Untitled (Bubble)

Rachel Whiteread (1963 - )

lithograph on paper

2022

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© Rachel Whiteread - Commissioned by the Government Art Collection for The Robson Orr TenTen Award 2022

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Government Art Collection

    Rachel Whiteread DBE’s new lithograph commissioned for the Government Art Collection revisits the circular motifs the artist first used in a print commission for the London 2012 Summer Olympics, also in the Collection. That work was conceived at a moment of celebration, the circles reminiscent for the artist of the marks left by glasses and cups after a party. It was a work about people coming together.

    The circles in this new work are by contrast suggestive of the traces of an invisible virus. Whiteread is known for making the invisible visible, and these abstract forms reflect both the microscopic form of Covid-19 itself and a time during the height of the pandemic in this country when physical contact and communication became reduced to those within our ‘bubble’. In denser areas of the print, where we see ‘a bubble within a bubble within a bubble’, as the artist describes it, that original idea of celebration lingers. In the overlaps, we may be reminded too of those ecstatic moments when we reunited with loved ones.

    Whiteread exploits the medium to enhance the sense of fragility and uncertainty we all experienced during this time. Her print layers different hues of monochrome ink. At certain stages she adds watercolour marks by hand, using it in a similar way to build up incredibly thin washes of colour. Whiteread is interested in how the fabric of our daily existence bears the accumulated traces of previous lives.

  • About the artist
    Rachel Whiteread was born in London and studied at Brighton Polytechnic and the Slade School of Art. One of the most established artists of her generation (labelled by the media ‘YBAs’, or Young British Artists), she is known for her sculptures of negative spaces of domestic objects. She was the first woman to win the Turner Prize in 1993 and in 1997 represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. She has produced several commissions, including 'Monument' (2001) for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth in London and 'Embankment' (2005–06) at Tate Modern. Her work is represented in international public collections from London to Sydney. Whiteread was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2006 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2019.
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  • Details
    Title
    Untitled (Bubble)
    Portfolio Title
    TenTen
    Series Title
    TenTen
    Edition
    Number 2 in an edition of 30, plus 6 Artist's Proofs
    Date
    2022
    Medium
    lithograph on paper
    Dimensions
    height: 70 cm; width: 49 cm
    Acquisition
    Commissioned by the Government Art Collection for The Robson Orr TenTen Award 2022, a GAC/Outset Annual Commission
    Inscription
    recto: inscribed by the artist "2/30" bottom left / ''R Whiteread", bottom right
    Provenance
    The artist, from whom commissioned by the Government Art Collection for The Robson Orr TenTen Award 2022, a GAC/Outset Annual Commission, October 2022
    GAC number
    19114/1