“The volumetric and monolithic basic principle was emphasised by the exclusive usage of the white exterior rendering. The main focus lies therefore on the exterior’s elementary colour and the slight nuances achieved by the aggregates in the plaster.”

— Frank Oberlerchner, Pedevilla Architects.

The off-white monolithic form of House at Mill Creek appears as object set within and against the landscape. At different proximities, the building reveals itself differently: the triangulated plan, the carefully located square windows set deep and black in the facades, and the subtle depth of texture to the external render. The facade comes alive as light moves across it, echoing the textural density of the forest-clad mountains behind.

The house reminds us of the mountains, but perhaps more-so of other familiar architectures of the area. The gable roof, articulated eave, and rendered form express known ways of making and being in this landscape, each slightly reconfigured to bring us a composition which warms us with its clarity and sense of the new.

In this 'Postcard' series, Whiteread uses a hole punch to cut out negative spaces in the rooms, capturing the three-dimensional concerns of her sculptural form in a two-dimensional manner. The well-known touristic images are obscured by the cluster of circular abscesses, and they become ambiguous. More of Rachel Whitereads' drawings at the Tate Britain courtesy of the Guardian here, with accompanying article here.

Alongside the postcards are a collection of pseudo-technical drawings, including the revealing 'Study for "House"'. In this work, Whiteread uses an everyday and meaning-laden medium - correction fluid, or 'twink' - to simultaneously create and erase. The house is 'corrected' into a 'pure' whiteness, it becomes absent, yet at the same time, we are more aware of the space the object occupies after the 'intervention'. White is at once pure and ghostly, the house in the images becomes both nothing and, oddly, sky.

IN THE LANDSCAPE

POSTCARDS OF AMBIGUITY