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Imagenes de paisajes sonoros2/25/2023 ![]() On the one hand it harks back to drawing, the attempt to inscribe the sense of an object in space through the emptiness it establishes on the other, even the earlier works contain a sense of building, of filling and materially completing the full identity of an object. The central endeavour of her sculpture seems to have been the development of a response to a negative space the thing that objects create by their presence but which disappears in their absence. Whiteread’s sculpture has developed consistently from her early pieces dealing with the negative spaces made by furniture. Rachel Whiteread’s work here is a sensitive response to the history of the area and a magnificent challenge to the local environment and to perceptions of what art, or more specifically sculpture, can be about. If you can’t see what it’s for, then it’s your loss art cannot be spelt out in words of one syllable in a way that the tabloids can easily digest. This particular house, once inhabited, with fires lit in its grates and windows opened to let in the sunshine, survived the devastation of the Blitz to be preserved in concrete, as much a mausoleum as a memorial. Unnecessary, I suppose, because unlike that solitary rock in the Welsh hills, House illuminates its own history, a reminder of the former street of terraced houses. When I last saw House no one had visited the sculpture in the night and replaced ‘WOT FOR’ with ‘Because’. But the question indicates the puzzlement and irritation that contemporary art can generate. Rachel Whiteread’s House has had the legend ‘WOT FOR’ painted on it, no question mark maybe the perpetrators didn’t have time to add one. Now, with the warning gone, the solitary name of Elvis has been reinstated on the side of his memorial. In the night, ‘Elvis’ would be changed back to ‘Benny Hill’ until finally Elvis was added with a warning to anyone who dared to replace it. Benny Hill was deleted and replaced with Elvis. From then on, and over a three-week period, a kind of skirmish took place. One night about eighteen months ago, the name of Elvis was deleted and replaced by ‘Benny Hill’. ![]() ![]() ![]() It has stood, that is, with one disruption. This memorial to the King has stood since his death as a reminder to all who drive by that one fan, at least, remembers him. The road runs right by it, and emblazoned on its side in letters three feet high is the word ‘Elvis’. This article by artist, writer and curator David Thorpe appeared in the Winter issue of Untitled Magazine that same yearĪlong the mountain road to Aberystwyth stands a huge rock, the deposit of some geological activity thousands of years ago. The controversy of her sculpture, at the time, had to do more with the government’s policy of housing demolition than with art. In 1993 Rachel Whitehouse captured the artistic imagination with the «negative space» house she made of concrete in Bow, South London. ![]()
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