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Tracey Emin
240 Plays1 month ago
This is a real banger of an exhibition and episode!
We explore Tracey Emin's exhibition "I Followed You to the end" at White Cube Bermondsey, open from 19 September to 10 November 2024. But first we go back to the nineties, to the YBA, the Sensation exhibition, and a really hilarious Channel 4 program comically titled "Is Painting Dead?". Follow us on this fascinating journey through Emin's life and work. You will not be disappointed!
For more information on the show:
https://www.whitecube.com/gallery-exhibitions/tracey-emin-bermondsey-2024
You can follow Tracey Emin's wonderful residency in Margate here:
@tracey_emin_artist_residency
You can also follow us on Instagram:
@exhibitionistas_podcast
And you can, more importantly, become a member of the podcast. We are doing this for free, so we need to step it up with you:
https://www.patreon.com/ExhibitionistasPodcast
Oh, and if you want to watch the Channel 4 episode Is Painting Dead, go here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKHJoLG2cEk
Music by Sarturn.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Exhibitionistas. So glad that you're with us for this very special episode where we're diving back into exhibitions. This time with Tracey Emin's show, I Followed You to the End. That's at White Cube Bermondsey until the 10th of November. So if you find yourself in London, I highly recommend going and giving this extraordinary show a visit.
00:00:33
Speaker
Um, and this was a great conversation. I have to say, you know, I, for better or worse, certainly worse. I did not know a ton about this hugely powerful voice in the art world that is Tracey Yemen. And it was such a pleasure to learn more about her incredible life how much she has to give to the art world and beyond and it was it was just a fascinating episode for me personally and I hope that you enjoy it too. And of course as ever talking to Joanna about it was was great fun. So I want a flag up front that there's some references to rape, to abortion. So if you're not in the mood for that kind of thing, you're with someone who might not you know find that appropriate. Just wanted to give you a heads up. And also, in other news, we have started a Patreon account. So you can find in the show notes a link to it.
00:01:32
Speaker
And come join us. ah We are so happy to have you along. And if you're able to give us five Bob, as they say in the UK, that would be enormously appreciated. Obviously, if that's not available to you right now, that's not a problem. But we would very, very wholeheartedly welcome the any donations or contributions you can give to the show.
Tracey Emin: Life and Art
00:01:56
Speaker
Without further ado, I hope you enjoy the episode.
00:02:20
Speaker
Hello, exhibitionistas. Welcome back to the podcast. This is the second episode of the season, but the first where we're diving back into an exhibition and an artist to discuss with each other and, of course, with you. So this episode will examine the exhibition I Followed You to the End, a Big Body of Paintings and Sculpture by Dame Tracey Emin.
00:02:46
Speaker
My name is Emily Harding, and much like you, I assume I am an art lover and an exhibition goer. I am Joanna Pierre Nevis, independent writer and curator and artistic director of Drawing Now Art Fair. I am writing a book titled Female Drawing Machines about drawing and technology from a feminist perspective, and I'm your co-host today, and as usual,
00:03:09
Speaker
And I'm really, really looking forward to talking about the show and to being back at a time when we need culture more than ever. I'm not one of those people who question art when the going gets tough. On the contrary, I'm working with a Lebanese artist and we started talking about the escalation in the Middle East, getting really despondent about it. And suddenly she pointed to her artistic work and said, I'm so ah glad I have this.
00:03:38
Speaker
And I guess, you know, my week confirmed what you said in the first episode, Emily, about the healing power of art. It it does have that power and it brings us together. So how has your week been?
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's been good. And I mean, just to go back to that, so she said, I'm so glad I have this, and others are so glad she has it as well. That's the thing about art is like that ability to can connect for so many people, not just the people who are creating it, which is wonderful. but So, I'm glad you brought up that healing um because I think this exhibition is right in that sweet spot.
Personal Reflections and Art Connections
00:04:19
Speaker
I mean, for Emma, this exhibition reflects on how she's living her life following her cancer diagnosis from 2020, which no one, even her doctor, has apparently expected her to survive.
00:04:32
Speaker
But it also brought up a lot of feelings about my own health, which we can talk about later on when we talk about the exhibition. It felt really personal looking at the work she produced for this. So I love that serendipity and and how you can experience things just at the right time. But my week, I mean, it was great. Actually, I dipped my toes back into the work for the first time.
00:04:55
Speaker
uh in several weeks so it's you know very much easing my way in in a slow way but it felt great to start to piece back a more normal routine so i'm taking it slow and it felt difficult for sure but the right kind of difficult and you know just kind of reaching out to feel the edges of capacity which is good But yeah, so how was your week Joanna? I went to the drawing room where they have this impressive exhibition by Emma McNally whose drawings on paper form a sort of grotto. You are even given a flashlight to explore it. It's very surprising.
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, it was really, really nice. Very good. So it like a really good season start for the drawing room. And I'm also reading Eula Biss's To Have and To Be Had, which is a series of essays stringed together to form ah a sort of narrative about money, property and status.
00:05:56
Speaker
And she makes it very, very cool, actually. I thought, this is not for me. this is These are not the themes that draw me to any book. So is it current? Is she is she's a current writer? Or is this something? She is. She's an essayist. I can't remember the date of the book.
00:06:14
Speaker
But she's, yeah, she's she's someone who's been around in the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years, I think. I don't know how I got to her. Oh, it's because I'm working with an artist called Danica Phelps, who I'm going to include in an exhibition about notations, so the idea of like the codes that we invent when language is not enough, like notations in music, notations in dance, and how that kind of cross-references we're drawing.
00:06:42
Speaker
And so Danica Phelps is a really interesting American artist whose work has always been about quantifying the input and output of money in her life. And she found codes to put into her drawings that um mark that flow, that cash flow in and out of her life. It's really interesting and she has a series of drawings where she did a trip with her son, I think, with her offspring and it's just drawings of the child doing stuff and then at the bottom
00:07:22
Speaker
I think she went to the Grand Canyon. She was traveling across America. And so she has a color for each aspect of money spending, but she drew them in a way that it's not short. It's kind of like a landscape. So it's like lines and over lines over lines that form these hills and these landscapes at the bottom of the drawings. And at the same time, it just made me think, wow, that really is what parenting is, isn't it?
00:07:51
Speaker
you're doing the best for your child, you're traveling, but you have you carry that responsibility of providing. And at the same time, providing becomes an act of love and an act of sustainability for that you know very small person's life. It's beautiful work. and she is she made So in the States, not the book I have, unfortunately,
00:08:15
Speaker
in the States, she did the cover of that book. And we were talking on Zoom and she said, oh, by the way, you know, I, one of these drawings was used as a cover of a book. And that's how I got to the book, because then she started talking about it. And I thought, huh, that might be interesting. and Actually, I'm completely hooked. Yeah, I'm in it.
00:08:34
Speaker
How about you? What are you doing? My main obsession has been this podcast. I just discovered that it's been around a little while. It's called One Song with Diallo Riddle and Luxury. So they are DJs and musicologists. They're kind of in the business. And they discuss the work of an artist through one song. So I got to say, there's something in the format that speaks to me, Joanna.
00:09:02
Speaker
and so It sounds familiar. Like something I'd really like to do, but yeah, great thank like a lot of music, ah like a lot of art podcasts, as you've talked about before, a lot of art podcasts are interviews with artists.
00:09:19
Speaker
which are great. And a lot of music podcasts are interviews with artists which are also great. I really enjoy their song exploder and you know where they go into how an artist sort of made a song, how did it all come together for them. But this is a bit different in that you know, it's two people who are just fanatical about music and really, really knowledgeable. And they um they go into a song and they they talk about the artists, their body of work, and then they have actual stems. So like, they'll take out
00:09:58
Speaker
the rhythm section or just the bass line. And you'll you'll hear that on its own. And I guarantee you, for songs you have heard a million times, there are things you do not have known were in there.
