IN NOVEMBER 2003, Untitled (Room 101) (Fig.46), by Rachel
Whiteread, appeared in the Italian Cast Court at the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London, where it remained until the following
summer. In contrast to the ornate surfaces, elegant contrapposto
and fluid modelling of the surrounding casts, the new object
presented a rectilinear mass of pockmarked planes and stodgy
architectural details. The parenthetical title alludes to the place of
final torture in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
but refers specifically to the real source of the sculpture: Room
101 at Broadcasting House (Fig.45), the headquarters that George
Val Myer and Francis James Watson-Hart designed for the British
Broadcasting Corporation. A widespread legend held that Room
101 served as Orwell’s office when he worked for the Eastern
Service during the Second World War. Early coverage and subsequent
discussion of Untitled (Room 101) emphasised this unsubstantiated
literary connection – all the more resonant in 2003, the
centenary of Orwell’s birth – and the connotations of authoritarian
menace that flow from it.1 This article focuses on less allusive
aspects, including the circumstances that led to the creation of the
sculpture; the physical conditions of its origins, form and public
display; and the interpretive consequences of those physical traits.
The idea behind Untitled (Room 101) arose from a major
redevelopment project involving Broadcasting House and its
surroundings. The ‘W1 Project’, as it was known, reflected the
aims of the BBC’s ‘three site strategy’ to rationalise its activities
and property portfolio in London.2 By 2001, the BBC was
operating out of twenty-three buildings spread across the city,
each of which held its own conditions and restrictions – including
heritage designations that severely limited changes to the
buildings. Related to this were two long-standing operational
problems: an inflexible technological infrastructure that could
not be easily revised once in place; and boundaries that separated
activities according to bureaucratic habit and obsolete requirements.
At the heart of the ‘W1 Project’ was the intention to
bring all the BBC’s national and international news divisions to
Broadcasting House, along with the World Service and national
radio.3 In November 2001 the BBC filed a planning application
with Westminster City Council for the extensive refurbishment
of Broadcasting House, and the redevelopment of surrounding
land. Conditional approval followed in November 2002.4 The
first phase of the project – the refurbishment of Broadcasting
House, the demolition of Egton House in Langham Street and
the construction of the Egton Wing on the site – concluded in
January 2006. The second phase, the construction of a new
extension that unifies the north end of Broadcasting House and
the Egton Wing, is due for completion in 2012.5
The BBC’s planning statement promised a public art programme
in accordance with the Council’s Unitary Development
Plan and cited the ‘precedents set by Broadcasting House in the
1930s’. An ‘externally advised Public Art Group’ within the BBC
was to provide a Public Art Plan at the determination stage of the
application.6 Primary responsibility for devising the programme
of art rested with Modus Operandi, a firm of public art consultants
that formed part of the consultancy team for the proposed
redevelopment.7 In January 2002 the Council’s Public Art
Advisory Panel approved the BBC’s draft proposals for a public
art programme.8 This comprised five permanent commissions;
temporary works, mostly huge vinyl banners that concealed
the south elevation, or ‘prow’, of Broadcasting House during
construction; education and outreach projects in which creative
artists worked with local schools and colleges; and ‘artists-onThe
author thanks Rachel Whiteread; Hazel Willis and Eoin Taylor at Rachel
Whiteread’s studio; Cristina Colomar and Chloe Barter at Gagosian Gallery,
London; Marjorie Trusted at the Victoria and Albert Museum; Jack Fortescue and
Roger Kite at Acme Studios; Mark Wainwright at the Barbican Arts Group Trust;
and Richard Robinson at MJP Architects Ltd.
1 See esp. C. Townsend: ‘Live As If Someone is Always Watching You’, in idem,
ed.: The Art of Rachel Whiteread, London 2004, pp.197–213; R. Cork: ‘Rachel
Whiteread and “Room 101’”, in E. Schneider, ed.: exh. cat. Rachel Whiteread.
Walls, Doors, Floors and Stairs, Bregenz (Kunsthaus Bregenz) 2005, pp.94–100; and
R. Carley: ‘The Foreign Body: Rachel Whiteread’s “Untitled (Room 101)” in
the Italian Cast Court’, in C. McCarthy and G. Matthewson, eds.: Inhabiting Risk:
Proceedings of the 3rd Conference of the Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators
Association, Wellington 2007, pp.17–25.
2 ‘The BBC’s management of three major estate projects’, London, National Audit
Office, Report to the BBC Trust (13th January 2010), p.12.
3 ‘BBC planning statement’ (23rd November 2001), pp.6–9; London, City of
Westminster planning application no.01/09569/FULL (cited hereafter as CWPA).
