Rachel Whiteread is the artist of the moment. She's had her moments before of course, need we recount all the controversial and sometimes brilliant works the public's eye has been strategically trained upon over the past two decades? The Sunday supplements are currently devoting pages to her new sculpture on a plinth in Trafalgar Square. Waldemar Januszczak of the Sunday Times called the transparent resin monument "a giant glacier mint". (for all our non-British readers out there, this is not a compliment).
 

You can't get more high profile than Trafalgar Square, you are guaranteed a crowd. It especially helps if one of London's most visited galleries The Serpentine is hosting a retrospective of your work. Too small a gallery to do Rachel's large scale works any justice, she has sited one of her latest commissions on the gallery's grass lawn whilst her concrete cast of a staircase totally dominates the interior of the gallery reaching all the way up to the top of the glass dome.
 
 

The Serpentine has always suffered from its cottage sized dimensions and so the outdoor space is becoming more important to exhibit art.  The architect Danial Libeskind has created this interesting structure (above) on show from June through to September. Like a miniature version of rival architect Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim, the metallic curvy "thing" will reflect the quaint Victorian gallery and its park surrounds. Although I wonder, as a work that relies upon sunshine for effect, will it be able to dazzle under the skies of a British summer?

The artist's lofty words :

“It is a special space of discovery, intimacy and gathering. The space is seen as part of an infinitely accessible horizon between the Gallery and the Landscape. Though the structure will disappear with the onset of autumn, it will leave a sharp after-image and the ineffable resonance of a unique space.”  Daniel Libeskind

www.serpentinegallery.org