00:10:15
Speaker
that just like
Exploring Emin's Personal Life and Influences
00:10:16
Speaker
give it this depth and resonance that you wouldn't have you know wouldn't have expected in in a lot of cases anyway. So they did um this episode on heart. I mean, I love Mason anne and Nancy Wilson.
00:10:34
Speaker
And they broke down Barracuda and it is a delight. If you like music podcasts, the other one I would recommend is, you know, Add to Playlist, which is a great one. It's a BBC one where they start with a song and then there's a couple of hosts and they bring in a couple of guests and then they say, oh, you know what that song made me think of? Is this other song?
00:10:58
Speaker
And sometimes it's something you know related you know that seems maybe natural, like a natural leap. But often it is very different. you know They might say, oh, well, this this kind of the folk lyrics of this rock song made me think of a of a Welsh folk tune. And then they'll be talking about... you know And then you'll get introduced to artists and genres that you would have never kind of fallen on otherwise, but that's another great one. But yeah, one song is so good. And I just, I love how musically geeky these guys are. I mean, they're just so deep in it and just love to share the joy, which is the perfect combination. Yeah, it's very communicative and it's very much what we are about as well. Like I really felt like a sort of a connection there. Yeah, it was really nice. Yeah, a power duo, just like us. So a power duo, just like us. So having said all this, do you want to introduce the artist and the exhibition you'll be discussing today? I would love to, yeah. So Dame Tracey Emin was born in 1963 in London.
00:12:13
Speaker
You've heard of her, of course, everyone has heard of her. She is one of the most powerful artists that have come out of the UK. She is known for installations, most notably a couple of pieces of work, which are every one I've ever slept with, 1963 to 1995, which is a piece that she did in 1995. And My Bed, which was an installation that she did in 1998, nominated for the Turner Prize. She didn't get it, but it was all the all the buzz at the time. So she also worked in video, printing, drawing, painting, sculpture. She has an immense body of work that has this common thread of being deeply personal, confessional, and very, very intimate. So something this is something that she got critiqued for, which we'll talk a little bit about, but that intimacy is so essential to her work. and
00:13:12
Speaker
yeah Yeah, really, really powerful. So there's an immense amount of information on Emin out there. So you can't be a very personal, very confessional artist without there being quite a bit out there on you. And she you know has been you know she does a lot of interviews. She's you know accessible as an artist, which is wonderful. So that's just to say that there's you know a wonderful hole to fall into on the internet that is all about Tracey Emin. As I dug into research, I read Jonathan Jones' book, Tracey Emin, and then read Strangeland, which is a 2005 autobiography from Tracey Emin. I mean,
00:13:56
Speaker
spoiler here, she can write really well too. um So yeah, so i listen, there's loads of podcasts out there and loads of videos available on YouTube from the BBC, White Cube and others, including a channel four program that is called Is Painting Dead? from 1997. Oh, I wondered if you got to that. ah We have to talk about that. Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. Because it's like, you know, she was she was known in the art world absolutely in the 90s. But this 1997 appearance on the show is why the culture started to know her, you know, and sort of a broader public. Yeah. ah It brought her, you know, just huge exposure for non artistic reason reasons that we can. So we will talk about. Yeah.
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, if I may interject, I was thinking while preparing this episode that she's the counter example of what I keep saying about contemporary artists, which is that you can't find anything about them online or in articles, because there has been a love-hate affair between Tracy Yemen and the press, TV and social media in this country that is quite unusual, and which has not always been very good for her mental health, I am sure, but you know, good for us, I guess. I mean, you can find a wealth of things online about her with her. It's incredible. And she's one of the very few artists that you can really, really do research on and who has a voice and who's been talked about in sometimes really interesting ways and sometimes really diminishing and crushing ways.
00:15:31
Speaker
But yeah, ah we'll talk about all that, yeah, later on, for sure. Totally, totally. And I mean, I just didn't know a ton about her before the bed, like the bed was somewhere in my consciousness. And then her neon sculptures, I mean, I'm at St. Pancras occasionally, and she had a big one there. Ignorantly, I would have put her in the category of sensationalist artist. I don't know, you know, is there a lot of there there? I never... It's really interesting that You were aware of her, but you didn't quite, I think she's one of the most unknown known artists in in the UK, because you think you know her. But you don't really. And she's painted all her life, actually. Yeah, exactly.
00:16:17
Speaker
Totally. and i mean And I think that's what was such a pleasure about um about researching or even even her voice when I listened to the first interview podcast that I listened to. I wasn't expecting a non-Posh voice.
00:16:32
Speaker
you know i mean Oh, mary oh so oh my goodness, yeah you were in it for a ride then. Yeah, totally. And I was like, oh wow, she's you know because I mean, there's such a thing with accents in this country. you know Mayor Khan having a South London accent as a political official on his level has been noted many times. you know and yeah And so yeah, so it's like I heard the sound of her voice and I was like, oh wow, I didn't expect that. So it has been a pleasure and a real great surprise to sort of investigate what a complex, fascinating character she is for sure. And so for and our non-UK listeners, so this idea of accents is that accents in the UK really
00:17:17
Speaker
show where you come from. So if you have a very Downton Abbey accent, you are posh, you are well off, you are part of the right side of society. And if you have Tracy Emmons accent, you come from working class. So there's a working class accent that's very, very particular, very specific. There are many of them. And sometimes other accents like the Northern accent are associated with working class people where Maybe that's my ignorance as a foreigner, but but that's not quite right. So that it's very difficult to penetrate these accents and the classism in the UK. I'm still trying to figure it out, so I will not pretend to explain it bit by bit to you, non-UK listener. But there ah definitely is something about the way she speaks and her
00:18:08
Speaker
uh directedness and there's not a single podcast with her that doesn't have a fuck or a fucking in the middle there, you know, and she's she's so at ease with the way she speaks um that is quite strange and unusual here in the uk um in the art scene so just to explain what we're talking about for those of you who are kind of finding out about her and to be very honest with you we both found out more about her doing this episode, I myself, even even though I knew more about her, ended up discovering much more things about her that I didn't know.
Artistic Comparisons and Themes
00:18:45
Speaker
And that's why we do this. It was also a pleasure for me, to be very honest, and and kind of allowed me to revisit these things. and And this aspect, because I was at university when this all happened in the 90s when she came about, so I kind of
00:19:01
Speaker
thought I knew things that I didn't quite know as usual. Yeah, it's the beauty of it. So as I said, Emin was born in London, but she grew up in Margay, which is a seaside holiday town in Kent on the coast, where her father, who is a Turkish Cypriot emigrant, owned a hotel and some other properties. Her family was pretty well off at that point. So they weren't wealthy, but there weren't money problems per se. And her parents, by most standards, had a pretty unusual relationship in so far as her father was married to and had children with another woman.
00:19:41
Speaker
and was not willing to get a divorce. So yeah, yeah, he married, he married, uh, another woman. Well, I mean, she was pretty young when they got married. I want to say she was still a teenager, his, his first wife, but it was a woman in his village in Cyprus who it was was married back home. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then double life.
00:20:11
Speaker
He came, well, she was, the wife came with him to the UK, the first wife. So was living also in Margate. um Yeah. And then he, Tracy's father got with Tracy's mother.
00:20:29
Speaker
And they had twins, Tracy and and her brother, and they made an agreement that was look the best, you know, the best that Tracy's mom was going to get was three days a week. And that was the agreement that they came to. So it was it sounds like it was really open with the other. He lived with other the other family at the same time. Yeah, like half. So.
00:20:54
Speaker
I hope that's a complex situation to be sure, especially at that time. She was born in the sixties, right? And I mean, I don't know, you know, who knows how well Tracy's mom was with the situation. I mean, but it seemed to, you know, it seemed to work and Tracy's mom changed her last name to Emin for that period of time that they were together. But then, unfortunately,
00:21:19
Speaker
her father went bankrupt, lost the hotel and left the country. So that was a pretty traumatic pivot point in her life. And that's when you know the financial picture really disintegrated and her mom had to work several jobs in hotels that she was once helped running because Tracy's father owned them.
