Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
British artist celebrated for casting negative spaces of everyday objects, most famously the concrete 'House' and a water tower on MoMA.
On the island
Eight records
I think I'm extremely lucky and have the sort of best job in the world but if I didn't have my job I'd quite like hers because I think she's kind of amazing. And it's music that I listen to in the studio all the time and she kind of keeps me company.
It's called Light Flight, which is actually the music from a television series called Take Three Girls, which was completely my sort of parents' generation. And I have two sisters and we were the sort of three girls.
Michael Jackson was actually my first love when I was I think probably about eight years old and my entire bedroom was plastered in pictures of him and uh he was a kind of cute thing in those days.
The Köln Concert, Part IFavourite
This piece of music, I think it's the first sort of piece of music that really I really had sort of found myself at this point. And I listened to this at Brighton a lot. You know, and I've listened to it ever since. Great piece of music.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Kylie Minogue
This is another piece of music that I listen to in the studio. I listen to Nick Cave an awful lot and I think it's a bit of sort of contemporary opera really. Very beautiful piece.
This is uh a beautiful piece of music that um I my parents had played at their wedding and we recently played at my mother's funeral.
This is for my son, who actually likes to be known as Oliver Dodger. Um he's he loves music and I think one of the joys of having children is that they introduce you to other art forms that you never thought you'd appreciate and he loves the musical Oliver amongst others, so this is for him.
Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)
This is really for Marcus, my other half and soulmate, who I've been with for nineteen years now.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30What then, Rachel, is the emotional beginning for [your installation of] fourteen thousand white boxes?
I'd gone back into the studio very sort of quietly and without assistance and just wanted to try and make work in the way that I had fifteen years ago when I first started, which was just me and a bag of plaster, really. But why a box? Well, I'd been I'd moved house, I'd moved studio, life had been in complete chaos. And my mother had died and we had to clear her house and I was just surrounded, completely surrounded by boxes. And full of junk sometimes and full of very precious things and other issues. Exactly, and trying to work out what was junk and what wasn't was quite a difficult thing to do as well. So I, you know, I literally, as I always do really, is start from what's really happening in my own life.
Presenter asks
6:44Why do you think [House] appealed to the public imagination in that way?
I think mainly because it was it's about sort of all our lives. From builders who were sort of quite intrigued by how it was made to granny who lived in a house like that, who now lives in a tower block.
Presenter asks
9:29What about your father?
He started out as a geography teacher, then he became um a humanities lecturer, became head of the humanities department at North East London Polytechnic. and then eventually became head of the art school there through his sort of uh love for art and also, you know, he was a very good administrator and it was at the time when polytechnics were changing.
The keepsakes
The book
A complete reference book on the natural history of the island
Well, I think my book would have to be a sort of complete reference book on the natural history of the island.
The luxury
ink pen, paper and correction fluid
I'm going to go for ink pen, paper and correction fluid. I know that sounds like a lot of things, but actually it's just for doing drawings. Because that's how I draw. I like to, um you know, I d I draw a line and then and then maybe get rid of a line and and also with writing you can just you know, I can compose songs and write stories and then get rid of them as well.
Presenter asks
9:50Did you always contemplate being an artist?
No, I think wh when I was at school it was the last thing on my mind actually. I tried sort of everything else and it wasn't until the sixth form that I actually went into the art rooms and I did my sort of O and A level art in a year, I think, and then went on f to foundation and, you know, realized that that's what I did.
Presenter asks
16:48How did your mother react to your success?
I think it was quite difficult. I think first off, she was um... You know, she was very proud and then she, you know, was maybe a little bit sort of jealous, but um... Essentially, though, she was really proud of me. If I'd been painting, or if I'd been doing sort of slide tapes, or doing work with computers, it was much more in the sort of language that she was using. It would have been harder, but because I made all this sort of big sculpture, and she was quite frail. I think that was a good distance for her. She said, Oh, I couldn't lift that bucket of plaster. Oh, how do you do it?
Presenter asks
21:13What were you frightened of [at the unveiling of the Holocaust Memorial in Vienna]?
There was a lot of um sort of resentment, I know, towards me and I know towards the work... I did feel physically threatened actually, yeah... I just felt very physically threatened. So it was a very intimidating situation to be in. There was a a lot of sort of unrest politically and I was, you know, part of that... um, snipers on all the rooftops and I had to s watch all the Secret Service police standing around whispering into their microphones and and with guns everywhere pointed sort of in our direction. It was just terrifying actually. I walked away and collapsed.
“I literally, as I always do really, is start from what's really happening in my own life.”
“I just realized that doing something as simple as that could change your perception of an object and you know twenty-two years later I'm sort of still doing the same thing one way or another.”
“I wanted to make something that was really trying to make a a childhood experience concrete, which was casting the inside of a wardrobe.”
“Since having him, I found that there's a certain sort of joy in becoming a parent. I think maybe. one becomes less selfish and you just think about the bigger picture a bit more.”