Tracey Emin, I followed you to the end, opening night at White Cube Bermondsey, 18th September 2024 – The morning after the night before, what to make of all that? I went early, in the line before it opened, get in and get out before things got too busy, too messy, went out for my late night run somewhere around midnight, there was a number of people staggering back from what was, as expected, quite an event. Now I make no secret of the fact that i admire Tracey’s art, I’ve always like it, I love the way it has evolved, I really love where it is now, I really like where she’s at now, that she’s just still here after all she’s been though, I like the person she is now. Some might not like that, so be it, it is what it is and I tell you this at the start so you know where I stand, I’m a fan, I woke up yesterday morning excited about going to this show.. 

There’s some really intimate paintings here, some really honest, personal heartfelt sometimes (brutally) disturbing work, if she hadn’t placed it up here on very big canvases for all to see and read (by that I mean the marks, the brush movements, the pieces painted over and approached again, I don’t mean the words so much, although they are then on a canvas or two to be read as well), there it all is for all to see on the wall. You might say very very private work, certainly very personal, you might see it as the artist reaching out – Tracey Emin’s life is up here and some of it is painful to see so it is just a little strange when you stop and watch the crowds streaming in to view all this (or maybe just to be seen), and after the relatively quiet first half hour I was hoping for place fills up fast, it soon becomes a one in one out and wait in the line outside until there’s space to go in. 

But who are these people pointing phones? The scenesters, the celebrities, that feeling that we’re at some kind of almost a rock concert or at least a pop concert or something beyond your usual art opening. And people are flooding in, crowds of them streaming down the road from London Bridge as I later walk back against the tide flooding down Bermondsey Road (and most flooding down without a glance towards that glorious Norman Ackroyd exhibition happening on the same street, I’d already spent some time in there in the late afternoon, can’t resist diving in for one more look before I head back over the river). I mean, I like that there’s this buzz, it feels exciting, it is exciting that art can do this, that an artist can do this, that there’s big crowds outside the White Cube and there’s that bloke from that famous band over there, and Alan McGee is walking up and asking me questions, that conversations are just striking up about it all. There’s all kinds of people here, artists, poseurs, artist-poseurs, business men in their suits (minus their ties, rebellious business men!), the beautiful people are here, the not so beautiful people, there’s street artists, piss artists, Phillip from the Blitz all dressed in yellow clashing with the others who have also dressed in yellow – some people have really dressed for the occasion (and why not?), there’s art students, there’s pushchair pushers, couriers still with their bags, someone in a football shirt, there’s old, there’s young, goths, someone in a Northern Soul t-shirt, someone in a Led Zeppelin shirt, there’s models, women in long flowing dresses, people with paint on their clothes, tattoos on their faces and there’s a line of people pointing their phones at the very big canvas that, in dramatically scrawled rather urgent yet rather quiet slightly pale red paint says “I don’t want to have sex because my body feels dead” and you stand behind them feeling just a little bit strangely uncomfortable, not because of the painting and the fact that she’s put it right there not to be missed (next to the other one), more because people are just taking photos and then just walking away, they’re not looking at it, they’re not really seeing it, they’re just recording it on their phones and then turning to the next one and yes, there I am taking photos (of them taking photos), my excuse is, I guess, that I’m doing it for this piece. I mean that really is something to put up there, when you stop, and think, hang on, when you look at it and don’t just walk up to it and take a snap on your phone and then turn away without letting it talk to you – and no I’m not being critical of the people, I’m just observing, part of the reason I came to the opening was to watch, to see, I will go back in a few days when the space will be relaxed and there will be only handfuls of people and we can all be alone with the pieces.  I watched one man in a suit (no tie, that was rebelliously off and in his bag), I watched him walk up to several pieces, aim his phone at them, take the shot, his best shot, then turn, not once did he look at the painting without it being through his viewfinder, through a digital window, not once did he appear to actually invite the conversations the painting or the artist wanted to have, not once did he elect to see the texture, the dimension, that nothing was flat, that paintings are never flat, it is all there on the surface, on the canvas. 

And there are conversations here, or things being said here, or told, things being told, shared, it isn’t loud, it isn’t dramatic (although it obviously is), it is almost hushed, intimate, I can’t say beautiful but those lines and the way she moves paint, the sense of the loaded brush and the energy spent, the sheer effort, the commitment of it all, the need, the need to paint, to draw with a brush, that is something beautiful. Not raw, these aren’t raw paintings, not raw marks and they’re not wonderful, not glorious, they’re not any of that, they’re something else,  and you worry about her (and you’re glad at least that the cats are there), you care, concerned maybe? Powerful painting, powerful marks, powerful movement, some of it rhythmic, some of it frantic, some of it inwardly destructive, cathartic? But they are beautiful (even though they’re not), something about the way she can say all this, that she can come through it, that it does come through, that these aren’t just more Tracey Emin paintings, that this all really matters, that this is her at her very best as an artist, and that, even though she’s paid a (high) price, that she has all this, that art is all this… (sw)

I followed you to the end will run from 19th September until 10th November 2024 at White Cube Bermondsey (144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3TQ). More details

Previous Tracey Emin coverage via Organ

As always click on an image to enlarge and see the whole thing or to run the slide show, we start at the start, a quarter of an hour before the 5pm opening….