00:21:42
Speaker
And so this thrust, Tracy, her twin brother Paul, and her older brother Alan into poverty. And you know she she talks a lot about how difficult that was. And so now it's like her father isn't around. Her mom essentially isn't around because she's having to work so much.
00:22:04
Speaker
and Yeah, 500 jobs at the same time. Yeah, exactly. There was some squatting. There was a lot of you know housing insecurity and and all that kind of stuff. And so this was a ah big shift for her. And she will come back to this kind of again and again in her work, you know as as her work is autobiographical. And Margate, you know Margate in and of itself has made a huge mark on her. I mean, she's since moved back there. But the the Margate influence is certainly most clear in some of the films she made in the late 90s. So as I said, she's since moved back after spending lots of her life in London and she started a residency. I found it surprising to know how much she loved and appreciated her father even after he was she was clearly really heartbroken.
00:22:57
Speaker
by his actions and his departure, and they ended up having you know a relationship in her life when she got older. Really? Yeah, so she spent some time- So he never came back to the UK?
00:23:12
Speaker
Did he come back to the UK? No, she has a relationship with him over there in Cyprus. Yeah, so she spent some time in the 80s there when she was in her 20s. They seemed to have a real kinship, you know, they seem to be very similar people in a way, kind of real storytellers and You know, obviously, Tracy Yemen is nothing if not wildly independent. And um you get the sense that her father is the same. I mean, think about it. He's an em immigrant coming to this country. He was planning on going to Australia. And then he found out about no non-whites policy and so stayed in the UK. And and then, you know, has this, you know, this two wife thing going on. You know, I mean, I think that's
00:24:03
Speaker
It takes some gumption to kind of just openly say, listen, this is who I am, take me or leave me, have kids with me or or don't. And that's how it's going to be.
00:24:14
Speaker
especially as an immigrant, I would say. you know As an immigrant, as a long white. She'd mentioned that her father's first wife was a lovely woman and was like, look, the children are not to blame for all of this mess that the adults had sort of waded into with all of this. And you know yeah, I think that's a remarkable thing as well for that kind of grace to be afforded in a situation like that.
00:24:42
Speaker
There's another aspect to her life that is quite complex as well, right, which is pertaining to her sexuality. Totally. Yeah. So sex is a big part of her work and all of its guises. And she has experienced rape and sexual assaults and abortions, as well as lots of other sexual experiences. And she is all in for exploring these and expressing her relationship to these things throughout her work. So it's a major, major theme. and she's not at pains to say that she did this very early on pre pre pre pre me too when no one was talking of I mean Marilyn Dumas talked about I mean no one was talking about it in a way that
00:25:31
Speaker
made them part of the subjects. A lot of people would have been talking about it as representing it, but she was talking about it from her own perspective in order to connect with women.
00:25:48
Speaker
who had gone through the same thing, and she's very clear about it, and she states very clearly, I've always done this, I've always been ah persecuted for doing it, and now the times are catching up with me. Her body and its pain and ecstasy and just plain humanness have always been depicted in her work, her paintings, photographs, and really powerfully in sculpture, which there's a couple of examples of yeah in the show. In the show, yeah. Wow, wow, wow.
00:26:18
Speaker
So she she shares herself, and you know when she's at her most vulnerable, i mean menstruating, and masturbating, without holding back at all from any of it, but also with a whole heap of pathos. and it's like You know when you look at an Egon Sheila who was a huge influence on her and her work and that is abundantly clear in the show as well, I thought. um It feels like looking at one of them from the inside out in a way. It's like she's
00:26:52
Speaker
you know, she's so um intimately associated like associated with the form. It is her body in most cases that she's drawing her actual body. And, you know, that is really palpable. To me, it feels a bit because, you know, I think we've spoken about this before. I had a student who really, really opened my eyes to Egan Sheila's history. And also the Vienna Circle at the time, there was a lot of teenage abuse. I mean, artists abusing teenagers, and Egan Sheila was one of them. And he kidnapped it a kid, for Christ's sakes. He kidnapped a little girl. So he disappeared with her for a few days. She was the the child of ah a powerful
00:27:43
Speaker
magnate or a powerful man where where he was saying and it was a whole thing so in some ways when I look at her work and I see that she was influenced by it it makes complete sense because it's suddenly she is that kind of person when suddenly Of course, he may have been influenced by his artistry and his technique, but also it's as if one of his models, which were basically little girls who were living in the streets, and he would bring them into his studio and do whatever he wanted with them in exchange of some food and some warmth.
00:28:21
Speaker
I mean, literally heat, you know, they were freezing in the street. And it's as if these girls suddenly started speaking through Tracey Emin. Oh, wow. So sometimes when artists say they're influenced by Egan Shealy, I'm like, oh, that's so annoying because he is such a powerful artist. But at the same time, when you really look at the drawings, those girls are not comfortable.
Emin's Courage and Vulnerability in Art
00:28:43
Speaker
He's overarching. You know, he's always painting them from above or drawing them. But actually with Tracey Emin,
00:28:50
Speaker
it makes a lot of sense especially with her relationship with the openness of the the the sort of harm that her that may have caused to families but also the love he may have brought to them and the complexity of these issues. She speaks about them from within and I think that's also what's so powerful in this relationship with Eden, Sheila that she definitely has, you know, and a lot of artists do, but with her it makes so much sense, you know. Yeah, totally. And I mean, I think it's, it's, you know, her relationship maybe to her father, but also to, you know, she talks a lot about the men that she had sex with, you know, when she was a teenager and they were like 25, 30, and she's like, who are these men? Like,
00:29:39
Speaker
you know i was I was out there. She dropped out of school at 13. She had some time on her hands. and you know she was having you know She was raped at that time in an alley. and She started you know becoming sexually active, which is not uncommon.
00:30:01
Speaker
And so for her, it's one thing, but it's like, you know, these men should have known better. And what was it like, why are they having sex with a teenage girl? And yeah, why is Egon Sheila kidnapping?
00:30:15
Speaker
You know, I mean, there's oh a little girl. Yeah. Here's some heat. Yeah. Just yeah. I don't know. She does say, to put it into context, that a lot of her... So she was fascinated with art when she was a kid. That's something that has always been with her. She's like a true artist in the sense of um having been really comforted by art and by her drawing. She drew and wrote a lot ever since she was a ah little girl.
00:30:46
Speaker
And she says that she looked around at some point and 13, 14, 15-year-olds, girls were pregnant, were in relationships with men, probably older than them, or a bit older, like 18, 19, 20. And she said, I don't want this for myself. Like, this is not for me. I don't want to go through this. So there was an awareness, I guess, of that time and that place.
00:31:14
Speaker
and She talks about Margate with a lot of warmth and a lot of tenderness, but also realizing that it was one of the poorest parts of the country at the time. It still is a complex space. um And that was ah the there were these, and that was the norm as well at the time. And it was also the norm to make fun of a woman menstruating. She's from that generation that we lived as well, um even though we're a bit younger,
00:31:45
Speaker
uh where you know it was shameful everything related to women was shameful so she's she's a real trooper us so le And I have to say, you know, looking at the, you know, the drawings of herself and the paintings of herself and all of it, you know, I wonder if I were to draw myself at the lowest times of my life and the most intimate, could I be as honest and empathetic?
00:32:16
Speaker
I mean, I just, I think that's a feat. That's a real feat to have, you know, a very harsh light on the thing, but also have it be held with the pathos that she has it held in. I mean, that's, that's a really, really something to behold. So there's a story about her where she realized that she wasn't the skinny, pretty thing.
00:32:45
Speaker
She had been before and she was invited to do a show in new york in the at the end of the 90s Uh, and she was really depressed with her body. So like a very common female experience male too obviously non-binary too for sure uh, but let's say the weight of the 90s skinniness was weighing on her and so she was disgusted by her body and she thought you know, what am I to do?
