Empty House
Contemporary artist Rachel Whiteread creates ghostly casts in plaster of spaces. The sculpture exist as a monument to the space that is not occupied by the objects she responds to. Each cast reflects years of wear, where cracks have fissured, dust has gathered and wood has warped.
This piece entitled, “House” (1993) is a concrete cast of a Victorian house in East London, exhibited exactly where the original house once stood. Controversial, some loved the work, others hated it and it was destroyed by the London Council about a year after it was made. The Independent wrote about it, “Denatured by transformation, things turn strange here. Fireplaces bulge outwards from the walls of the House, doorknobs are rounded hollows. Architraves have become chiselled incisions running around the monument, forms as mysterious as the hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs.”
The Independent, “Rachel Whiteread, ‘I’ve done the same thing over and over’”
Untitled (House), Rachel Whiteread, 1993