Broadcasting House is a Grade II* listed building.
4 CWPA, decision notice (28th November 2002).
5 See the report cited at note 2 above, p.13. By January 2010, the project was more
than three years behind schedule and £58 million over budget.
6 Planning statement cited at note 3 above, pp.37–38.
736 november 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
A substitute for history: the origins and exhibition of
Rachel Whiteread’s ‘Untitled (Room 101)’, 2003
by JAMES LAWRENCE
45. Broadcasting
House, 2–22
Portland Place,
London W1.
1932. Designed
by George
Val Myer and
Francis James
Watson-Hart.
(Photograph by
Janet Hall, 1995;
RIBA Library
Photographs
Collection).
MA.NOV.Lawrence.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 15/10/2010 16:18 Page 736
site’, six commissioned responses to the history and redevelopment
of Broadcasting House.
Intertwined themes of intangibility and interactivity ran
through the programme. Four of the five permanent commissions
employ lights, from Jaume Plensa’s Breathing (2005), a
roof-mounted light sculpture dedicated to journalists who have
been killed in action, to Ron Haselden’s Close-up (2004– ), an
ever-growing archive of digital portraits of staff and visitors that
a series of LED screens displays at random. Two of the six ‘artistson-site’
projects are photographic series documenting the staff
and architectural transformation of Broadcasting House. Three
are videos, including Flight (2002) by Catherine Yass, first shown
in the 2002 Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain.9 The sixth
project, Whiteread’s Untitled (Room 101), was imbued with a
different kind of intangibility, the aura of combined popular
myth and literary allusion.
The legend that Orwell used the number of a room at the
BBC for the torture site in Nineteen Eighty-Four is an enduring
one. The possibility that his office was Room 101 at Broadcasting
House was sufficiently tantalising to prompt Vivien Lovell,
Director of Modus Operandi, to invite Whiteread to visit Room
101 prior to its demolition.10 An article by Richard Brooks in
7 Ibid., pp.3–4.
8 CWPA, Major Planning Applications Committee report (27th June 2002),
pp.56–57. The general terms of the Public Art Plan formed part of a legal agreement,
dated 28th November 2002, between the BBC and the City of Westminster; CWPA.
Westminster, like other local authorities, prefers a public art component in major
planning applications. Several newspaper articles have criticised the Public Art Plan
without accurately presenting the financial or administrative arrangements of the art
commissions; see, for example, A. Barnett: ‘£4m price tag of BBC art collection’,
The Observer (26th March 2006), p.7.
9 The permanent works are: Breathing, by Jaume Plensa; Close-up, by Ron Haselden;
Light work (2003–06), by Tony Cooper and Martin Richman; World (unfinished), by
Mark Pimlott; and Broadcasting House interior colour scheme (2004), by Antoni
Malinowksi. The temporary programme included: Night light (2002–03), by David
Ward; Signal (2003), by Fiona Rae; Acts of inscribing (2004), by William Furlong; and
Kerfuffle (2004), by Liz Rideal. The artists-on-site and their works were: Flight, by
Catherine Yass; Presence (2002), by Brian Catling; Between stations (2002), by Tom
Gidley; architectural documentation (2002– ), by John Riddy; Radio with pictures
(2003– ), by Nick Danziger; and Untitled (Room 101), by Rachel Whiteread.
10 Vivien Lovell (Modus Operandi) to Whiteread, 14th March 2003; London,
“Untitled (Room 101)” file, Rachel Whiteread studio (cited hereafter as RWS).
the burlington magazine • cliI • november 2010 737
46. Untitled (Room 101), by Rachel Whiteread. 2003. Jesmonite and mixed media, 300 by 500 by 643 cm. (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; photographed by Mike Bruce in
2003 in the Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; courtesy of Gagosian Gallery, London).