00:33:13
Speaker
And then she had this invitation for this show, so she built a sort of a box where she was to live for, I think, three weeks, so between two menstruations, because she didn't want to menstruate during that period, because she was naked. So she was naked the whole time. There were some peepholes so people could look into the the space she was living in. And to cut a very long story short, because you I think we could do an episode just on that piece,
00:33:43
Speaker
She spent the first days reading The Guardian so she was delivered The Guardian so she was hiding behind the newspaper. because she couldn't live with her self-image and knowing that people would be looking at her body and she said that at the end of that period she felt so free, she felt completely in tune with herself and her body and and that was her and it was the acceptance of maybe a body she didn't love as much or society didn't love as much but it was her own body and that's
00:34:16
Speaker
I mean, listen, that's crazy, right? To do so such a thing, to just go like, okay, I have this problem. How am I to solve this? And it is always through art and it's always through a sort of communitarian situation. So that's kind of, yeah. And she, yeah, she hadn't she hadn't painted in five years.
00:34:36
Speaker
at that point as well so she wanted to reconnect with herself as a painter and that was part of the impetus for this and so they have redone that room as an installation in various exhibitions as well. Thank you Emily for pointing out that it was a return to painting.
00:34:59
Speaker
And that's really interesting that she was naked painting for the first time in five years and relating to her own body and also giving that to the public.
Art Education and YBA Movement
00:35:10
Speaker
I think it makes a lot of sense when you see the exhibition now in White Cube Barmansey. So as we said, she dropped out of school as a teenager, ah but she still sought art education throughout the 80s. She went to Medway College of Design, Maidstone College of Art, and the Royal College of Art.
00:35:27
Speaker
she had her first yeah i mean She was basically studying all of the 80s in one place or another. And so she was yeah you know totally throwing herself into it, getting into the scene. you know I mean, you know just a really voracious appetite. i mean she was you know She was not ah half in, half out, ah maybe I'll just see. you know You get the sense that she was just really throwing it all on the table and yeah you know got a first class degree and in printing. and i mean So she was she was very, very much in it. And then she
00:36:07
Speaker
had her first solo show at the White Cube in 1993, and it was called My Major Retrospective, which I love. because i mean So 1993 is also the year of the founding of the White Cube. The title, My ah my Major rep Retrospective,
00:36:28
Speaker
this reference, the fact that Emin didn't believe that she was a new artist. And she talks about this in interviews. She was like, we they call us the YBA, but like we were in our, I was in my late 30s. And it's a bit sad. I mean, we haven't talked about the the alcohol issue she had. um She was a heavy drinker, to say the least. And she had a reputation for that. And she was a woman and she was pretty, she was young-ish. And she It's interesting because in the interviews of those days and even after the 2000s, she says many times, do you know I went to art school? Like I went to art school. I spent many years educating myself and she even did a philosophy degree, ah which she loved. She was very, very into it. And she has to keep reminding people because people don't take her seriously. So my major retrospective is also like,
00:37:27
Speaker
Guys, I know what I'm doing. It's intentional. But do you want to do you want to say a bit more about the YBA young British artists and just kind of that time?
00:37:39
Speaker
Hmm, sure. I mean, again, as like I said, I was at university at the time, so I i came into this profession and into this field hearing about the past, like the very recent past of the YBA, and I didn't even know what it stood for, you know YBA, but it just means young British artists who are actually still around, no longer that young.
00:38:02
Speaker
um And their work were was on display as part of the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy of London in the exhibition Sensation in 1997. So after, you know, this show that you just mentioned, um that's when the YBA took on an international aura and made a sort of a big splash in the art world. So artists such as Matt Colishaw, Damian Hurst,
00:38:28
Speaker
Julian Waring, Sarah Lucas, just had a retrospective at to Take Britain. Marcus Harvey with the infamous portrait, Myra, which was of the child sex abuser and killer Myra Hindley. And it was made with imprints of children's hands dipped in gray, white and black paint. um So that was kind of one of the major focuses of the exhibition for the press and for the general public. There was Michael Landy. I mean, lots of artists that are now established um were parts of this exhibition. And so what kind of changed in this young generation is that they used, they were very free with their materials, even the painters, as I mentioned with Marcus Harvey, and they used the literal thing that they were talking about. So the work would talk about something and they would take the thing
00:39:27
Speaker
to make the work or the material. So for instance, an artist such as Mark Quinn did a self-portrait, which was a cast of his own face, but it was made up with 10 points of his own blood, frozen in silicone. And in the same vein,
00:39:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. I hope my legs go really, really numb when I talk about this. Ah, blood is just the whole thing. Then we will talk about it later on. So in the same vein, Iman's work at the time used her own life and intimacy to frame the vulnerability of women and society.
00:40:04
Speaker
Damien Hirst placed animals in formal dehyde tanks, for instance, and of course, you know, Marcus Harvey's portrait of Myra Hindley that I've just mentioned. So in some ways, they brought real life into the museum, whereas museums usually represent stuff that remains outside.
00:40:23
Speaker
So this is not that new and you if you think of Massé du Champs and they the Surrealists and lots of artists beforehand but let's say that in some ways and the criticism towards this generation is the grittiness and the negativity that they brought into the to the museum as sort of the world is what it is and we're showing it um which I mean my take would be that this is kind of of their age at the time they were quite young and if you look at those artists now they are quite well off and famous around the world others have kind of dissipated but they all
00:41:03
Speaker
grew quote-unquote grew up as it were. So I'm always a bit surprised at the reactions people have to visual artists and I guess perhaps people do that also with other art forms which is that we don't consider the age of the artist and what I find really moving about the YBA is that they were young, they were powerful, they had gumption and they were of their own age, of their own generation. They changed quite a bit. I mean, if you think of Arthur Rambaud, you know, the famous ah pope French poet that disappeared in Africa, although his poems are very good, they are poems of a person who was between his teens and a young adult age. And when I studied him at school, it was taken as this sort of universal ageless kind of
00:41:51
Speaker
poetry and when I realized it he was almost I was almost his age when I was studying him I was like okay so this speaks to a very specific state of mind a very specific sense of adventurousness and and a very specific need to break the mold and those YBAs did break the mold they were very skilled There was innovation there. There was knowledge of materials that weren't supposed to be materials of art all the time. And skill impresses people. And we confuse skill with maturity. I mean, these artists like we saw with Emin, they were educated, they were passionate about art, and they wanted to be showing their work. Because one thing that Emin stresses out as well is that this generation
00:42:41
Speaker
didn't have a whole bunch of museums, a whole bunch of galleries to show their work in. So they really wanted to be out there. They wanted to communicate. They had things to say, but there weren't that many situations where you could say things. And so this YBA generation found themselves at the Royal Academy of Art in the Sensation Exhibition. The Royal Academy is a revered space of fabulously established or dead artists. So that kind of created a tumultuous relationship with this generation that that we'll probably talk about later on. So yeah.
00:43:17
Speaker
Interesting moment in history. For Emin, as we talked about earlier, the two breakout installations that demonstrate you know where she was at this time, and the first is The Tent, everyone I ever slept with, 1963 to 1995, which she made in 1995, and My Bed, which is the installation that she made in 1998.
00:43:39
Speaker
And the first is a tent, you know a tent that you might take camping, a dome tent, yeah with appliquéd names of everyone she'd had slept with. And as we said before, not just people she had sex with, which inc included that as well.
00:43:55
Speaker
Um, but anyone, you know, who she literally slept with. So it does what it says on the tin. So the piece was bought by Sachi and exhibited in his, in the sensation exhibition that you just mentioned in 1997. Sadly, it was destroyed in a warehouse fire. Yeah. In 2004. Do you, do you want to say a little bit more about sensation and that exhibition?
