by Sarah Cope

“What a lot of glorified self-pity!” complained one American male visitor as he surveyed the five rooms dedicated to the art of Tracey Emin, in this her first London retrospective. Listening to comments made by fellow visitors is always amusing, and Emin’s work seems to provoke strong reactions in both directions.

On first entering the gallery, visitors are confronted by Emin’s applique blankets. Reminiscent of homemade protest banners, Emin takes the ‘womanly’ craft of quilting and turns it on its head. These are angry pieces (‘You cruel heartless bitch. Rot in hell.’), although it isn’t clear who the anger is aimed at. Is it anger towards herself, Emin of course being her favourite subject? Or are these remembered insults, haunting and revisiting Emin at vulnerable moments?

The blankets also reveal much about Emin’s chaotic lifestyle, with alcohol playing a big part in perhaps both the events depicted on them and in their creation. She recounts vomiting down the back of a taxi driver’s neck, or pulling condom after condom out of her vagina in the bath, having little idea how they got there. Not the sort of events depicted on blankets made by local pensioners’ groups, I would imagine.

Several of Emin’s films are being played on a loop in various spaces throughout the exhibition. The excellent ‘Why I Never Became a Dancer’ (1995), features Emin at her most jubilant, witty and confident (and should be watched by anyone who thinks her default setting is miserable). Explaining how she made it to the finals of a dancing competition (she took up dancing at the age of fifteen, having grown tired of sex), she was shouted off the stage by a group of boys who were chanting “Slag! Slag! Slag!” in an effort to put her off. The story is told over grainy Super 8 footage of Margate, the seaside town of her childhood.

Emin recalls “And I left Margate, and I left those boys. Shane, Richard, Eddie, Tony – this one’s for you.” Cue footage of a smiling, ecstatic Emin dancing in 1995 to Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’. Success as revenge is a theme which features heavily in her work, and here it is writ large.

In another longer film, ‘How It Feels’, Emin recounts her experience of having a badly botched abortion in 1990. Standing outside her doctor’s surgery, she recalls how her (religious) doctor tried to persuade her to have the baby, and put off signing the consent form for six weeks. She said how she still felt like going inside and smashing the place up, so full of anger was she that she had been made to beg for his consent.

Emin then travels to the abortion clinic in Euston, recounting the experience of her abortion and the subsequent illness that she suffered due to the botched nature of the procedure. The problem with her grim and traumatic tale is that it is a very atypical account of an abortion, and does rather play into the hands of anti-abortionists. Indeed, in Emin’s 2005 book Strangeland, she asserts regarding an abortion, “I hadn’t got over it. You never do.” This is a misguided attempt to speak for all women, and hardly helpful to the pro-choice cause. But then Emin is not a politician, and does not therefore have to be “on message”; indeed, her understanding of politics (supporting a Tory government that is seeking to curtail women and girls’ reproductive rights) is hardly clear-headed or consistent with her beliefs.

The theme of wanting/not wanting children is strong throughout the exhibition, with baby clothes on display that Emin continued to make after having terminations. She comments ” looking back, this strange thing represented more. It represents the futile, fucked energy of misguided guilt. Something which I do not feel anymore.” An unfinished piece is displayed with a ball of yarn with a crochet needle speared into the side, reminding the viewer of the implements of the backstreet abortionist and the desperate lengths women will go to if denied this basic right.

The exhibition is laid out on two floors of the Hayward Gallery, with the upstairs space being devoted to Emin’s most recent work. This is a lot thinner than the work which made her name, although not without originality or merit. Almost an entire room is dedicated to paintings of herself masturbating. Again, she is literally laying herself bare and confronting a taboo subject, but something about the works (the largely white canvases?) makes them insipid and easy to pass over quickly. Compare this to the earlier blankets, which have so much to say and reward close inspection.

Two outside spaces have been utilised on the upper level, one of which Emin has used in a playful manner. Visitors search for an art work and – hopefully — locate Emin’s tiny bronzes. (I won’t say any more as it will spoil the surprise).

I haven’t even mentioned the neons, the room of white light, the ‘family and friends’ room or the wooden structures. In short, there’s a lot to see here, and I’d recommend setting aside two to three hours, perhaps more, for a proper visit. It was also clear from my visit yesterday, when I saw latecomers without tickets turned away, that booking ahead is a good idea.

‘Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want’ is at the Hayward Gallery until August 29.