Tracey Emin: Love it or hate it

// May 20th, 2011 // View Comments // Uncategorized, b-inspired, b-scene, featured

Tracey Emin I’ve got it all (2000) copyright the artist The Saatchi Gallery, London

The controversial work by Tracey Emin, a celebrated contemporary artist and a member of the Young British Artist group, is either loved or hated by critics.  Opening this week at London’s Hayward Gallery is the much anticipated Love Is What You Want, a major retrospective of the Emin’s work covering every aspect of her career.

This is no easy task.  For the past two decades Emin has made a name for herself as an artist that has worked in every form of media.  Fabric, found objects, installations, painting and photography – you name it, she’s turned it into ground-breaking art.  However, one thing that her wide-ranging work has in common is it’s autobiographical.

The exhibition occupies two floors of the gallery and two outdoor sculpture terraces, including seldom-seem works from her early career, large-scale installations pieces and an outdoor sculpture collection created specifically for this exhibition.  This exhibition encompasses the full range of her work: paintings, drawings, photographs, textile pieces, video installation and sculpture.  This amounts to an overwhelming collection, which the Hayward Gallery arranges in a unique way.  The gallery plays with the rich variety of her pieces by arranging them by theme, medium or juxtaposed to create new interpretations from the viewer.

Emin gained international recognition for her controversial installation piece, My Bed (1998).  Since then, she has been pushing the boundaries with all of her work by exploring the complexity of self-presentation through various forms of media.  Beginning in the early 1990s at a self-run artist shop in East London, Emin has been making viewers uncomfortable with her brutally honest pieces and exposing intimate details about her personal life.

The candidness and sexually provocative nature of her work resonates with the ‘personal is political’ mantra of contemporary feminist art.  By re-appropriating traditional women’s handcraft – such as needlework and textiles –  with a radical and provocative outcome, she redefines the purpose of these media.

Whatever your taste in art, this exhibition promises to be a thought-provoking experience.

London’s Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre (May 18 to August 29).

'We Love 77' Launch Party: Sardine & Tobleroni

// March 2nd, 2010 // View Comments // b-scene

Sardine & Tobleroni present 77 paintings of 77 different bands that epitomise PUNK in their Conceptual Art Brut style. Launch night was a charming reunion. Lot’s of fun; I’ve now got the chance to win Sardine’s 77 leather jacket with a £2 raffle ticket. Or was it £3, beers were only £1.50.

The casual affair had its ceremonies. Paintings were at a special price of £1977 till 10.30pm, no less than Don Letts on the decks, custom punk cocktails and an appropriately ragged speech by the artists. Nothing vicious happened like their last exhibition in Manchester where a fight broke out. It could be the mellowing effect of having two female curators or nostalgia has tipped the edge over la revolution.

The paintings are like record sleeves resonating a past activist romance. The cultural phenomena that spawned this work is a distant memory but from the crowded turnout there are still those carrying the punk torch.

There is a definite revolution in the presentation of their work. The ‘Launch Party’ far removed from the pretentious private view syndrome (PPVS) of East London. As the night moved into the latter half, spirits were high and the music playing to their kin, the paintings,  gave rise to an enjoyable atmosphere. PPVS couldn’t have suited the work and their solution created a noteworthy vision that is a refreshing undertaking for any gallery.

Photographs by Eduardo Barreiro.

Corrupted

// January 27th, 2010 // View Comments // b-scene

Walk into Willy Wonka’s factory and tickle your desires with an edible paradise. Fruits and flowers conjure temptations. Your eyes boggle and glands salivate uncontrollably. But hang on…there’s a clear box imprisoning these delights!

Welcome to the work of Rebecca Stevenson. A sculptor oozing with talent. You would normally expect such excitable ectoplasm in the edible creations of Ferran Adrià. Well for more than ten years Stevenson has been creating some of the most vivacious sculptures on the market. Marveling at her forbidden fruit is just the beginning of the journey. If you can peel your lust from these glistening joys a deeper narrative unfolds.

The first work on display, Folie en hiver features a bust embracing a lambs head. Your eye initially sees the glossy candy separate to the classical form. The bust in fact vanishes among this wild vibrancy. Fooled by sweet shop trickery you are lured in close. Only then, slapped with some sickly contortion. Realising the confectionery is bleeding from this serene and quiet figure. Spewing like fungus on a dead tree and dangling like flayed skin. These teasers suddenly take on a darker side…

There’s one other piece exhibited thats lurks around the corner in the Nettie Horn gallery. No less delightful and gross, Luxe Vert harmonises supreme beauty with its supremely ugly flaws. This time the Disney disease has consumed the carcass of a swan. Sweet plums and raspberries have swept through its core like burrowing worms leaving a gaping shell. This beauty contest between classical and the craze has stunningly ravaged a new elegance. While the details of her feathers are in tact and her neck and head stands proud, a flourishing fantasy world has formed throughout the body.

In these sculptures, Stevenson let’s natural beauty and a magpie’s fetish have a fling. She achieves a wondrous balance between beauties and horrors. Her work leads me to think how our modern aesthetic is more a series of hybrids than a set of fixed traditional values. That these long established pillars of perfection have been released from their limitations. I urge you to make a trip to Vyner Street and experience this sticky situation for yourself.

Showing until 21st Feb at the Nettie Horn Gallery.
Have a look at her website for more fantastical examples.