00:44:23
Speaker
The exhibition was organized by Norman Rosenfeld and gathered a whole generation of what I would call like post-punk artists. I'm sorry, I know these post-pre words are so silly, but I do i do make a connection between the 80s and that no future generation.
00:44:44
Speaker
and this sort of grittiness, but also this very intense awareness of wanting to make it and to establish themselves as trans-setters in the art world, for lack of a better expression. And so they produced gritty, unashamed, really visceral works. I don't want to put everyone in the same category because, I mean, you have Jenny Saville in there, who's a marvellous painter. She was in the Summer Show at the Royal Academy this year, as was Gillian Waring as well, and Tracey Emin.
00:45:18
Speaker
I mean, these were artists that were changing the game, but there was such an exaggeration also in regards to their work. So Sensation introduced them um to the the world and the general public, reversing the idea we had of the UK and UK artists around the world, which was that they were dipped in oil or acrylic paint.
00:45:43
Speaker
So none of that for this generation, whose paintings were deemed not like turners. ah which was a shock considering that the Turner Prize was established in 1984. So it's hard to talk about the YBN sensation without talking about the Turner Prize. That was kind of like the triangulation that brought contemporary art to the minds of the general public in the UK and caused an uproar for sure. you know All of these things together kind of made up for an explosive material. The prize was established in 1984 in praise of the boldness
00:46:18
Speaker
but by now very established kind of painting of William Turner. And the the general public seemed to expect it to reward painting and seemed to expect to see painting at the Royal Academy, which I think was also the problem with with this exhibition. so um The prize had already introduced some of these artists of the exhibition such as Damien Hirst and sensation was the ideal event to ignite the general public and the journalists and our critics who were aghast not only with the art but also with the behavior of certain artists amongst which there was Tracy Emin.
00:46:54
Speaker
who was very drunk during a Channel 4 program titled, and this is crazy and I urge you yeah to rewatch this on and on YouTube because the thing was called, is painting dead? And it is absolutely hilarious. It's cringey, cringey beyond words. I mean, she makes it cringey because, you know, she is absolutely hammered during it. But even without her, it would have been yeah ah the cringiest conversation ever. I mean, like, it was such a great, like, it was like getting in a time machine, you know, and going back to that time, because it was so just of its time. It was just right up its own bum. There were people in bow ties, for God's sake. I mean... For God's sake. And the hair. Oh my God, the hair. Oh, the hair.
00:47:48
Speaker
And Norman Rosenthal is talking, so the the camera spans to him, and he has two kisses, one kiss on his cheek, probably by Tracy Evans. And he talks like really seriously about the importance of painting and what painting is and what it's not and what it's doing. And you're just looking at him and thinking, man, you're wearing a tuxedo. You have two kisses on your face.
00:48:17
Speaker
What is happening? And know if you if you didn't know better, you might think to yourself, is this like a late night skit? Is that what
Iconic Works and Public Impact
00:48:25
Speaker
this? Completely. Like, I mean, you're waiting for the joke to drop, you know, but you're just left in this, yeah, ambiguity. And then, yeah, she pipes in.
00:48:36
Speaker
And kudos to Tim Marlow, who's the the the presenter, who maintains his seriousness to the end. How did he do it? Was he on better blockers is my question. That must be, to date, the longest hour, hour and a half or whatever it was of of his life. i Because in the background, he's introducing the show, and in the brown background, you hear something falling, you hear a clunking noise, you hear a female voice going, what's that? Someone just endlessly speaking while he's introducing it. And the the program is amazing because the question is, is painting dead? And they convinced two people, two art critics, very serious ones,
00:49:23
Speaker
to talk in defense of painting being alive and well, and the other one of painting being dead. yeah And the one who defends painting is the then director, I think, of Modern Painters, the magazine. And the other one was the director of a cultural department at Channel 4, I think, Waldemar Januszczyk. I mean, that name.
00:49:52
Speaker
I mean, you know, every single part of this is hilarious. I mean. And then at some point, Tracie Yemen interjects and says, are real people watching this?
00:50:08
Speaker
And she stomps off. And she leaves. As you say, throughout the whole thing, even when the camera's not on her, you can hear her sort of chatting with her neighbor or saying disparaging things or arguing with what has just been said, even though it's not her sort of moment to speak.
00:50:29
Speaker
and then Yeah, she's she's, I mean, in and bless her, like there was, I loved, I don't know how she feels about that. I didn't read anything in afterwards about that. But I mean, in in a way it was like ah such a breath of fresh air to have somebody saying things like, are real people watching this? Because all y'all are looking pretty pompous at this moment.
00:50:56
Speaker
And you know if anybody was curious about it, they will have turned it off by now. If anyone wants to know, 10 minutes in, they will know that this is not the program that is going to tell them if anything is there or not. And the program has David Sylvester, who is such a revered critic, Norman Rosenthal. um Jane Harris was such an amazing artist. She passed away with cancer. Such an incredible and abstract painter. Like you say, was going into a time machine because you have painting literally everywhere at the moment. The market's very conservative. Going back to um sensation. So I think it's worth saying the artists that were in the exhibition, there were 21 artists, eight women for 13 so not too bad.
00:51:50
Speaker
okay And the artists were, Jake and Denos Chapman, very successful, Adam Czotzko, Matt Colishaw, also successful, Tracy Ehrman, Marcus Harvey, Damien Hirst, Michael Landy, Abigail Lane, Sarah Lucas, Jason Martin, Ron Muik, Chris Ofili, Richard Patterson, Simon Patterson, yes they are related brothers, Mark Quinn, Fiona Rae, Jenny Savile, Sam Taylor Wood,
00:52:19
Speaker
Gavin Turk, Gillian Waring, Rachel Whiteread. And they, most of them became quite successful. Some of them got the Turner Prize, really good galleries. And it's also worth saying that one, two, three, four, five, six got royal distinctions, like OBEs and CBEs and whatever. Tracey Eminis Dame, Tracey Emin. And also just a tidbit, like just for laughs and giggles. um Sam Taylor Wood,
00:52:49
Speaker
is the film director who did Fifty Shades of Grey, the film. Okay, wow. So she was an established artist. I knew her as an artist, a bit like Steve McQueen um of Hunger and 12 Years a Slave and all that. They were established artists that, you know, whose shows i've I've seen. So that's kind of weird. That's a weird one. that is But anyway, um this was sensation that got so much press and so much hatred from the public. And it's aptly named because that was the big critique, wasn't it? Was that all of this new art was just sensationalist and nothing else. It wasn't crafted.
00:53:30
Speaker
And, you know, it was just all attention getting, which is, you know, Tracey Emin got quite a bit of that. And I mean, her seminal piece at this time, ah My Bed, it certainly got, you know, a lot of praise, but absolute rancor as well. I mean, people were not happy that this could be considered art.
00:53:54
Speaker
So, the bed, again, is exactly what it says in the tin. It's an installation of Tracey Yemen's actual bed. And if you haven't seen it, look it up. There's loads of images of it. It's tousled sheets, bedside mess of empty vodka bottles, cigarette packs, overfilled ashtrays. There's a really cute little stuffed dog, little white stuffed dog. I think it's a dog there. Some KY jelly old newspapers.
00:54:19
Speaker
And Jonathan Jones, in his book, describes it really well. He says, quote, ah My bed is found stuff in the way that caught imaginations, for better or worse. And it was and is a very pure manifestation of the idea that anything can be art. Here's her bed, unmade, unfresh, surrounded in its squalor in the detritus of a messy life.
00:54:45
Speaker
When Emin exhibited a peer ready-made, she did it with dollops of dirty realism, created in 98 and shown for the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery the following year. My bed bears the curious resemblance to Damien Hirst's Tiger in a vitrine in 1991. Both flaunt their ready-made-ness in a way that outraged lovers of crafted art.
00:55:10
Speaker
Yet both have a fleshy excitement, far from the cool ironies of Duchamp you know and his bicycle wheel and a table, very, very different you know kettle of fish. Sorry, that's me ad-libbing there. So, quote again, the shark shows off its deadly teeth. The bed is littered with stuff of sex and illness.
