Turbine Hall creations
Since its launch in 2000, The Unilever Series has attracted millions of visitors to see the works of art especially created for Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall.
Each year we have experienced stunning and original approaches to the challenges of filling the Turbine Hall and this year is no exception.
British sculptor Rachel Whiteread has created the spectacular sixth commission, entitled EMBANKMENT.
It is a sublime and labyrinthine installation built of semi-opaque white casts of boxes made from polyethylene.
Some stacks appear disordered and organic, resembling a natural landscape, while others recall the more geometric forms of a cityscape. Disorientating and irregular pathways are formed between the stacks and towering piles, which visitors are invited to explore.
Although the work had been formulated well before Whiteread's trip to the Arctic earlier in the year, the semi-translucent quality of the light penetrating the enveloping towers recalls Whiteread's experience of the forbidding white terrain.
The title of the work, EMBANKMENT, suggests something built up holding back water and refers to the London landscape by the river. Whiteread has said that she wanted to create, for the space, a work which was redolent of landscape and which also evoked the idea of a warehouse.
EMBANKMENT will be on show until 2 April 2006.
