Fittingly, the publicity image for her Love Is What You Want exhibition is a 2000 photograph of Tracey running along a street holding aloft the Union Jack flag. In 1997, at the height of Cool Britannia, Emin achieved notoriety for her artwork Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995, a tent inscribed with the names of all the people Emin had ever shared a bed with. In the same year she appeared drunk on a live arts discussion programme. Her 1999 Turner Prize nominated My bed featured empty vodka bottles, used condoms and blood stained underwear. By that point you didn’t have to be an avid art follower to have heard of mad Tracey from Margate.

I visited this exhibition with these three pieces of Tracey history as my main reference points, so it was surprising to be greeted with sentimentality- a neon sign reading  Meet Me in Heaven, I’ll Wait For You.
Immediately afterwards I’m confronted with I Don’t Expect To Be A Mother But I Do Expect To Die Alone stitched on a hanging blanket. That’s more like it.
I’m in chick lit central as I read another stitched slogan: ‘I Want An International Lover That Loves Me More Than The World.’  Emin is the consummate storyteller. The universal themes of love, trauma, childlessness, family, sex, romance, friendship and abuse, are part of Emin’s life and they are effortlessly woven together with the thread of sly humour running through each.

After describing being raped as a child, Emin remembers how one of the assailants pointed to her genitals and said ‘look at that ugly cunt,’ but Emin has the last word.  ‘Even then I knew they were pointing the wrong way.’

Despite some mawkish nostalgia, this is clearly (written in bright felt) Pscho Slut 1999 territory. Emin can’t spell and that just adds to the raw appeal.
But her use of cosy blankets as the medium through which to tell her stories lulls me into a false sense of security.

As I look around the rest of the exhibition her trademark honesty plumbs new depths, that are difficult to stomach.  Emin isn’t on another plain– she is on another planet to the dearth of confessional writers who also sell their life experiences, but would never have the guts to travel to the dark places she explores.

Upstairs there are ugly slogans and beautiful paintings. I’m unable to take my eyes off  Black Cat, described by Emin as a demonic self portrait,  inspired by an Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name.
From one of the four videos playing at the exhibition  I can hear music from the western The Good The Bad And The Ugly, an accurate summary of this exhibition. But watching these films cheapened my experience, as seeing her on screen just made me feel cheated that she wasn’t here in person.

Emin’s critics may dismiss her as more car crash TV reality star than brilliantly subversive post-modern feminist artist.  But that’s part of her genius.

Tracey Emin, Love Is What You Want, Hayward Gallery, South Bank Centre, London  18 May -29 August.

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About the author

Sanjeeta Bains
A former celebrity editor, Sanjeeta Bains began her career at The Express and spent eight years as a mag hag before going backpacking across South America. Later Sanjeeta travelled to Sydney, Australia, where she wrote for Aus titles FAMOUS, That’s Life and Cosmopolitan. Now back in the UK, Sanjeeta says, ‘I have a new appreciation for the tremendously vibrant cultural life we have available here. I think it's important we make the most of it.’ North, South, East or West? East. I first lived southside when I moved to London, but it was only when I moved east two years later that I felt at home. High Class or Common or Garden? High class commoner drinking champagne in the garden. Clothes or Culture? Clothes are culture darling. My best night out ever made me feel....... ...that The Secret really works.

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1 Comment for Tracey Emin, Love is What You Want – Review

Vivi-Mari Carpelan

What I find quite interesting about the kind of art Tracey Emin produces is that you start to feel as if you know her – until you realize all the many gaps. We are lulled into an illusion about a real person, and yes you do feel that most of it is very sincere and very true. It’s as true as can be, even. I found myself getting very excited over her retrospective, as something just suddenly made sense and clicked into place – in a wider sense, in a sense to do with our place in this reality, at this time in history. In the end it probably had more to do with me than her. All this wallowing and desire for self-disclosure is very familiar to me – as an artist and as a woman. Most of all she vindicates a woman’s right to be feminine (sewing is quite a feminine thing to do) and also as tiresome as women often are. She has won a place in art history but also in my heart – thank you Tracey for promoting the sharing of lives! I wrote a review on my blog, in order to sort out what my feelings really were> http://vivi-mariandmartinart.blogspot.com/2011/08/living-her-art-tracey-emin-and-her.html. Just in case it interests anybody .

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