Artist Six - Rachel Whiteread

Whiteread was awarded the Turner Prize in 1993 just after creating House (1993; destroyed 1994), a life-sized replica of the interior of a condemned terraced house in London's East End made by spraying liquid concrete into the building's empty shell before its external walls were removed.

My first idea was to like Whiteread, cast existing letterforms and fill with concrete, but when these letterforms proved hard to source, I decided to make my own on the laser cutter and make a cast. I would then fill this with a similar looking material to concrete but with finer sand/cement.  As Ben Wright takes a toy-making module, I decided he would be the best to advise me on the best way to go about this.

Process

The first job was to decided on type; again I went for my theme type of Helvetica bold Caps. I needed my type to be 3D, so I laser cut the plywood letters 3 times to get the desired thickness.

I then arranged a time to get together with Ben to make my … molds. After a quick intro into the melting pots and the material, I started setting up the mold. As I didn’t want my letters to move/float, I decided to add small nails to them so I could dig them into the clay base without losing any depth with my cast.

  

I then got on with melting the … and pouring in the mold. This then set for 2 hours. After I had the cast I tested it using a clear resin used to make toys and got to work on sourcing the cement etc. 

 

The concrete letters - attempt 1

I first attempted to make the letters out of a mix of cement and fine sand kindly donated by the glass works department in the college. I took my cast home and managed to source some old cement from a builders yard. I mixed it as instructed on the packaging and left to dry. Unfortunately for cement to gain maximum strength it needed 2 weeks and I only had 2 days, so I took the decision to take it out the cast slightly wet and carefully lay the broken pieces out spelling her name. As it would be difficult to take the letters to another location, I used the builder’s bench and tools used to mix the cement to make a small building site. 

The concrete letters – attempt 2

After the cement letters fell apart I looked into a stronger/quicker drying material. I still wanted to retain the look of the cement so it had to be grey and have a similar texture. I came across some grey grout, which was said to be the same colour but dried quick and was slightly flexible.

Again I followed the instructions and left it to dry over night, but in the morning it still wasn’t dry. Because I didn’t have time, I had to take it out as it was and arrange the broken letter on the wood again.

I plan to continue this signature after the deadline until I find the perfect material. I also want to experiment with location.