Rachel Whiteread CBE, the Turner Prize-winning artist has been made a Dame in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday List. The painter Glen Brown and Photographer Terry O’Neill were awarded a CBE. Other artists honoured were potter, Kate Malone, MBE and Printmaker John Mackechnie MBE. The honours were awarded for their outstanding contributions to culture in the United Kingdom.
Visual Art figures mentioned in the list included Hayward and Venice Biennale director Ralph Rugoff OBE, Former Hayward Touring head Roger Malbert OBE and the BBC broadcaster/journalist Brenda Emmanus an OBE for services to broadcasting and diversity.
For me, art is fundamental to culture and politics, to how we live our lives – RW
Rachel Whiteread is one of Britain’s leading contemporary sculptors. Born in London in 1963 she studied painting at Brighton Polytechnic and sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art. She came to public attention in 1993 with her sculpture, House, a life-sized cast of the interior of a condemned terraced house in east London which was eventually demolished in 1994. She realised one of the Unilever Commissions for Tate Modern’s turbine hall, as well as being commissioned to make a sculpture for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. She is now a leading international artist, creating major public works in both Europe and the United States, including the Holocaust memorial at the Judenplatz in Vienna, one of the most prestigious sculptural commissions in Europe.
The Queen’s Birthday List is a British tradition marked by naming new members of orders of chivalry and recipients of other official British honours. A number of other Commonwealth realms also mark this day in this way. The awards are presented by or in the name of the reigning monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II or her vice-regal representative. The selection is made up from names nominated by government officials and now the public are also allowed to nominate. Honours have been awarded at New Year since at least 1890, the year a list of Queen Victoria’s awards was published.
Lead image: Rachel Whiteread with her work Nissen Hut, 2018, Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire. Photo: P A Black © 2018