White Cube Bermondsey, London is now showing, ‘A Fortnight of Tears’ by Tracey Emin. This major exhibition from the revered artist is an amalgamation of sculpture, neon, painting, film, photography, and drawing. And as the title suggests, Emin draws on her own memories and emotions that cover the whole spectrum from loss and pathos to anger, and love.
Stepping foot in the gallery, the viewer is immediately confronted by double-hung self-portraits from her series taken at different moments and states during the artist’s periods of insomnia. These are unsettling and the intimate close-ups, blown up in size area also overwhelming in number, reflecting the persistent torment of these lonely hours.
In her new paintings, Emin presents the joy and suffering that comes with everyday life, from the often fraught territory of sexual relationships to the recent death of her mother. Undoubtedly there is a raw energy to these new works, laying bare the emotional turmoil, quite literally. Emin uses her own body as a conduit for her feelings, connecting with a history of expressive figuration in art; here, you'll notice the moving realism of Käthe Kollwitz, the modernist fear of Edvard Munch as well as the sexuality of Egon Schiele’s female subjects.
Expect a palette of visceral pink and dark red tones that create a type of physicality, alluding to the journey between birth and death. Drips and bleeding paint point to the fluidity of the body and gestures are ghostly, bereft of any recognizable details of context or place. Pieces such as, 'But you never wanted me' and 'It was all too Much' convey feelings of love and desire, while others bluntly depict the acts of sexual aggression that continue to haunt the artist.
‘A Fortnight of Tears’ portrays Emin’s personal pain, including her mother’s death, evoking states of bereavement, mourning and enduring love. Set against the melancholic grey tone of the walls, 'I Could Feel You' (2018), 'Bye Bye Mum' (2018), 'I Prayed' (2017) and 'Can you hear me' (2017) all show candid grief.
In a new film screened alongside these paintings, the camera pans across a table towards a wooden box, bathed in an ethereal light. Emin recalls the overwhelming weight of her mother’s ashes as she carried them back to her home, "I carried her ashes across the street – trying not to cry, trying not to think. It somehow felt wrong like I was stealing something – like I was a thief".
The celebration of motherhood and the female form reappears in 'The Mother' (2017) and this bronze sculpture shows a kneeling nude, gazing on an absent form cradled in her palms, she is a profound symbol of femininity and refuge. Two further sculptures portray a female figure lying face down or curled up in vulnerable and eroticized poses, with limbs elongated, hands clenched by her head or between her legs.
The endnote to the exhibition is 'How It Feels' (1996), an important early film for the artist. Here Emin is seen walking through London, recounting the ordeal of her first abortion in 1990 and how through that crisis, she came to the realization that her art could only come from her own life. As she described it, "the essence of creativity, that moment of conception... the whole being of everything...it had to be about where it was really coming from".
