Tate Art Is Epoch Defining

Walking into Tate Modern's Turbine Hall this winter is set to become an epoch-defining moment. It seems at first that the vast space has been filled with thousands of blocks of ice rising vertiginously above you - looking as if at any moment they might come toppling down. Welcome to Embankment, the latest large-scale sculpture by Rachel Whiteread. Walking into its corridors, between the towering whiteness, has the effect, so beloved of the Romantics, of making you feel microcosmic. It does not, as some have said, induce a sense of claustrophobia. What it does do is persuade you to suspend disbelief, and the deeper you penetrate, the more bizarre and dislocatory the experience becomes. Embankment is the apotheosis of Whiteread's work, the finest thing she has done in a decade, even though that decade saw her produce some of the most memorable works of the fin-de-siècle. Embankment confirms Whiteread's position among the true greats of 21st-century British art. It is a phenomenon you cannot afford to miss, a moment of transcendental beauty in which time stands still in an unforgettable, unrepeatable paean to the human race. For the full story - click the title Irish Art