00:55:30
Speaker
All these bottles and drugs and tubes of lubricating jelly and ashtrays are not used as symbols. They are exhibited as forensic evidence, traces of the woman whose bed this was. which is I just love that. I just think it like really encapsulates like that this these are not symbols of things. these are As you said as well, you know we are bringing the outside world into the museum and she has done so in a very intimate way. She's not bringing in a tiger shark, she's bringing in herself into the museum. And that was so and she's not bringing in a boudoir with lipstick and necklaces where we put our mosques to go out into the world. She's bringing the other side of it, which is incredible.
00:56:21
Speaker
And I mean, I think one of the other things that really struck me in looking at her and sort of the conversation around her art, which isn't unique to her but ah is maybe specific because she's a woman, is this whole conversation about the fact that she's making money. And, um you know, I listened to an interview with her. What do you mean by that?
00:56:46
Speaker
Well, so I listened to an interview with her in 2004, and the host of the interview kept coming back to this idea of, well, yeah, you're exposing yourself, but you're making a lot of money off it, aren't you? You're getting really rich, you're lining your pockets off of... And she wasn't as explicit as that in the interview, but it was so the undertone. That was the subtext, yeah. Absolutely.
00:57:12
Speaker
And, you know, I liked how Tracy Yemen handled it. It was like, well, you know, i I am glad, you know, that's great that I'm making money. And and quite honestly, if i if I didn't make any money off of this and if I didn't get any positive feedback, you know, I'm not sure I'd be here, like, you know.
00:57:33
Speaker
you have to... And she means that quite literally. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, for sure. So it I mean, it kind of reminded me of, I remember a controversy when I was at university and any of any folks who know Ani DeFranco, she's a folk artist and she was she was kind of big on the college scene. Ms. Magazine, great feminist magazine gave her a nod in the 90s for all the records that she was selling. And They referred to her a success only in terms of sales, you know, that she was making more per album than Hootie and the Blowfish, which is also a big 90s band at the time. Maybe a lot of people don't remember. But, um but you know, just kind of that critique and that metric of rating art on commerciality rather than,
00:58:25
Speaker
you know, in Emin's case, the fact that she is bringing things that are really intimate depictions of herself and how she is living life and and navigating through life that is obviously connecting with a lot of other people, you know, that that in and of itself is is something to be exalted and rewarded and talked about and praised.
00:58:47
Speaker
And you know I think that's what Ani DeFranco is saying. She wrote a very ah eloquent, pointed letter to Ms. Magazine saying, I don't want your accolades. like If it's only going to be because I've made money.
00:59:01
Speaker
Thanks, but no thanks. And you know, I think that's something that not unique to women artists, but maybe got, you know, ah launched at women artists more than than than male artists about like, oh, well, yeah, you're doing all this confessional stuff, but you're making a lot of money off it. So that's probably why you're doing it. It's just, you know, that must have been a lot for her to navigate at the time. And also, don't you think it's weird in this country where you don't speak about money?
00:59:31
Speaker
Yeah, right. To have the guts to address that question publicly to a person. And I agree with you that it's probably because she's a woman, but I do think it's because of her accent. Like you said yourself, you weren't expecting to hear that accent. And I think she's considered lesser than. And that's my theory. I'm of course judging a bit, but You have to ask yourself at some point, why are people treating her like that? You don't treat people you consider as your equals. Yeah, of course. Of course. And when we say like that, scathing things were written about her. I find it beautiful, after the break, we'll talk about the exhibition, to see that you know you made this point of without money, artists don't produce.
01:00:23
Speaker
yeah And she was lucky enough and we are lucky enough that she got money yeah so that she could make this show and the shows that she did before.
White Cube Exhibition
01:00:34
Speaker
Well, let's take a break. I need a cup of tea. I'll be right back after the break.
01:01:00
Speaker
So welcome back everyone. Joanna, do you want to introduce us to the exhibition? Yes, with pleasure. um So first of all, the White Cube Gallery is a commercial gallery, as you said, founded in 1993.
01:01:16
Speaker
It's one of the oldest galleries of contemporary art, and so this is where the exhibition takes place. It was created by Jay Joplin, who's a major actor in the field, having promoted artists of the YBA generation, but also many others after that. So the gallery is now ah huge. It has several spaces across the world. In London, two spaces. New York, Hong Kong, Paris and Seoul.
01:01:44
Speaker
So this exhibition takes place at the Bermondsey location, which is bigger than many art centers that we know. I mean, it is like a small one's fine, basically. So the space is super impressive, and the scale it demands of the artists at times feels worrisome to me. I kind of feel like the artists will produce works in a bigger scale because they're represented by a bigger a gallery, but with Emin,
01:02:11
Speaker
That is not a problem. You know, she has paintings that are super small, ah like a kiss, as she says so herself, or huge. So as you enter, there's a big central corridor with small paintings on each side that are really, really small. They're like almost half an A4 sheet. Yeah.
01:02:33
Speaker
size And at the end, so you see this big corridor with very small paintings, so you go and you really lean into the paintings to see them. there's a So at the end there's a wall sculpture there that appears to be made of bronze.
01:02:48
Speaker
emulating those old medieval woods crucifixion sculptures you see at the British Museum, half eaten away by bugs, so the head is missing, parts of the legs, but there's also a specific torsion of the body that alludes to the body of Christ. I mean, that's what I thought of. I mean, maybe it was me, but yeah and of course it's kind of like, obviously has that relationship to the history of sculpture. So overall, we are very far, I just have to say this from sensation,
01:03:17
Speaker
and the fears that traditional means of art are dead because you cannot get a more traditional exhibition, sculpture and painting. on the surface, on the surface, very traditional. So the space on the left um has a smaller painting. So there's three big rooms and the corridor, the space, the room on the left has three, I think three bigger paintings and a smaller one. And you start realizing that they all have the same colors, blue, black, red and white, or
01:03:51
Speaker
if one wants to be more poetic about it, as the text accompanying the show is, a palette, or quote, a palette of carmine, ivory, deep roots, and black temper, unquote, which I found really sweet. So the room on the right is much bigger, with a wall in the middle, and you tend to go around through the right and explore the narrative of the paintings, where there's some text, so some text starts appearing in these paintings in the second room. There's a narrative to the exhibition, right?
01:04:21
Speaker
a complete narrative, you have to fill in the blanks, obviously, but there is a sort of narrative in the exhibition. um So in this space, so some writings appear alluding to internal conflicts and emotions of entrapment and love. And most paintings so far have images of the body or bodies in bed at times with cats, her own cats. And one has the immediate knowledge that this is personal, autobiographical,
01:04:51
Speaker
and confessional. And yet it's also a very common experience. So all the paintings depict being in bed, lying down, eating, masturbating, sleeping, aching, having sex, et cetera, suffering.
01:05:09
Speaker
being ill, you know, everything. it's It really is very relatable at the same time. So the other final space is even bigger and it's for sure the most impactful one on a gut level because it has this big sculpture of a woman on all fours.
