The York City Art Gallery held an exhibition between October 2007 and January 2008 of one of Britain’s most prolific artists: Tracey Emin. The work on show was a collection of works owned by Tim Dickinson who started collecting in 1995 and has since built up an established collection.
The exhibition was on the second floor, tucked away in a small room, almost in isolation from anything else in the gallery Personally, I was expecting the exhibition to be in the main room of the gallery, on spectacular show for all to see. This was not the case. When entering the crammed room I felt as if I was pushed into Emin’s work; I was part of its space, intimately involved,unless you tried to carefully manoeuvre around the crowd that is. The first works I came upon were a series of monoprints. The monoprints were of (presumably) Tracey herself sat in a chair and next to her is a smaller chair with a smaller, childlike person, presumably a younger Tracey. What hit me first was the harshness of these images but also a vulnerability, a vulnerability that almost made you feel sorry for her. But this can’t be right can it? I mean we all love to hate Tracey Emin. We all love to instantly make a comment of ‘how is this Art?’ when faced with her work.
Sometimes I feel Lonely But Its OK, 2002 depicts a single, lonely bird on a branch, evidently Tracey herself from the use of ‘I’ in the work’s title. The same bird then also reappears in the monoprint, Broken Heart, 2003 but this time crossed out with a single X as a black hawk that hovers over her. Again there is a sense of vulnerability, of her not minding being on her own until something comes along and breaks her down. It feels like a deletion of her own secure being and she puts herself out there; on show for everyone to see.
Other works here include an appliquéd travel bag and a tea-pot, specifically designed for Longchamp races. These soft, stitched almost child-like works seem to provide comfort against such harsh, honest monoprints and self portraits. Maybe also a comfort to Emin.
From this exhibition it is hard to understand why the media and general public have a prejudice to Emin’s work. This exhibition showed a vulnerable side to Emin, sympathy almost arose within me. All the works on show were pleasant to look at and there was nothing in my mind which provoked the question, “How is that Art?” So what’s the issue with Emin’s work? Maybe the reason why people hold such a prejudice is because she is stark and honest and we all know almost everything about her. But isn’t that what today’s celebrity-obsessed culture loves? To know everything about everyone who is in the spotlight? Maybe one answer to this is that Emin exposes something personal about theviewer. Maybe she arouses something and brings to the forefront of the mind something we’d rather forget. Let’s take for example her most controversial work, My Bed, 1998, which was exhibited for the Turner Prize in 1999. This unmade, stained, not all too attractive bed was exhibited at Tate Britain for all to see. By looking at this bed, doesn’t it expose something which could be said to be true to us all? After all, haven’t we been in that unmade, dirty, troubled bed? Not wanting to awake and face reality. A bed is a site where the best of us and most certainly sometimes the worst of us is released. A place where our alcoholic endeavours take the bain of it, a place where we’ve sunken so deep we can’t see a reason to even want to get out. The bed can be a place where a whole human life-cycle can take place: copulation, fertility, sickness and loss. Not to mention those dirty sheets that kindly remind us of emotions, some of which we’d rather forget. The whole body and self can certainly get lost in a bed. So just to look at a bed is, yes, just a bed, but if by viewing a bed we are remembering something of the past or an emotion is aroused, that we thought was long gone, then isn’t that bed worth something? What it arouses or what is remembered will be different and personal to every one of us.
If I didn’t understand Tracey Emin before, then now I do but I’m sure there’s much more to be revealed.
No comments:
Post a Comment