Board and Box: Chessboard with carpet and linoleum squares, printed wooden games box with instruction manual on paper

Since the late 1980s British artist Rachel Whiteread (born 1963) has used resin, rubber and dental plaster to cast often overlooked domestic objects and spaces. Like artists Bruce Nauman and Joseph Beuys before her she presents the casts of the negative spaces defined by an object as the final artwork, rather than replicating the object itself. Her abstract transformation of familiar forms have included over the years, bathtubs, chairs and mattresses, and even an entire house in east London for which she was awarded the Turner Prize in 1993. For her RS&A and Luhring Augustine chess commission Whiteread returns to a domestic theme but this time concentrates on the duplication of her own dollhouse furniture collection. The final chess set is therefore comprised of identical copies of her original miniature chairs and kitchen units, the two sides creating an opposition between utilities and furnishings. The board compliments this overall aesthetic by being constructed out of carpet and linoleum squares while the box mimics the typography of 1950s modern design.