Rachel Whiteread CBE (born 1963) is a British artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts, and first woman to win the Turner Prize.

Whiteread is one of the so-called Young British Artists, and exhibited at the Royal Academy's Sensation exhibition in 1997. She is probably best known for Ghost, a large plaster cast of the inside of a room in a Victorian house, and for her resin sculpture for the empty plinth in London's Trafalgar Square.

Whiteread was born in London and raised in the Essex countryside, until aged seven, when the family returned to London. She is the third of three sisters — the older two being identical twins.

Rachel Whiteread's mother, Pat Whiteread, was also an artist. She died in 2003 aged 72, the death having a profound impact on Rachel's work. Her father was a geography teacher, polytechnic administrator and lifelong supporter of the Labour Party, who died when Whiteread was studying at art school in 1989. Rachel trained in painting in Brighton Polytechnic, was briefly at the Cyprus College of Art, and later studied sculpture at London's Slade School of Art. For a time she worked in Highgate Cemetery fixing lids back onto time-damaged coffins. She began to exhibit in 1987, with her first solo exhibition coming in 1988. She lives and works in a former synagogue in East London with long-term partner and fellow sculptor Marcus Taylor. They have two sons.
Many of Whiteread's works are casts of ordinary domestic objects and, in numerous cases, the space the objects do not inhabit (often termed the "negative space" — instead producing a solid cast of where the space within a container would be; particular parts of rooms, the area underneath furniture, for example. She says the casts carry "the residue of years and years of use".

Unlike many other Young British Artists who often seem to welcome controversy, Whiteread has often said how uncomfortable she feels about it. On 24 May 2004, a fire in a storage warehouse destroyed many works from the Saatchi collection, including, it is believed, some by Whiteread.

Biographical information from Wikipedia