R A C H E L W H I T E R E A D ’ S ‘ U N T I T L E D ( R O O M 101) ’
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The Sunday Times quickly presented the commission as a settled
matter.11 This was premature, for the necessary logistics,
resources and official approval from the BBC Public Art Group
(chaired by Alan Yentob, then Director of Drama, Entertainment
and Children’s BBC) were not yet in place. Brooks
indicated that the BBC planned to display Whiteread’s piece in
‘one of several new public spaces’ after the refurbishment, an
aspiration consistent with the BBC’s representations to Westminster
City Council. Brooks also overstated the connection
between Orwell and Room 101 in Broadcasting House before
conceding that the connection was dubious. He quoted Peter
Davison, editor of the Complete Works of George Orwell (1998),
who stated that ‘Room 101 was at another building – 55
Portland Place’,12 which is 300 metres north–north-west of
Broadcasting House. In the course of research on Orwell,
Davison and Ian Angus found an agenda for a meeting of the
Eastern Services Committee on 22nd October 1941, held in
Room 101 at 55 Portland Place.13 Orwell was an occasional
member of that committee, which included representatives from
the Ministry of Information and other government departments,
and which supervised censorship within the Eastern Service.14
The situation of Room 101 at Broadcasting House also suggests
that it had no specific connection to Orwell. It was at the
north-east corner of the first floor, at the end of a long corridor
beyond a goods lift (Fig.47). The first floor was mainly devoted
to clerical activities: sorting mail, typing and filing. It was two
floors below the Talks studios to which Orwell was attached. It
is entirely possible that Room 101 was never a private office or
conference room. The original floor plan shows that it contained
part of a flight of stairs leading to the balcony of the Radio Theatre,
the massive concert hall that was the centrepiece of Broadcasting
House. Those stairs were removed in 1994.15 The BBC’s
own plans show no indication that Room 101 was ever designated
as an office.16 It is difficult to identify the precise function
of Room 101 in Orwell’s day: in recent years, Room 101 housed
parts of the building’s plumbing and heating systems (Fig.48).
Although it was the supposed connection with Orwell that
prompted Whiteread’s involvement, her decision to cast the
interior of the room also rested upon the physical condition of
the room itself. By 2003 the interior walls were full of unfilled
holes and unrepaired damage resulting from years of changes to
the plumbing and ventilation systems (Fig.49). Damage to the
fabric of the room increased as demolition crews tore pipes
and ducts from the walls, leaving patches of exposed brick. By
the time the room was empty, it contained little more than the
accumulated evidence of heavy-handed alterations. Whiteread
later compared the effect to bomb damage and noted that the
development of the project coincided with the invasion of Iraq
in March 2003.17
The condition of Room 101, and its general form, reflected its
peripheral but distinctive place in an architectural scheme. The
layout of Broadcasting House followed the constraints of the
location and the stringent demands of broadcasting. The site
11 R. Brooks: ‘Orwell’s room 101 to be work of art’, The Sunday Times (23rd March
2003), p.14.
12 Ibid.
13 P. Davison: ‘George Orwell: Dates and Origins’, Library 6, 13/2 (June 1991),
pp.144–45.
14 C. Fleay and M. Sanders: ‘Looking into the Abyss: George Orwell at the BBC’,
Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989), p.506; and J. Paczulla: ‘“Talking to India”:
George Orwell’s Work at the BBC, 1941–1943’, Canadian Journal of History 42
(spring–summer 2007), pp.60–61.
15 CWPA, ‘Heritage study volume 2’ (16th November 2001), pp.28–29.
16 Ibid., pp.20 and 57; see also plans in support of application.
17 R. Whiteread in conversation with J. Tusa: The John Tusa Interviews, BBC Radio
3 (broadcast 4th January 2004); and R. Whiteread in J. Claypole: The Real Room 101,
BBC Four (broadcast 14th July 2003).
18 Heritage study cited at note 15 above, pp.15–16.
19 R. Byron: ‘Broadcasting House’, The Architectural Review 72/429 (August 1932),
p.47.
20 Heritage study cited at note 15 above, pp.7 and 18. The studios on the upper
738 november 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
47. Plan of the first floor of Broadcasting House showing original uses. (Drawing
courtesy of MJP Architects Ltd.; annotations by the author).
R A C H E L W H I T E R E A D ’ S ‘ U N T I T L E D ( R O O M 101) ’
48. Interior of
Room 101 at
Broadcasting
House prior to
demolition. 2003.
(Photograph by
Jeremy Young).
MA.NOV.Lawrence.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 15/10/2010 16:18 Page 738
called for rectilinear north and east elevations defined by neighbouring
properties along Portland Place and the line of Langham
Street respectively. The north elevation abutted buildings that
the BBC rapidly acquired and demolished to make way for a
planned extension to Broadcasting House, a project that ceased
with the outbreak of the Second World War in September
1939.18 The longest side of Untitled (Room 101) records the wall
along this shared property line. That long, uninterrupted wall
was an ideal location for the plant equipment that Room 101
eventually housed. The inset beside the door, which disrupts the
rectangular perimeter of the sculpture, marks where a large duct
ran from the basement to the third floor. The windows – the
sole elements that might be described as decorative – possess
Georgian proportions, which indicate a compromise between
the design of the building and the tone of its environment
(Fig.50). In a special issue devoted to Broadcasting House soon
after its completion, the Architectural Review characterised that
compromise in more combative terms, as ‘a struggle between
moribund traditionalism and inventive modernism’.19
The interior layout reflected the requirements of audio broadcasting.
