Tracey Emin’s first show in her hometown - a good curtain raising premise – but does the show itself live up to its billing?
Tracey is from Margate – we
all know that from her previous celebrity building works. Tracey does not
however live in Margate now and her return feels a little sheepish. There are
no tents or unmade beds (although there is a piece of driftwood on a mattress).
Tracey has moved on and she has in her own words ‘fallen in love with making art
again’. Instead of the brash YBA she is now a mid-century Royal Academician and prefers to display her tentative watercolours
and prints alongside work by Rodin and Turner (they did eroticism as well so it
is ok as a subject for a real artist). The work actually reminds me more of
Schiele, the extended limbs and twisted forms indulging in show and tell sex, and although she made much of the work especially for the show there is nothing
very new to be seen.
The show begins on the
staircase with a beautifully placed neon realisation of the show’s title She
Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea, its aquamarine light bathing passers-by in a Man From Atlantis glow. The balcony gallery builds the anticipation with a
small painting scrawled with the words ‘I Said No’. But this promise of vulgar
delights is unfulfilled by the first room, which is filled with melty blue
gouaches depicting a nude woman, housed in sun and sand bleached frames. A
cruel critic could describe the aesthetic as seaside chic, of the type peddled
by trendy Whitstable gallery/shops. Yes there is a ‘work of adult nature’
warning but really there is little here that would shock anybody who has been
to the National Gallery.
The next room is painted a
Farrow and Ball (they really are one of the show sponsors) mossy green. The large-scale
embroidered portraits on unbleached calico look promising from the previous room
but on closer examination are disappointingly flat. More satisfying – maybe
because they are the worst taste things on display – are large tapestries,
which resemble cheap carpets, depicting the now familiar reclining female form
in shades of lavender and mustard.
The darker corridor gallery
houses a series of small-scale erotic works by Rodin and Turner (the few
surviving examples of Turner erotica, most were destroyed by Ruskin). These are
fascinatingly beautiful but apart from the obviously similar subject matter are
unconnected by intent – Rodin and Turner were gazing at naked mostly female
forms not depicting their own sexuality. Opposite these is a suite of watery Emin
watercolours made in 1998 in Berlin – very tentative and beautiful.
The final room is psychiatric
hospital white. It contains more of the same, calico, monoprints, erotic nude
Tracey alongside the fore mentioned mattress with driftwood (which is actually made
of bronze). There are also two phallic driftwood towers topped by a pomegranate
and a bust respectively.
And that’s it – no big
shocks, not even any film. It’s all very easily understood and digested. Tracey
has said that she didn’t want to do a ‘coals to Newcastle’ type show featuring
her Margate greatest hits. But maybe the reality is that she wants to be loved
and respected and most of her Margate work is less than complimentary about the
town. The show rather reflects someone who is no longer interested in the place
she has come from, she has moved on and wants to prove that she is cultured and
a cut above. Personally I find the down and dirty seaside, full of illicit sex,
kiss me quick and grubby cones of chips more interesting than Tracey’s
reinvented Margate which aspires to be yet another good-taste, middle class,
Whitstable wannabe.
Cathy Lomax
Tracey Emin
She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea
Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent
26 May – 23 September 2012