Tracey Emin: A Fortnight of Tears


Introspective exhibition at White Cube, Bermondsey of new work by Tracey Emin.

I have to admit I didn’t like most of this work. I am sure I am meant to find it as a profound insight into the human condition but I find it a bit self-indulgent. One room was full of selfies taken during the night when she is suffering from insomnia. I am hoping they were a clever reference back to her earlier unmade bed work but I a shallow part of me did want to point out that maybe if she wasn’t playing with her phone she might get to sleep.

I don’t like her paintings. Again I am sure they are profound but I find them rather messy and without titles I’m not sure I’d know what they were about.

However I did like the central video installation called “The Ashes”, a short piece, which focused on her mother’s ashes on a table in her home moving around them, and the large sculpture “The Mother” which relates to her public commission due to be installed outside the Edvard Munch Museum in Oslo. 

Closes on 7 April 2019

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