How you can use this image

This image can be used for non-commercial research or private study purposes, and other UK exceptions to copyright permitted to users based in the United Kingdom under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended and revised. Any other type of use will need to be cleared with the rights holder(s).

Review the copyright credit lines that are located underneath the image, as these indicate who manages the copyright (©) within the artwork, and the photographic rights within the image.

The collection that owns the artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.

Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.

Notes

Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.

Rachel Whiteread DBE’s new lithograph commissioned for the Government Art Collection revisits the circular motifs the artist first used in a print commission for the London 2012 Summer Olympics, also in the Collection. That work was conceived at a moment of celebration, the circles reminiscent for the artist of the marks left by glasses and cups after a party. It was a work about people coming together. The circles in this new work are by contrast suggestive of the traces of an invisible virus. Whiteread is known for making the invisible visible, and these abstract forms reflect both the microscopic form of Covid-19 itself and a time during the height of the pandemic in this country when physical contact and communication became reduced to those within our ‘bubble’.