The one redeeming feature about piano lessons is that it gives me one captive hour (assuming I can keep the waiting siblings from murdering one another) to read, write blog entries, assess homework and work on whatever art work I am making (the small portable stuff of course). In the piano teachers waiting room, I am writing this as there is no time whatsoever aside of this due to the ridiculous amount of commitments all the children have in the last term of school.
Saturday I escaped with my friend Tracy from Margate to go and see the other Tracey from Margate,showing at the Hayward Gallery. The show has absolutely tons of work in it, too much to take in really. At some point she annoyed me immensely (the Tracey Emin that is, not my one), at others I think the work was let down by its positioning in the space, particularly the ground floor, but ultimately it was impossible not to be immensely moved and impressed at the journey her practice has taken. I have never been sold on the ‘neons’ but when dwarfed and disorientated in a huge, towering black room with a wall emblazoned floor-to-ceiling with Emins brutally honest words bearing down on you, the effect was powerful and unsettling in its honesty and rawness.
Ultimately the film of Tracy’s escape from Margate following the humiliation of the dance contest stands the test of time and is for me the most poignant moment of the show. Having spent 10 years in the area (my own Tracy grew up there) and sharing some of that time with Tracy Emins older brother, Alan, a friend at the time, every image brought us back there.
It was a day of big shows and big names as Tracy wanted to see the Saatchi gallery, it’s vast sterile rooms filled with massive, exuberant ( and predominantly male) statements, in ‘The Shape of things to come’. At the end of the day though having had (and lost) babies myself, Emins constant wrestling with the subject stirred up all sorts of emotions and I spent a restless sleep dreaming that I was holding someone else’s baby on my shoulder, crying to be fed and swinging its head round wildly looking for the source of food. Strangely enough it wasn’t the many ghoulish and demonic figures in Saatchi’s monstrous sized sculptures but the intimate memories of motherhood that filled my head with nightmares.
Snatched moments spent cleaning up the studio for work in the summertime and a meeting with the curator to see what we can salvage from the plans for the Salisbury show make up the rest of the week but with family descending, sports day, three concerts and to end of term events to attend in school I’ve given up all chance of getting work done in the following week.