In order to insulate the studios from street noise, the
plans called for several layers of acoustic protection. Each studio
was enveloped in soundproofing; all the studios were contained
within a brick tower that ran through the central core of the
building; and a moat of corridors surrounded that core on most
floors.20 Offices and service functions ran around the periphery
of the building. The central core at first-floor level contained
the balcony of the Radio Theatre. Room 101 was about as
physically removed from any recording space as was possible
in Broadcasting House.21 Unlike the other rooms on the predominantly
clerical first floor, Room 101 did not primarily serve
the BBC. Room 101 served the building itself. Whiteread’s
sculpture records the contours of architectural utility in a building
renowned for elegant interiors (many of which succumbed
to wartime damage and post-War alterations) and for details such
as Eric Gill’s sculptures for the interior and exterior.
Whiteread and a team of three assistants began work in Room
101 in mid-April 2003 and finished six weeks later. Fifteen years
of experience casting the boundaries of intangible volumes led
her to use Jesmonite, a blend of plaster and acrylic resin. The
room was cast in fifty-nine separate pieces that could be braced
and bolted together to form a complete shell.22 This differentiates
Untitled (Room 101) from its formal precursor Ghost (Fig.52),
which was cast in plaster pieces that Whiteread then mounted on
a steel armature. Ghost has no ceiling and does not fully enclose
a volume.23 Gaps between the sections of plaster allow the viewer
to glimpse the interior.24 The distinct elements that constitute
Untitled (Room 101) are evident; in Ghost, they are pronounced.
The surfaces are also quite different. Whereas Untitled (Room 101)
looks achromic, Ghost is discoloured and stained. Ghost and
Untitled (Room 101) belong to the same family of sculptures but
their differences evince the development of Whiteread’s practice
and the changing nature of architectural utility.
Ghost was formative and epiphanic for Whiteread. It led her
to realise that she ‘could absolutely disorient the viewer’.25 By
inverting the relationship of mass and void, she also inverted the
relationship between a container and what it contains. She has
described the realisation that she had ‘become the wall’,26 an
observing surrogate for the physical boundary of interior space.
The viewer, however, does not have the tactile relationship
with the finished work that the artist enjoys. There is an isolating
zone between viewer and object. This adds to the sense of
floors did not entirely follow this arrangement. The upper floors were abbreviated
as a result of ‘rights of light’ provisions that required a steep mansard roof on the east
side of the building. For recent commentary on the interior layout of Broadcasting
House, see S. Ericson: ‘Death at Broadcasting House’, in A. Jansson and A.
Lagerkvist, eds.: Strange Spaces: Explorations into Mediated Obscurity, Farnham 2009,
pp.233–56.
21 Ibid., pp.20 and 30; there were no studios on the second floor until 1972.
22 RWS, component list and diagrams.
23 I. Cole: ‘Mapping Traces: A Conversation with Rachel Whiteread’, Sculpture 23/3
(April 2004), p.41.
24 R. Carley: ‘Domestic Afterlives: Rachel Whiteread’s “Ghost’”, Architectural Design
78/3 (May–June 2008), p.28.
25 R. Whiteread in C. Houser: ‘If Walls Could Talk: An Interview with
Rachel Whiteread’, in exh. cat. Rachel Whiteread: Transient Spaces, Berlin (Deutsche
Guggenheim) 2001, p.52.
26 Ibid.
the burlington magazine • cliI • november 2010 739
49. Interior of Room 101 at Broadcasting House prior to the casting of Untitled (Room
101). 2003. (Photograph by Rachel Whiteread).
50. Installation view of Untitled (Room 101) in the Cast Courts of the Victoria
and Albert Museum, London, showing the cast windows. 2003. (Photograph
by Mike Bruce; courtesy of Gagosian Gallery, London).
