LOndOn 2O12

Location

Country: Japan
City: Tokyo
Place: British Embassy

Although Rachel Whiteread is best known for her sculptural work, she has always made drawings. She describes these as being like a diary – a core activity to which she continually returns. Her LOndOn 2012 print features a pattern of broken, overlapping rings in the Olympic colours. While picking up on the emblem of the Olympics, this work alludes to the social side of the Games and in particular to the marks left by glasses or bottles at social gatherings or ceremonies. This work is part of a set of limited-edition prints, commissioned from some of the UK’s most critically acclaimed artists to celebrate London hosting the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympics. A set of these prints was presented to the Government Art Collection.

 

Whiteread is celebrated for her sculptures that cast the negative spaces of common domestic objects such as the area beneath a chair or an empty plinth. She gained international fame for House  (1993; destroyed 1994) – the monumental concrete cast she created of a terraced Victorian house in Bow, London.

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.

Places

Subjects

olympic games, abstract

Materials & Techniques

screenprint

Artist

Rachel Whiteread (1963 - )

Title

LOndOn 2O12

Portfolio Title

London 2012

Edition

HDC 2/10

Date

2011

Medium

Screenprint

Dimensions

height: 76.00 cm, width: 60.00 cm

Acquisition

Presented by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, October 2011

Inscription

below image, l: LOndOn 2012 ; below image, r: R. Whiteread 2011 HDC 2/10

Provenance

London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (gift)

GAC number

18422/6