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 rachel whiteread - embankment
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Boxes, boxes everywhere. It’s easy to wax lyrical on Rachel Whiteread’s installation in Tate Modern’s cavernous Turbine Hall.It looks like a warehouse of soulless plastic boxes storing a product that doesn’t exist. Or Duchamp’s birdcage of sugar cubes blown up to superhuman size; Superman’s secret crystallised lair; an arctic icy landscape inspired by Whiteread’s involvement in the forthcoming Snow Show. Maybe it is a pile of urban rubble or a sea of skyscrapers in their most abstract form. As you wander through the installation, the piece changes key. The opaque, white, hollow boxes that never open look like giant piles of unwrapped presents, masses of lard, squares of butter. Glued together in haphazard piles or rough symmetrical piles, they are transformed into a strange cubic maze or a plastic hall of mirrors. Other viewers suddenly appear among the abstract piles, shocking each other with their sudden appearance among this soulless, untidy, inspiring mess. EMBANKMENT is at Tate Modern until 2nd April 06.
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comment by Mister Savage
Jan 5, 2006
That was my reservation too (see above). Nobody's said yet...
comment by revsorg
Jan 5, 2006
The thing that worried me about this installation was whether it is recyclable? It seems like a bit of a waste of plastic. When I say this I'm not criticising the artistic merits of the work.
comment by abricot
Nov 11, 2005
i was there yesterday. didn't find it soulless at all - on the contrary - it felt like a ghost city - especially when i suddenly caught sight of a reflection in the glass walls. i found it unexpectedly moving and spiritual. it kind of made you feel like whispering, as though in a cathedral. quite amazing really, and definitely worth a visit, because it works on an emotional level that i don't think you would imagine just from seeing photos or tv documentaries. i loved it!
comment by starmie
Oct 18, 2005
If I went round that exhibition, I'd expect to come across a huge sugar-lump eating Dougal.
comment by rowan
Oct 17, 2005
Surely someone'll just store it in a room until it can be shown again in another massive room. I think it looks beautiful - can't wait to get along and see it. On a Tate Modern tip, I notice that they're rehanging the whole permanent collection next year but with new themes. I love the existing ones (society etc, matter etc, body etc and objects etc) as they were a breath of fresh air when it opened, free some considerations of time and style. But I think something new will rejuvenate it actually. I believe they're going for...Minimalism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism - although I'm not sure that limits the pieces in those areas to be just from those movements. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what they do around those themes.
comment by Francesca Gavin
Oct 17, 2005
too true! that's a lotta plastic
comment by Mister Savage
Oct 14, 2005
A lovely looking idea - but what are they doing with all those polythene boxes when they remove it?
comment by flyingtwinkle
Oct 14, 2005
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see also
 turner prize - 20 years - whiteread days like these - whiteread bruce naumanin the turbine hall  anish kapoorin the turbine hall
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