R A C H E L W H I T E R E A D ’ S ‘ U N T I T L E D ( R O O M 101) ’
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disorientation and makes the details of common experience, such
as the contours of a doorknob or window latch, crucial to
the process of cognitive engagement with the work. Ghost
unambiguously proclaims its origins in a room that had been
routinely occupied before falling into disuse. The room was in a
three-storey late Victorian house at 486 Archway Road, London
N6 (Fig.51), part of a terrace slated for demolition between
1976 and 1994 as part of a road-widening scheme that never
happened.27 Acme Housing Association Ltd., which specialises
in providing affordable studios and accommodation for artists,
managed the property. In 1990 they made it available to
Whiteread, who rented a studio from Acme at the time.28 Ghost
is full of indexical clues to the history of the room, from the
form of the picture rail and skirting board to the fireplace and the
surrounding tiles. In addition, the plaster retains traces of the
room’s chemical history, with soot from the fireplace and the
stains of nicotine and wallpaper paste.29
As with House (Fig.54),30 which earned Whiteread the 1993
Turner Prize and a barrage of public attention, Ghost has
prompted a body of critical analysis that emphasises loss, nostalgia
and the pathos of humble dwellings that fall into disuse. The
title’s implications of mortality and intangible presence have
prompted comparisons to mausoleums, sepulchres and even
spirit photography.31 House and Ghost bore the impressions not
only of form, but also of residue: particulate matter, chemical
staining and other consequences of habitation that convey the
past tense. In the case of House, however, any distinction
between the embodied past and the exhibited present was moot.
The site of casting and the site of display were one and the same.
The vacant property at 193 Grove Road, London E3, was also a
three-storey Victorian terraced house scheduled for demolition
– in this case, to make way for an extension of Mile End Park
(Fig.53). James Lingwood of the Artangel Trust secured permission
for Whiteread to cast the inside in concrete and dismantle
the fabric of the building that enveloped it. The controversial
decision of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to demolish
the work was disappointing but expected. House was always
intended as a temporary piece, a quality that orients the
work towards the vivid process of metamorphosis rather than the
commemorative process through which markers and edifices
become surrogates for the departed.
By the time Whiteread cast Room 101 at Broadcasting House,
her approach had changed significantly. Some of the reasons
for this were practical, including the need for greater resilience
and stability than was possessed by the ‘naively made and put
together’ Ghost.32 In subsequent works, panels are tightly aligned
and the tops are closed. The interior within the shell is not
visible. Whiteread also dispensed with the internal armature that
holds Ghost together, turning instead to bolts and a modest
amount of internal bracing. The most visible difference, the
bright and untainted surface apparent in Untitled (Room 101),
results from the introduction of a blank release agent into the
process. This allowed the textures of the original surfaces, such as
damaged masonry (Fig.55), to make their marks while preventing
chemical pollutants such as nicotine or soot from discolouring
the cast.33 Whiteread had used a blank release agent for
Untitled (Apartment) and Untitled (Rooms) (both 2001),34 two
groups of casts taken from areas of the building that now houses
her studio. The building was originally a Baptist church, then a
synagogue, and finally a warehouse.35 It was bombed during the
War, and two self-contained flats were subsequently built for the
rabbi and the caretaker during the post-War period of austerity.
The spartan rooms, with their strictly geometric windows,
27 ‘History 1972–1994’, in Acme. Studios for Artists, London 1995, pp.15 and 18. Mark
Wainwright and Richard Philpott occupied 486 Archway Road from 1978 to 1985.
Philpott’s documentary for Channel 4, Road Movie (1984), examined the proposed
road-widening scheme and responses to it. Ghost was cast in one of Wainwright’s
former studios, a back room on the first (middle) floor of the house. I thank Mark
Wainwright for this information.
28 R. Whiteread in an interview dated 8th June 1990, in N.P. James and S.A. Batiste,
ed.: Interviews with the Artists. Elements of Discourse, London 1996, p.98.
29 Ghost was first exhibited at the Chisenhale Gallery, London (13th June to 17th July
1990). Its subsequent appearance at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, earned Whiteread
her first nomination for the newly reconstituted Turner Prize. The Turner Prize
returned in 1991, after a one-year hiatus, with a new sponsor (Channel 4) and new
rules. It was restricted to four short-listed artists under the age of fifty and was judged
on the quality of exhibition during the preceding year. The 1991 prize went to Anish
Kapoor.
30 See the review by R. Shone: ‘Rachel Whiteread’s “House’”, THE BURLINGTON
MAGAZINE 135 (1993), pp.837–38.
31 See, for example, Houser, op. cit. (note 25), p.52; Tusa, op. cit. (note 17); and A.
Ferris: ‘Disembodied Spirits: Spirit Photography and Rachel Whiteread’s “Ghost”’,
Art Journal 62/3 (autumn 2003), pp.44–55.
32 Houser, op. cit. (note 25), p.52.
33 Ibid., p.53.
34 Untitled (Apartment) is in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum, New York;
Untitled (Rooms) is in the Tate collection.
35 R. Whiteread quoted in L. Corrin: ‘A Conversation with Rachel Whiteread,
March 2001’, in L. Corrin, P. Elliott and A. Schlieker: exh. cat. Rachel Whiteread,
Edinburgh (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art) and London (Serpentine
Gallery) 2001, p.22.
