwona Blazwick, Berlin 1992, reproduced in Rachel Whiteread: Sculptures (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. 1992), p.11
3. op.cit., p.12
4. In conversation with Brad Faine at Coriander (London)Ltd.
5.Tim Mara, The Thames and Hudson Manual of Screen Printing, (London, 1979), p.86
Michele Zalopany was born 1955, Detroit, USA.
It's as if we're building these mausoleums for ourselves. We don't know how to deal with these buildings that are almost living and breathing, they have their own viruses: Legionnaire's Disease is transmitted through air conditioning systems. They are almost organic - you go into a building and it hums - it's the computer lines, the lights, the heating - this noise which seeps into it (3)
Demolished shows, frame by frame, the ghostly space once occupied by the tower blocks, captured by the artist as they disappear into gradual non-existence. Whiteread originally photographed each image in colour, but then decided that she wanted the images printed in black and white as this was deemed more appropriate. A mezzotint separation process was used to print Whiteread's photographs. In order to print an image from continuous tone (ie. a photograph) into a 'printable image', the photograph is projected through a mezzotint screen (4) 'which can create the half tone effect without its mechanical feel. It is screened with a random but regular grain which will imitate the original tone without evidence of a strict grid'.(5)
1. Contemporary British Art in Print (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. February - April 1995), p.50
2. Interview with Iwona Blazwick, Berlin 1992, reproduced in Rachel Whiteread: Sculptures (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. 1992), p.11
3. op.cit., p.12
4. In conversation with Brad Faine at Coriander (London)Ltd.
5.Tim Mara, The Thames and Hudson Manual of Screen Printing, (London, 1979), p.86
Michele Zalopany was born 1955, Detroit, USA.
Jennifer Ramkalawon