Discovering the portrait work of Vhils immediately made me think of the works in concrete and plaster of Rachel Whiteread. Although the two artists are a long way apart visually and conceptually they are both working with essentially the same medium. Vhils marks out his images in paint and then removes the concrete or sand and cement, what is left is the finished work. In Whiteread’s 1993 sculpture House, she pours concrete into the inside of an old Victorian residence in London, lets it set, then removes the entire outside of the house. Both artists are essentially removing and destroying building materials in order to create something new. These artists have made me question the materials I am using and the materials I should be using in my work and what these very materials mean.
Whiteread’s House is not a direct comment on homelessness, but while working on my own project I cannot help but see a link. Whiteread has taken an ordinary dwelling and made its rooms and the entire house itself in-enter-able. She has taken a constructive and positive material and made a negative. The solid concrete cast has turned the inside of a home into a tombstone, monument and mausoleum.
From talking to those in a homeless situation I have found that for some, this is their view of a permanent place to live, the dream of living in their own home is dead, something out of reach, something from their past but not of the future, a house as a ghostly memorial rather than a real and positive thing. Vhils on the other hand creates something much more life affirming, something celebratory and iconic. In Vhils portraits ordinary people are written large on buildings and the carving out of construction materials creates something monumental and triumphant.
The use of these materials would add another layer to my work. I have decided to explore working on and into hardened sand and cement as a way of giving the viewer other layers and meaning to think about. Part of my work concerns equality, portraying people in the stuff and substance of our towns and cities, of our buildings, houses and monuments, the basic and universal materials of construction, levels everyone.
Rachel Whiteread Interview – 1993