36 Houser, op. cit. (note 25), p.54.
37 RWS, Lovell to Whiteread, 8th August 2003.
38 RWS, Robert Seatter (BBC) to Whiteread, 29th May 2003.
39 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Rachel Whiteread, Untitled (Room 101)
file, (hereafter RW/V. & A.), Lovell to Mark Jones (V. & A.), 15th September 2003.
40 RW/V. & A., Seatter to Sarah McCormack (V. & A.), 13th October 2003.
740 november 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
R A C H E L W H I T E R E A D ’ S ‘ U N T I T L E D ( R O O M 101) ’
51. 486 Archway
Road,
London N6.
c.1979.
(Photograph
by Mark
Wainwright).
MA.NOV.Lawrence.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 15/10/2010 16:18 Page 740
recalled Untitled (Room), Whiteread’s contribution to the 1993
Turner Prize exhibition. That sculpture did not originate in an
existing dwelling but in a plywood form constructed solely for
the purpose of casting ‘a generic space’.36 The surface of Untitled
(Room), however, has variegated brown tones lifted from the
plywood. The casts from the self-contained flats, on the other
hand, are more or less devoid of tonal contrast.
That lack of tone, together with the dour geometry of the
rooms and their details, calls to mind the formal distillation of
Minimalism at extremes that it seldom approached. The crucial
difference is that Whiteread’s works always retain implications of
physical engagement: points of contact, indicators of human scale
or evidence of the way things are handled. That principle persists
throughout the body of works that represent the interiors of
rooms, as do the connotations of different architectural styles
and purposes, and the shifts of tense and of aspect – of temporal
situation and direction – that different casting conditions record
in different ways. Seen from that perspective, Untitled (Room 101)
possesses a Janus-faced air of transition. Its source was a room in
an inter-War building that blended tradition with modernity, a
room fit for occasional rather than habitual occupancy.
The BBC failed to locate a suitable permanent site for Untitled
(Room 101).37 It was also unable to exhibit the sculpture but
instead expressed support ‘for siting in a public venue’,38 an
attitude consistent with its Public Art Plan. In September 2003
Vivien Lovell approached the Victoria and Albert Museum on
behalf of the BBC Public Art Group to discuss the possibility of
exhibiting the sculpture there, noting that ‘the BBC would wish
to launch its Public Art Programme at the same time’.39 The
BBC agreed to pay for the costs of transporting and installing the
work. The V. & A., for its part, provided ‘substantial support in
kind’: staff time; use of facilities for the private view on 14th
November; and use of a lecture theatre by the Radio 3 magazine
programme Nightwaves, which broadcast a discussion of public
art on the same day.40 The exhibition opened to the public on
15th November. Some photographs by John Riddy, showing
Room 101 after Whiteread had finished casting it, were on
display in the gallery above the Cast Courts until the end of 2003.
Untitled (Room 101) was placed near the south wall of Room
46b, the Italian Cast Court. Whiteread supervised the installation
and directed the rearrangement of thirteen works in the vicinity.41
The appearance of Untitled (Room 101) amid casts of
artefacts from the Renaissance was sudden and dissonant. ‘In this
context’, Whiteread noted at the time, ‘my work looks like the
Tardis has landed’.42 In the long-lived BBC television series
41 RW/V. & A., Technical Services requisition, 1st October 2003. The following
casts, identified by their inventory numbers, were moved: REPRO.1872–62, the
Bruges Madonna; REPRO.1872–430, candelabrum from Chester Cathedral;
REPRO.1885–198, bust of Bartolommeo Colleoni; REPRO.1888.519, Putto with fish;
REPRO.1899–55, David with the head of Goliath; REPRO.1863–2, socket for a standard,
from the Piazza di S. Marco, Venice; REPRO.1890–5, bust of Francesco di Tommaso
Sassetti; REPRO.1864–15, bust of Filippo Strozzi; REPRO.1899–57, bust of Piero di
Cosimo de’ Medici; REPRO.1889–91, bust of a young woman; REPRO.1867–181, bust
of a man; REPRO.1884–298, Crouching boy; and REPRO.1882–238, Perseus with the head
of Medusa. A similar but slightly inaccurate list appears in Carley, op. cit. (note 1), p.21,
note 28. Carley’s list incorrectly identifies REPRO.1899–55 as the cast of Michelangelo’s
David (REPRO.1857–161) rather than the cast of Verrocchio’s David with the head of
Goliath. That was moved; the cast of Michelangelo’s David was not.
