A stroll through Tracey Emin: A Second Life is an evocative experience. Positioned as a 40-year retrospective through the pioneering artist’s vast and varied repertoire, the show lays bare Emin’s life through her distinct and often unsettling art, from career highs – such as the iconic, Turner Prize-nominated ‘My Bed’, which is every bit as shocking and moving today as it was in 1998 – to stark personal lows in work depicting her experiences with sexual violence, abortion and recent life-threatening illness.
As you can imagine, with such subject matter, it is not always a comfortable experience for the artist and the viewer alike. However, Emin’s flair for dark comedy adds moments of levity throughout. The second room of the exhibition features a large-scale projection of a work on video entitled ‘Why I Never Became A Dancer’. It begins with the artist recalling an incident in her youth when she entered a local dance competition only to run off stage mid-performance when a group of men with whom she’d previously had sexual encounters chanted ‘slag’ at her until she could no longer even hear the music. The film ends with a sequence of Emin dancing, totally uninhibited, to the disco classic ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ by Sylvester, and the work is dedicated to each of her aggressors, calling them out by name. It is the perfect encapsulation of both Emin’s defiant approach to life and her ability to turn traumatic experiences into mesmerising art.
Longform video is an important part of the show; there’s a fascinating and harrowing work in which Emin retraces the steps she took to have her first abortion, a procedure which ultimately failed and nearly killed her, and a nearly hour-long filmed conversation between the artist and her late mother discussing parenthood. I’d recommend giving yourself enough time to sit and absorb these captivating pieces in full, as they offer the best insight into the thought processes and experiences which shaped Emin’s singular outlook on the world.
Disturbing works on canvas are where Emin shines the brightest
Part of what makes A Second Life so dynamic is the diversity of Emin’s practice. Over the course of four decades, the artist has dabbled in – and arguably mastered – a variety of disciplines, from textiles, upholstery and embroidery, to photography and screenprinting, to bronze casts and large-scale sculptures, such as a recreation of the wooden rollercoaster in Dreamland, a symbol of her childhood in Margate.
Dotted throughout the show are Emin’s instantly recognisable neon light works, which serve as a reminder of her ubiquity in British visual culture. Whilst they may have a certain 'Live, Laugh, Love' quality to them visually, on closer inspection, they’re a whole lot more ominous than they first appear; ‘I could have loved my Innocence’, reads one ominous piece mounted above a room full of works tackling sexual violence. Words are a crucial component of much of her oeuvre, and for that reason, the works are mostly left to speak for themselves, with very little wall text around the show (though if you do want to find out more, there’s a fantastic audio guide available with recorded insights from its curator, members of Emin’s team and the artist herself.)
It is her painting, the discipline she first focused on as a student (and that she has reprioritised again recently,) however, which takes pride of place throughout A Second Life. Though she never fails to communicate her unique perspective on the world in whatever she tries her hand at, her thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing works on canvas are undoubtedly where Emin shines the brightest.
With its unflinching examinations of some of society’s greatest ills, A Second Life inspires a myriad of emotions – despair, anger, hope and amusement, to name but a few – that are liable to leave you feeling exhausted by the time you emerge from the final room. But you will also be struck by the realisation that ‘Mad Tracey from Margate’ is truly a force to be reckoned with, and a master of reflecting society back at itself, warts and all.
