I find the subject matter totally engaging and relevant to my work as well, although working primarily in sculpture and 3 dimensional pieces she seems obsessed with the value of objects or neglected space. "I wanted to try preserve the everyday and wanted to give authority to some of the more forgotten things." Whitread mentions spaces like the inside of wardrobes, space under beds, which she went on to cast. This parallel of someone who meticulously collects odd objects and hoards bits others would throw away is a recurring theme through bodies of my work and something which really appeals to me. The itinerary of objects she takes us through at the start of the interview is an eclectic mixture of the precious, bizarre and seemingly unimportant. But as she says, every piece is as important as the other and collecting these objects is an extremely important part of the process for her. Her hoard is kept arranged on a beautiful long glass shelf where the objects are handled and engaged with in a very tactile nature for inspiration and starting points. "I realised that the objects are as much part of the process for me making a sculpture as the drawings are themselves."
As another angle of approaching it, Whitbread made a series of sketches and photographs which were worked back into, depicting a building and its surroundings before and after its demolition. Here she focuses in on the importance of a particular arrangement of bricks and mortar by highlighting its loss of presence in the photographs where its gone. The removal of an object in its original context and replacing it with a tonal space. This is as much of a glorifying worship of objects as the other works but on a larger scale.
