Feature: The Big Picture - Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want at Hayward Gallery
Published: 4 August, 2011
THERE are just three weeks left to catch Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want at the Hayward Gallery, the first major exhibition in London of the work of one of the most renowned and celebrated artists in the UK.
The show features key works from all periods of Tracey Emin’s career, including seldom-seen early works and more recent large-scale installations, as well as a new series of outdoor sculptures created especially for the Hayward which reveal a surprising and new direction to her work.
Among other highlights is the largest-ever presentation of her most famous appliquéd blankets, including “Hotel International” (1993) and “Psyco Slut” (1999), which are hung in a spectacular installation in the exhibition’s opening gallery alongside “Knowing My Enemy” (2002), a partially collapsed wooden pier that rears above visitors as they enter the exhibition.
A series of neon art works which illuminate emotions, memories, feelings and ideas – including the new heart-shaped neon “Love is What You Want” (2011), pictured – are dramatically displayed along a darkened wall evoking the atmospheric nightlife of bars, clubs and amusement arcades.
Key films on show include Why I never became a dancer (1995), an account of the end of her childhood in Margate, and How It Feels (1996).
The Hayward exhibition brings together key works in all media, including painting, textiles, works on paper, photography, neon, film and sculpture. Works are arranged either thematically or juxtaposed to invite new readings of them.
• Film screening: On August 20 in the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank, at 6pm, there’s a rare opportunity to see a selection of Tracey Emin’s videos and films not shown in Love is What You Want, including her feature length movie Top Spot (2004). £5.
• Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want, supported by Louis Vuitton, runs until August 29 at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, SE1, £12/ concessions available,10am-6pm daily, Thursday and Friday 8pm, 0844 875 0073, 0844 875 0073