Untitled (Bubble)

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Education, Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith Street

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.

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

circle, abstract, celebration, COVID-19 pandemic, coronavirus, national lockdown, bubble, support bubble

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), print (as object name), lithograph, velvet paper

Artist

Rachel Whiteread (1963 - )

Title

Untitled (Bubble)

Portfolio Title

TenTen

Series Title

TenTen

Edition

Number 10 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 ''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

19114/9