As her new sculpture is unveiled in a Yorkshire forest, the artist talks about the first world war, playing with scale, and why she’s quit east London
Among Rachel Whiteread’s best-known works are House, a cast of the inside of a Victorian house which stood in Mile End Park until it was controversially demolished in 1994, and the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna. Whiteread won the Turner prize in 1993, the first woman to do so. A retrospective of her work took place at Tate Britain last year. Nissen Hut, her first permanent public sculpture in the UK, is a commission by the Forestry Commission and 14-18 Now, the arts programme marking the centenary of the first world war. Its home will be in Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire, from 10 October.
How did you come to make Nissen Hut?
Tamsin Dillon of 14-18 Now came to me and asked if I was interested in getting involved. I wasn’t sure initially what I might do, but eventually I suggested a building, one that would work well with the series of “shy sculptures” I’m doing internationally [a series of casts of small buildings sited in unexpected, out-of-the-way places]. It seemed right to use for a model something that had been developed by this rather extraordinary man, Major Peter Nissen. His huts [used by the military, primarily as barracks and hospital units] were exemplary structures, made from corrugated iron and balsa wood, and the model for future prefabricated buildings. But also, I’ve always been interested in the war. My father’s grandfather was a conscientious objector; on the other side, my great-grandfather was in the trenches, and suffered his entire life from the after-effects.
from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QikmmQ
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