Changemakers: Rachel Whiteread

One of Britain’s leading contemporary artists Rachel Whiteread talks about her monumental practice and career.
 
Rachel Whiteread will discuss her pioneering career and how her practice has continually pushed the boundaries of sculpture.
 
Rachel Whiteread is widely recognised for her casting of everyday settings, objects and surfaces, from hot water bottles and beds to entire houses. Transformed into ghostly replicas, her sculptures reveal hidden narratives to reflect on the purpose and memory that these objects once held.
 
Whiteread was the first woman to win the Turner prize in 1993 and to present a solo exhibition for the British Pavilion during the Venice Biennale in 1997. She was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who featured in the Sensation exhibition at the RA in 1997. She has since taken over the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London’s Fourth Plinth, created the Holocaust Memorial in Vienna and placed a cast of a 1950s house at the United States Embassy in London, as well as holding major exhibitions and retrospectives across the world.
Changemakers is a series of conversations with women across the cultural sector, highlighting how their work has shifted narratives, broken down barriers, and generated change across the arts.
 
The series is inspired by the RA’s Angelica Kauffman exhibition and her role as a pioneering artist. Kauffman was one of only two female painters among the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768, the other artist being Mary Moser. Kauffman helped to shape the direction of European art, reinventing the genre of history painting by focusing largely on female protagonists from classical history and mythology.