01:05:25
Speaker
There's no doubt. It's a woman and a number of striking paintings where a confessional tone Led her to write on them again One of them says I don't want to have sex because my body feels dead And you see it as you go in and go to the left you see it from afar um, and then on the same angle but on the wall closer to you there's a painting of a woman spreading her legs on the bed. So it's all very nuanced and conflicting. Everything's about conflicting feelings. So the show ends with a video whose title escapes me now, I don't remember it, revealing one of you know the most challenging or changing aspects of a very turbulent life as it is for the artist, which is her soma. So after her cancer, her bladder cancer, her bladder was removed a few
01:06:21
Speaker
organs around it, and she has to have an external and artificial bladder. And the the video is basically her filming herself with a phone, I'm presuming, from below. And so you see a bit of her breasts seen from below. You see her belly with this very alien-like um small kind of organ that looks a bit like a penis at times stretching in and out and bleeding onto the belly so there's kind of these rivulets of blood on the belly and she explains that this is a
01:07:02
Speaker
quotidian experience for her she needs to take care of it and it bleeds very often and she decided to film it and it's a very the noise it's Delayed so it's it's in slow motion But you don't know that it's slow motion because it's almost a static image but you hear a sort of sound in the background like whoa And it's kind of a sort of an out of body experience, but there's a body there. And I can tell you that the reactions of the spectators when they go in is quite something. She's still out there shocking people. I went in again, you know, I knew her from vaguely the bed and some neons and I did not associate her with painting. And so I, you know, I wasn't sure what to expect, but going in there and seeing her paintings, oh my God, can the woman paint? What I was struck by in the paintings is there's parts of images that are detailed. You might have part of a face or part of a body that is recognizable and has you know lines that represent such, but then there's disintegration of the image all over as well.
01:08:13
Speaker
And some of it looks like a horror movie, that essence and the feeling of when you are ill, when you are depressed, when you are bleeding, and all of those things make you feel monstrous. This this person she's representing is not fit for society. like They don't have any kind of the wherewithal, the energy to put on the things that it would take to put on to be acceptable. So many of the beds are you know looking at vaguely the same angle
01:08:54
Speaker
but kind of a little bit different each time. And sometimes, as you say, you might see one of the cats, tea cup and pancake or what they're called. They're adorable all over Instagram. I really encourage you to have a look, but um they are so cute. But, um you know, you might see the cat in the background or you might get more detail in the wallpaper that you don't have in another, but that you get the sense of time passing. Oh, I didn't think of that because it's true that you think These are days, yeah right? These are several days. So just for clarification or maybe for visualization for those who can't make it to the show for various reasons, they are very impressive. ah So the bigger paintings are very impressive because they look like a sketch. Like someone is telling you something
01:09:50
Speaker
They can't tell with words, so they have to make a sketch to show you. And so for me, the impressive thing is, how do you make a sketch that big? Because she never prepares for paintings. She doesn't beforehand define structure, a bit like Alice Neil. She kind of went into the raw painting. And so, but she doesn't, she's depicting herself. So unlike Alice Neil, she doesn't have an external um reference to paint, she's painting herself as she felt in her bed. And so she's sketching, she's like, okay, so I was here, so I was crying, so you see the tears down my face, and then, well, you see, I was bleeding as well, so she shows the blood, like really quick brushstrokes. But in such a magnitude, for someone who was so sick for six months, couldn't hold a brush, couldn't take a make tea,
01:10:47
Speaker
She was so unwell and then to make these very big paintings there are just showing you pain points pleasure points happiness points points of strangeness of uncanniness um From above seen from above like a sort of a godlike thing, but it's really ah I am painting what this thing that I was feeling and like you say there are moments where you can see the face and moments where there's a there's a few portraits. and So in the first room and on the right, it's the more internal one where she's stating that she's afraid of being loved. She feels dispossessed of herself if she's desired. That's what the text says in a very repetitive repetitive manner. She writes really well and the text is really beautiful because
01:11:41
Speaker
the beginning you're like, oh, texts, okay. I can't read her writing, but then you cannot stop reading because it's so fascinating and so clear what she's saying. I think maybe for us women, but also for so many people trapped in the relationship that clearly is dispossessing you and she and she speaks of her fear of not being herself. And you feel like her not being herself is her not being able to ruminate through painting.
01:12:09
Speaker
And then there's three portraits where the first one she's kind of almost disappearing and she draws so she paints I say she draws I mean it is a kind of drawing on raw canvas so you can see the canvas as well and she the face is almost disappearing they're kind of ghostly these paintings But you know that notion of we all have those moments right that we are depressed, we are ill, we are for one reason, art we're in pain. For one reason or another, we are in bed. And and some and a lot of i mean we spend a third of our time there just sleeping, hopefully, in a normal way. So I mean, so much of our lives are past.
01:12:55
Speaker
in bed for one reason or another. And if, as she seems to depict in the in the exhibition, you know having a period of life where you are spending a lot more time in bed, are we not ourselves in that moment? I mean, when we're in pain, when we're in depression, when we're ill. And I think that what I really appreciated about the about the exhibition is you is that this is the human experience. This is her human experience. This is all of our human experience. And it's it's it's so easy.
01:13:34
Speaker
to think of that time as like dead time. you know I mean, I have spent a lot of time in bed lately. I mean, way more than I ever have. I was diagnosed with a rare blood condition and there's you know the treatment is is you know all working and it's all manageable and it's all gonna be fine. But there's been a period of time here where I have had no energy.
01:14:02
Speaker
and spending you know a lot more time in bed. And you know having those moments where it's like you'll fall asleep so fully and you'll wake up in the middle of the day and be like, god what day is it?
Identity and Illness in Emin's Art
01:14:15
Speaker
Is it morning or is it evening or you know that disorientation that you can get from these times in our lives where you are not doing what you normally do. And I think what what what I left thinking about is how we frame those kinds of times, how I frame this time in my own life. I mean, is it is it a time that is that like time when i when I wasn't myself, when I'm, you know, and then I'll get back to myself and then, but but this is all part of it. So it's like, I think there's something about ah acknowledging and
01:15:00
Speaker
Embracing the moments in your life when our bodies and our minds and our souls Stop us in our busy tracks and say you're gonna be in bed for a little while and I it felt like that It was very alive on the canvases that she had there was one that she had that wasn't in a bed but it was like a body in a urban landscape, and I don't remember the name of it, but there was like ah there is a building, obvious buildings in the background and then they are outside kind of naked and lying down. and um And there was something about that, like that that vulnerability
01:15:50
Speaker
in a public space, and there was something about the way she drew the windows on the building. They were so innocent. they were the The way she drew the shape of the rectangle for the windows was as like very childlike, like you would see in a child's drawing.
01:16:12
Speaker
And it was just this combination of these elements that she manages to manifest along with you know just incredible you know layering of the of the painting itself.
01:16:30
Speaker
But I mean, I was just blown away. Like I just it really was so moving. This is the first one that I've gone to see twice. And I mean, truth be told, it was not that far from a place where I've been going for my appointments. But um but but yeah, it just it really felt like, you know, having another immersion was necessary to absorb a lot of what she was and what she was putting across.
01:16:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's so interesting because and when I got in and I saw the exhibition, I thought, I wonder how Emily is going to feel because it definitely is an exhibition that frames the ill body in a way that embraces its abject side. And the video is there to say, this is the body and this is the state it's in. There's a femininity to illness as well. So as you know, I've also been at well for very different reasons, but also with, you know, blood related issues with anemia. And you ask yourself those questions. You say, what about sex? What about pleasure? What about where is pleasure now? And I had the same experience as you were because I was so deeply anemic.
01:17:52
Speaker
um that I had to have a blood transfusion. But one of the things that now that I'm better, much, much, much, much better that I miss are the way i is the way I slept. The sleep is so deep. It's so populated with dreams and images. As someone who's a fantastic, I don't visualize when I'm awake. Dreams are quite fantastic for me, but I'm not a good dreamer. But when I was in that state, the dreams were so incredible. And like you say,
01:18:27
Speaker
Is this experience not to be valued? Your question is incredible because are you still yourself? And the reason why you're asking that question is that because society keeps telling you a lot of things about your body, about your gender, about your role in society, about your work, about your value, about your appearance, and all of that comes into very clear becomes a very clear picture when you're unwell.
01:18:57
Speaker
you know, when you're ill, what about the sculpture? We didn't talk about it. Yeah, the sculpture is incredible. I liked your description of it, of that replicating a wooden sculpture that has been around for eons and has just aged, aged, aged, aged, and parts of it have fallen off. And I think that describes it so well. But yeah, I mean, talk about... No, but the big sculpture in the big room. No, I know. But that too, it kind of has that feeling. Yes, it's the same. Exactly.
