Tracey Emin at White Cube Bermondsey
Many publications or outlets that seek writing about art, contemporary or otherwise, have no desire for the first person. There's a seemingly masculine urge to separate oneself from artworks when documenting your experience. You're supposed to be moved enough by art to play the part of a consumer, or even a collector, but feel anything personal, and you've crossed a line. While the binary positioning of the viewer and artist roles have their place in art criticism (i.e. sometimes we learn from artists, and that is that), often the artist is conveying a message that is crying out for tenderness. Yes, take it personally.
One such exhibition is Tracey Emin's latest body of work at White Cube Bermondsey, consisting of large-scale paintings, bronze sculptures and a video piece. Crucially, during the artist talk at the show's opening press breakfast (more on that later), Emin stated that she makes work almost relentlessly, not thinking within the constraints of this exhibition in London, or that exhibition in Paris. This tells us that these works are emotions, thoughts, and ideas bursting to life on the canvas. She also says that the writing which appears on several of the paintings in this show is entirely automatic. Spelling errors, or withdrawn ideas, are crossed out, and handwriting is uncontrived, authentic.
The themes in I followed you to the end are directly channelled from the artist's personal life. Having been diagnosed with an aggressive bladder cancer in 2020, for which she has since been treated and given the 'all-clear', illness and feelings around the body are a dominant force. This doesn't mean Emin has turned her back on heartbreak and sexuality, the two parts of her autobiographical work that she is most known for. In fact, the two elements seem to have plenty in common; blood is everywhere in the palette, whether it is the blood in the artist's stoma in her graphic video piece, TEARS OF BLOOD, or the red paint dragged across the diptych, My Dead Body - A Trace of Life.
Which brings me to one of the most powerful physical angles of the show, as depicted above. My Dead Body - A Trace of Life is a play on words, using the artist's first name, but for me this is where Emin's use of automatic writing is at its most powerful. There is no hiding what she is trying to say, no euphemisms, no apologies, and crucially, she marks the intersecting themes of sexuality and illness. Across the left canvas of the diptych reads: "I don't want to have sex because my body feels dead". Survivors of sexual violence will find something for them here, as will those experiencing illness that is either generally misunderstood or wilfully ignored (as many gendered illnesses and survivors are). As a movement, it is hard to mark where feminism stands now, as it is arguably divided more than ever, but My Dead Body - A Trace of Life feels like it touches the rage that is being felt among many women in the 2020s. No time or energy for poetry: this is where my mind and body are.
At this stage in her career, most would agree that Emin is now part of the canon. Everyone knows of her work to some extent, and most people can rise to the challenge of forming an opinion. That's why many "radical" writers won't be touching I followed you to the end with critical analysis. "The white cube" (uncapitalised) is shorthand for the method of exhibiting art in a gleaming white blank space; four walls of nothing until the art arrives. In contrast, Emin says that her studio in Margate is the place she is most inspired, thanks to the intimacy she has with the communities and landscapes there, as well as the beautiful horizon of the sea outside her window. She says it feels expansive. While many of White Cube Bermondsey's gallery spaces could certainly be described similarly (the eponymous patinated bronze work that mars the viewing of My Dead Body - A Trace of Life is an impressive 690cm x 393cm x 260cm, and it doesn't take up a fraction of the available space in the White Cube's South Gallery), it is more than a sense of the spatial; considering how the artist and artworks might live, breathe and communicate their feelings, their bodies and their suffering is important. White Cube Bermondsey isn't the only space that could accommodate Emin's huge voice and talent, but I followed you to the end provides wider and potentially new audiences with the opportunity to see and hear her stories of despair, heartbreak, illness and contending with mortality. There is a great deal of solitude in these works, and in the way that the artist has been feeling in the midst of heartbreak and illness. The real challenge of this exhibition is evoking the collective impression and the individual feeling as one. Whether this has been successful in its challenge will be entirely subjective.
[1] https://juststopoil.org/2024/09/27/sent-down-for-throwing-soup-judge-hehir-turns-state-repression-into-an-art-form/
