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Rachel Whiteread
Shortlisted: 1991, 1993

Whiteread's work is based on casts taken from commonplace objects, but they have a sense of mystery because she usually casts not the objects themselves, but the spaces above, below, or inside them, giving form to the apparently empty spaces we have inhabited. Soon after she had been shortlisted, Whiteread made House, a cast of the interior of the last remaining house of a late-nineteenth century terrace in the East End of London; this became a focus for debate about contemporary art in the year she won the prize.

Rachel Whiteread was born in London in 1963. Between 1982 and 1987 she trained at Brighton Polytechnic and the Slade School of Art. She was nominated for the Prize in 1991, and she won when shortlisted again in 1993. Whiteread was selected for her 'resonant sculptures of the spaces surrounding domestic objects and rooms,' as seen in her installation works shown at the Chisenhale Gallery, and her work House, publicly exhibited in collaboration with Artangel.

This information has been taken from The Turner Prize: Twenty Years, by Virginia Button, Tate Publishing, 2003.

View Rachel Whiteread in the Tate Collection