01:19:31
Speaker
Yes. but um Yeah, vulnerable. that is ah That is a very vulnerable position. you know Basically, it's a woman on her knees, but you only get the lower half. It's enormous. You can't not look at it. you know I mean, it's huge. It's enormous. Yeah. I didn't even know what I was looking at at first.
01:19:53
Speaker
You know, when I was like, I don't, you know, and then finally you get to an angle where you're like, Oh, oh, okay. Oh, sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so anyway that's what it is. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, I mean, I loved it.
01:20:08
Speaker
Yeah, it was great. I feel like if that were done on a different size, if it were smaller, if it were, you know, it would feel, I don't know, there was something really impactful about the size of it and the enormity of it for sure.
01:20:24
Speaker
It's so gigantic. i kind of I was talking to the yoga, who also went to see the exhibition, and I was like, okay, so you're the artist. like How does one make a sculpture like that? It's bronze. How does one go about making it? Because it's like the paintings. You imagine it to be molded with the hands, but then it's huge. And even if there's a trick to it, I'm pretty sure that if Trace Yemen was here, she'd say, well, do you know what?
01:20:52
Speaker
I did it with my hands. Then I enlarged it, 3D printed some costs of whatever. It doesn't matter because it still is this decision of making, if you like you call you can go under it. It makes me think of mother, you know, the the spiders by Louise Bourgeois. You can go under it. um you you can you can It crush you if it fell on you, like you would immediately die. It's so big.
01:21:22
Speaker
And yet it seems to have been molded by a distracted child. And it's the ravaged body, but at the same time, it's the moving body, the body kind of like flowing and being in itself and being all flesh. There's something, a sort of a tribute to a simple relationship with the body as well, right? A literal, this is what it is.
01:21:49
Speaker
And that's where suddenly the pleasure and the happiness comes again. And i I kind of went in there and seeing, yeah, I mean, she did a lot for us. like She did a lot for us. She's doing a lot for us. And I felt like a sister, you know, like the sisterhood is working.
01:22:08
Speaker
And we have space now to talk about these things. And we're doing a podcast where we reference these things, which was not possible a few years back. And she's one of those little sisters who was weaving in the background and made it possible. So thank you. Thank you, Tracey. Thank you so much.
01:22:27
Speaker
We're here because of you. And thanks to you and many other sisters as well. She's not alone in this. She contributed. and I feel so lucky that I didn't know much before and now there is this wealth of, it's you know it's like finding the gold pot at the end of the rainbow of work of hers to be able to dive into and explore. I mean, there's so much. I agree wholeheartedly that I feel appreciative of the work that she has done because of what it has done for me and the connection that I have had to it. But what I love about her, and maybe this is true for way more artists, you know, maybe it's true for all artists, I don't know, but with her, I really get the sense that
01:23:17
Speaker
she doesn't care but She doesn't need me to do to feel any way. And you know I get the strong presence from her that she is doing it for herself first and foremost because she has to. She just has to get in there and do it. And there's a freedom in that.
01:23:35
Speaker
that I feel, you know, there's there's i she is not pandering to one single person, you know? And there's ah there's a freedom in being in a relationship with art that isn't asking anything of me, but it's just saying, this is it, you know? This is what I got. Do with it as you as
Emin's Influence and Future Topics
01:23:57
Speaker
you may.
01:23:57
Speaker
I was thinking, this there's always amongst women artists, um this recurring, especially artists of like two generations up from me that I speak to under the seventy s eighty s um who who are kind of disgusted by their peers who are making very confessional gender-based work.
01:24:22
Speaker
They are more conceptual artists and they say, you know, gender is not important for me and I really hate it when women put that out there. And it's very conflicting because I'm, as I've said before, I really do love conceptual art and it's formed me. it's edge it's it's i'm i'm I'm built into that or it's built into me.
01:24:44
Speaker
I'm always a bit grieved, you know, I have a sort of grievance regarding that where I i loved what you said because she might not be for everyone or she might not be for every stage in your life. Sometimes you might not want to bask in that.
01:25:02
Speaker
But I think there is a beauty and understanding. That's what we try to do with the podcast. And it goes back to our conversation in the first episode, where there's a space for everyone. And some people are very self-respecting of their privacy and their intimacy, and they don't want to put it out there. That's not what they have to give to the world. um And the art world sometimes, or the contemporary art spaces, are a sort of a platform where everyone is together.
01:25:30
Speaker
but it's not a platform. it's a It's a very big building with lots of little rooms and secret areas. And that's how I see the art world. And I don't, for a long time, I was very against, you know, self narrative and and exposure. and And I remember coming into the art world as a kid almost, and having the YBA and behind me in the 90s,
01:25:57
Speaker
hearing about bed and hearing about everybody I slept with and being really confused by it, because that's not what I was being told by philosophy, art criticism, aesthetics. You know, that was something not to do. That was something that we had overcome by conceptualism, minimalism. We were not there anymore. That was a no go.
01:26:19
Speaker
And I remember not knowing what to think of it, but at the same time, a part of me was speaking to it, you know? Sometimes there's some grief in me ah when I hear some women talk about other women artists like, oh, oh, why is she doing that? You know, again, I don't know. I think we need to give space to that. Maybe it's not our jam. Maybe it's not for every day, but I mean, she's out there and she's, you know,
01:26:47
Speaker
painting her own truth. I don't think many people get to say that, you know? Great. So the show is at the White Cube Burmansey until the 10th of November in London. So if you have time, do go check it out. And Joanna, do you want to say a little bit about who we have teed up for next time?
01:27:10
Speaker
Yes, so we're going back to the curve at the Barbican. If you remember, it's a very, very special exhibition space that is, you guessed it, curved. So that's what we will be talking about, but very specifically of Pamela Fazimo Sundstrom's project.
01:27:29
Speaker
called It Will End in Tears. I mean, we are in it for very, very path is driven titles this season. So that's what that's our next episode. And if you want to prepare for the third one, we will be talking about Mike Kelly at Tate Modern. So we're in for very, very interesting episodes for sure. And also we have something new.
01:27:59
Speaker
that yeah I'm putting out there um so very tentatively because we are of a certain age and we are not Very good with this kind of thing, but we are trying. So we are trying not to have any ads in the in the podcast. We're trying to kind of remain, one, accessible. So no subscriptions, no bonus episodes. And second, just a conversation that you might overhear in a cafe.
01:28:34
Speaker
um Well, spoiler, we do edit quite a bit. you know This is scripted and edited, but also very improvised. It's prepared improvisation. but So that's the two things that are really important to us. So if you want to support this effort, this endeavor,
01:28:51
Speaker
um we are We are in it for the long run, so we will be doing this for a long time. um And therefore, because of that, we would urge you to go to Patreon and become a member. So you can just pay for a membership. It's the price of a latte. So maybe not a latte on Tuesdays and a podcast on Fridays for you. You can go to Patreon. We have a page there. Exhibition is this podcast.
01:29:17
Speaker
you can become a member and in that way for very little money a month you can support us and we can keep on doing this much more comfortably than we do now and maybe we can produce more episodes if there's a bunch of you who support us that would be really really great yeah so that's it very tentatively putting it out there and hopefully you will follow through the link is in the ex the the show notes Um, it's also on our Instagram. So, you know, we can access it really easily. Um, and if you have trouble, there's always our email, you know, contact us, give us ideas, give us feedback, leave us reviews also, you know, five stars or more. And a nice comment is very welcome. Yeah, totally. All of that. Yeah. Brilliant. All right. Well, thank you so much Joanna. This is brilliant. I really.
01:30:09
Speaker
Talk about starting season two's first exhibition with a real, with a real barnstormer. This is great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Emily. Your insights are always, always so welcome and so enriching for me personally, and I'm sure for our listeners. So thank you so much. And um see you next time. All right. next time See you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone. Bye bye.