ORANGES AND LEMONS AND ORANGES AND BANANAS

In his short essay on the planning and life of Rachel Whiteread's House, James Lingwood describes the initial search that he and Whiteread undertook to find a suitable site for the work. Their search eventually led them to 193 Grove Road, the last of a terrace of houses that was being cleared to make a piece of open parkland. They took possession of the house in the summer of 1993, from which time, as Lingwood says, 'House was of a specific place and a particular time.' (1) Although in the year or so before that time they had extended their area of investigation well into North London, it was appropriate, for many reasons, that the site finally settled upon was in the east end. A few years before completing House, Whiteread had shown Ghost at the Chisenhale Gallery, just round the corner from Grove Road. Closely related to the idea behind House, Ghost was the cast of the sitting room of a similar terraced house. Common to both works was the strong sense of familiarity they evoked in those who saw them, a sense of familiarity with a type of domestic space and the way of living that went along with it. What we saw was the way we lived, and the directness with which House conveyed this contributed in large part to its popular success. That it was successful, rather than merely notorious as most contemporary art that finds its way into the media remains, was significant. Of course it was also contentious, as the argument in the Council Chamber and in the letters pages of the local and national press over when it should be demolished confirms.

Yet, as Lingwood points out, this argument was not one conducted between different communities, but within them. It was not a case of the art world attempting to impose its vision upon a locale whose residents objected to it. There were, rather, a variety of viewpoints within the community, some for and others against either the presence or the idea of Whiteread's work. Looking at the graffiti that very quickly appeared on House one was aware that it had been recognised, not as the cause of the area's social problems, but possibly as symptomatic of them and certainly as a focus for debate as to what might be done about them. 'Wot for?' asked one, only to provide its own, equally interrogatory answer, 'Why not?' The largest message made the demand, 'Homes for all, black + white', while on what had been a doorway, more discreet but just as telling, was the statement, 'This house is a nice home.' In this last message is the key to one of the factors that had contributed to the situation in which House appeared. What Lingwood leaves unsaid, but which is integral to his meaning, is the degree to which artists had, over the preceding twenty five years, established themselves as part of the east end community. That houses such as this one, earmarked for demolition in order to make way for improvements to the roads and amenities of the borough, could remain viable until the last minute, was the very idea that had led to the influx of artists into the east end from the later 1960s onwards.