Press Release
About the Show
To be unveiled on Monday 4 June at 3pm in Trafalgar Square by The Right Hon. Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
| Rachel Whiteread: Monument (photograph by Gautier Deblonde) |
Rachel Whitereads sculpture for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square will be unveiled on Monday 4 June. A facsimile of the granite plinth has been cast in water-clear resin and sits reversed on top of the original. Its huge bulk rendered almost insubstantial by the material, the work will refract the bustling traffic of the square.
I decided that the most appropriate sculpture for the plinth would be to make a pause: a quiet moment for the space.
Monument is Rachel Whitereads fourth major public work, after the Turner prize-winning House in 1993-4, her resin cast of a water tower in New York for the Public Art Fund, and the recently unveiled Holocaust Memorial in Vienna. As ever, Rachel Whiteread has pushed materials and techniques to their limits, and this will be the largest cast ever made in resin.
This is the third and final work of contemporary art to be installed in Trafalgar Square under the Fourth Plinth Project, the brainchild of Prue Leith, previous Chairman of the RSA. The fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square had remained empty for 158 years.
Rachel Whitereads sculpture was funded by the artist, Anthony dOffay Gallery, London and Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York.
Rachel Whitereads preparatory drawings for Monument are on display at Anthony dOffay Gallery, 9 Dering Street from 4 June to 21 July. The first solo exhibition of Rachel Whitereads work in a public art gallery in London is on view at the Serpentine Gallery from 20 June to 5 August.
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