any thoughts from little birdie on this one? is there an art report in our future?

A pile of 14,000 white polythene boxes was today unveiled as the latest art installation to occupy the gigantic space of the Tate Modern gallery’s Turbine Hall.

The artist - Rachel Whiteread, 42, a former Turner Prize winner - says that she first got the idea while cleaning out her late mother's house, when she found a cardboard box which once contained her toys and later was filled with Christmas decorations.

The smell and the shape brought back memories. Later coming upon boxes squashed in the street or stacked in the back of a lorry, she was inspired to explore the "universal quality of the box", whose uses range from solar ovens to children’s playhouses. Packing up to move studio made her notice the variety of forms.

The piece, entitled Embankment, was also inspired by Whiteread's trip to the Arctic earlier this year. The semi-opaque boxes bear a resemblance to giant ice blocks or even - in a nod to the way that the Tate family made the fortune which endowed the gallery - to sugar cubes. The work fills the back of the hall and the boxes have been stacked into giant forms up to 40ft high, resembling both a cityscape and landscape.

Embankment is the sixth in the Unilever series at Tate Modern.