Rachel Whiteread takes a radical approach to sculpture. She is interested in capturing the negative space around and within her subject matter rather than creating a direct facsimile. By creating casts of familiar objects using basic industrial materials such as concrete, plaster, resin, rubber and metal, the surrounding space is captured in a static, physical rendition. By encapsulating this empty volume and giving solidity to its form, the artist creates a powerful depiction of something otherwise unseen.<br><br>Whiteread’s work ranges from the domestic to large-scale public projects. At the smaller end of the spectrum she casts unexceptional, familiar household items such as furniture, mattresses and hot water bottles; revealing the detail of their form and the scars of everyday use. One of her first large projects was ‘Ghost’, a plaster casting of the interior of a Victorian living room. This was followed by ‘House’, a concrete cast of the inside of an entire three storey house on an East London street. Due for demolition, the house underwent extensive preparatory work before concrete was poured in and the sculpture revealed. The resulting sculpture stood in situ for only 80 days<sup>1</sup>, before the stay of execution with the local planning authorities ran out and the bulldozers moved in. <br><br>Whiteread’s projects, whether public or domestic in scale, have a unifying theme: the idea of casting something mundane yet vital to draw attention to the unremarkable and remind the viewer of its worth.<br>