42 Cork, op. cit. (note 1), p.98. The quotations first appeared in Cork’s review of the
V. & A. installation: idem: ‘Inside-out nightmare’, The Times (17th December 2003).
The essay in the Bregenz catalogue is a revised and expanded version of the Times
review.
the burlington magazine • cliI • november 2010 741
R A C H E L W H I T E R E A D ’ S ‘ U N T I T L E D ( R O O M 101) ’
52. Ghost, by Rachel Whiteread. 1990. Plaster on steel frame, 269 by 355.5 by
317.5 cm. (National Gallery of Art, Washington; photograph by Mike Bruce;
courtesy of Gagosian Gallery, London).
54. House, by Rachel Whiteread. 1993, demolished 1994. Concrete. (Photograph
by John Davies).
53. 193 Grove Road, London E3, prior to the casting of House. 1993. (Photograph
by John Davies).
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Doctor Who, the Tardis is a deceptively voluminous vehicle for
travel through space and time, a feat which leads to its sudden
appearance in all manner of incongruous situations. It externally
resembles a police box of a type that Gilbert MacKenzie Trench
designed for the Metropolitan Police in 1929,43 just as Val Myer’s
proposed design for Broadcasting House was evolving.44
Whiteread’s casual witticism captured the sense of anachronism
and spatial disorder that her sculpture emphasised, but that
sense already existed. The cast collection at the V. & A. includes
copies of small busts, reliefs, monumental sculpture and architectural
details, the common traits of which reside in art-historical
generalities such as period, medium and style rather than in
specific locations or coherent spatial relationships. The Cast
Courts are an instructive repository of exemplars that bolster a
tradition held in common and taken on trust. Untitled (Room 101)
openly challenged the conventions of sculptural appearance that
surrounded it, even as it represented a variation on the physical
process that made the Cast Courts possible in the first place.
Whiteread’s work took the process of casting and turned it into
the primary object, thus inverting the relative value of cast and
original. Moreover, her work adjusted the role of the viewer
in relation to sculpture and architecture until the customary
distinctions of observation and spatial occupancy – of ‘being
outside’ and ‘being inside’ – evaporated. A collage by Whiteread
conveys the spatial and temporal reorganisation that her sculpture
would imply once it stood in the Cast Court (Fig.56).
The uncertain scale of the work contributed to the sense of
disorientation. The relationship between the scale of Room 101
and the rest of Broadcasting House had been concealed by the
nature of architectural interiors, which are seldom apprehended
concurrently with the building as a whole. In Whiteread’s
studio, the cast of Room 101 had occupied much of the space. It
seemed enormous there, even though the scale of the cast and the
studio were rather close. In the Cast Court, which is seven times
as high as Untitled (Room 101), the relative scale of a room and a
building was strikingly apparent (Fig.57).
The exhibition was due to close on 27th June 2004 but
Whiteread’s sculpture remained in place until 28th July.45 It
attracted healthy attendance and a scattering of negative comments.46
A condition assessment prior to returning the sculpture
noted some minor and easily repaired damage, mainly scuff marks
from shoes.47 This was the result of a Wodehousian publicity stunt
in which readers of the Chap – a humorous magazine that
embraces the aesthetic and social codes of an idealised pre-War
gentry – handcuffed themselves around (or at least in front
of) Untitled (Room 101) and then climbed on top of it. Guards
monitored the situation and waited for them to descend without
confrontation.48 The stunt was little more than an uninspired (but
nattily attired) protest against contemporary art that avoids superficial
emulation of past styles. Nonetheless, it further exemplified
the pervasive sense of anachronism that attended the sculpture,
the quality that gives it a complicated and unsettling relationship
with the position and direction of time. As a cast of an architectural
feature, the sculpture belonged in the Cast Courts
typologically. Its shortage of decorative flourishes or clues to its
place in the history of design, however, placed it at odds with the
other forms in the room. Whereas Ghost might conceivably
have gained acceptance through its mild hints of domesticated
Victorian classicism, Untitled (Room 101) seemed as anonymous
and parenthetically qualified as the title of the work suggests.
43 I. Burton: ‘A History of the Police Box’, Construction History Society Newsletter 75
(November 2006), pp.2–5.
44 Discussions over appropriate solutions to the ‘rights of light’ problem, mentioned
in note 20 above, continued throughout 1928 and into 1929; Heritage study cited at
note 15 above, p.7.
45 RW/V. & A., Neville Redvers-Mutton (Momart) to McCormack, 20th July 2004.
46 RW/V. & A., visitors’ comments.
47 RW/V. & A., condition statement, entry dated 27th July 2004.
48 There is some uncertainty regarding the number of protestors. The organisers
claimed twenty-seven participants but the V. & A.’s notes on the incident put the
742 november 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
56. Untitled (Room 101), by Rachel Whiteread. 2003. Collage, 29.7 by 42 cm. (Courtesy of the artist).
R A C H E L W H I T E R E A D ’ S ‘ U N T I T L E D ( R O O M 101) ’
55. Detail of Fig.46 showing damaged masonry. (Photograph
by Mike Bruce; courtesy of Gagosian Gallery,
London).
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Truth, and living quarters in Victory Mansions. Whether or
not a specific notion comes to mind, Untitled (Room 101) stands
as evidence of the physical realm that conditioned Orwell’s
analyses of English life. That physical realm – by turns grandiose
and humble, noble and decrepit – continues to define a national
aesthetic consensus that favours anachronism in the built environment.
It is fitting that the sole British exhibition to date of
Untitled (Room 101) took place amid formal exemplars whose
commonality rests not on stylistic or physical consonance, but
on a remembered sense of cultural inheritance and continuity.
Untitled (Room 101) has twice been exhibited with other
works by Whiteread. It appeared at Kunsthaus Bregenz, where
it had the third floor to itself (Fig.58), and in a 2007 solo
exhibition in Málaga.53 In 2009 it joined the collection of the
Centre Georges Pompidou, where it is currently on display in
the exhibition elles@centrepompidou (to 21st February 2011). The
Centre Pompidou, with its exposed pipes and systems running
along the ceilings and walls, is an intriguing setting for a
sculpture that came from a pipe-filled room. This happy alliance
of object and setting emphasises the reordering of spatial
conventions in architecture and sculpture that Untitled (Room
101) makes real. It is nonetheless significant that a sculpture by a
leading British artist, cast directly from a cherished London
landmark that houses a renowned institution, and leavened by
an enigmatic connection to a great English writer, found no
home in Britain. Fortunately, Untitled (Room 101) has sufficient
presence and endurance to preserve its own heritage. Its material
facts are substitutes for obliterated space, tenuous allusions and a
recent past that prompts ambivalence rather than affection.
Those intangibles, which vanish so easily from the common
memory, remain encoded in the sculpture as it passes from its
place of origin to its place in history.
number at ten; see Carley, op. cit. (note 1), p.23; and RW/V. & A., undated notes.
49 Whiteread quoted in Cork, op. cit. (note 1), p.97.
50 RW/V. & A., exhibition text.
51 RW/V. & A., Peter Davison to the Director (V. & A.), 24th January 2004.
52 RW/V. & A., Charlotte Mullins to McCormack, 1st March 2004.
53 The exhibitions were Rachel Whiteread. Walls, Doors, Floors and Stairs at Kunsthaus
Bregenz (9th April to 29th May 2005); and Rachel Whiteread at the Centro de Arte
Contemporáneo, Málaga (25th May to 26th August 2007). Catalogues accompanied
both exhibitions: Schneider, op. cit. (note 1); and F. Francés et al.: exh. cat. Whiteread,
Málaga (Centro de Arte Contemporáneo) 2007.
the burlington magazine • cliI • november 2010 743
57. Installation view of Untitled (Room 101) at the V. & A. 2003. (Photograph by
Mike Bruce; courtesy of Gagosian Gallery, London).
R A C H E L W H I T E R E A D ’ S ‘ U N T I T L E D ( R O O M 101) ’
58. Untitled (Room 101) in the exhibition Rachel Whiteread: Walls, Doors, Floors and
Stairs at Kunsthaus Bregenz. 2005. (Photograph by Markus Tretter).
Whiteread was ambivalent about the title from the outset and
‘wondered whether to call it “Room 101” at all’.49 She avoided
using materials and surface effects to suggest the ominous
connotations that attend Orwell’s description of Room 101. The
supposed connection to Orwell, however, held an irresistible
allure for the institutions associated with the project. The display
text in the Cast Court described the sculpture as ‘an imprint
of the office George Orwell was said to have occupied at the
BBC during the Second World War’.50 After Peter Davison
wrote to the V. & A. in response to Richard Cork’s review in
The Times and set out the case against that account,51 there was
some discussion of alternative wording such as ‘. . . the office
that George Orwell was once thought to have used at the
BBC’.52 The more tenuous the connection, the greater the need
to qualify the relationship between truth and legend.
Despite her doubts about the title, Whiteread did detect
something Orwellian about the sculpture and the anonymous,
utilitarian, fraying room that served as its mould. There are
plenty of salient themes in Nineteen Eighty-Four, such as the
cynical manipulation of warfare for public consumption, or the
austere conditions of Winston Smith’s office in the Ministry of
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