Dean, this is for you

Art Exhibition: Love Is What You Want, Tracey Emin

I saw this exhibition at the most perfect time. My brain is like a black space filled with millions of colourful puzzle pieces; some fit and some don't, and that's just me.

I find art exhibitions quite interesting, more so from how they make me feel. Most of the time I can't wait to see them, but when I am there I feel desperate to get outside again. They can be quite...stuffy. Whether thats the people, or just the fact that most of the time you have to be quiet and there can be too many people around you tend to feel a bit squashed, theres a strange sense I feel when there-perhaps it was this exhibition itself.

Tracey Emin has has her heart ripped out and put back in again. It fits 97% right, but there's a slight gap and slight un-fix where her soul has been placed back in an awkward angle. I really feel for her. Perhaps there should be limits in the amount of people that can attend such exhibitions; I try to imagine myself alone, completely alone with no body around me so I can capture and inhale all that I see.

One of my faveourite moments was when I was able to enter the neon room by myself. It was more a long black corridoor lit by fantastic words of art. Some echoed in my mind, all too familiar as some I had once kept telling myself:

Of course no picture truly represents the great colour blaring in your face in person. Clearly, this woman has really suffered, she's been depressed. A blank gritty being in which is all too familiar.

Myself, a past in documentary film making-one of her documentaries I saw I really did not enjoy. 'Sometimes the dress is worth more money than the money'. Whether it is because I didn't understand it completely or, well. Who knows. In room 3 'trauma' recorded her collection of pieces representing her experience of abortion. Words echo with me when watching the film... I can't remember the name or find it yet (I hope to find it scrawling through the exhibition book I bought-will add it in!!), the words Tracey speaks describing how you feel like a failure, that ultimate guilt and failure of what you have become, in getting pregnant unexpectedly, saying 'it wasn't choosing to have an abortion it was choosing to not have a child', were very interesting. I'm glad she had her boyfriend there, though the shock that it didn't work in the first place, Tracey had to be rushed into hospital were at this point as she made her way out of the taxi, something slipped and she realised between her thighs and her hands was the dead fetus a failed abortion had left her with. I'm sure we all know what it feels like when our body gives up on us and medical procedures aren't always what they promised...

I can't remember whether I dreamt this, or if it was something I saw recently. Ok it was, it was on a modelling programme stuck on E4 for sometime recently. The phrase 'I just wanna give her a hug'. Well it's a phrase commonly said (though not for a while now) between someone I know-we both share the understanding of this desire. Clearly, when there is so much animosity in one person you know there is something else going on inside. We all have butchered attempts at trying to hide it; with anger, arrogance, sarcasm, being loud, being quiet, binge eating, drinking, substances e.t.c. though some have the ability to see past this and recognise all this person is doing is crying for help. They are trying to fix themselves in some way-there is always a difference in helping yourself in a healthy way, or a negative way.

I want to hug Tracey Emin. I love her work. Of course, it is all an expression of her-it has clearly been her release. I think when one experiences all that pain and all the puzzles we require in order to stick back our brains again we have to find healthy ways to do so, otherwise we risk going into greater danger again. We need to filter the good from our experiences:

'I think all the experiences add to make the person but I could have done well without the traumas in my life. What I've done is used my experiences to my advantage, turning the negative around to the positive. That's one of the greatest things that trauma can teach.'

We can all learn from this, its the beauty of Tracey Emin. What I also find remarkable about her is in her Blankets she quotes (often through her other pieces as well):

'So beautiful'

 Hopefully you are able to see in the top left blanket, Tracey writes. Amongst all the ugly she speaks about she quotes 'so beautiful' in how I feel she is almost laughing knowingly that there is beauty within the bleak ugly that we feel. We laugh, we smile with our experiences and learn.

There was a moment when I discovered Tracey's abortion pieces on the wall; a iud copper coil, pregnancy tests, flowers in the name of blood aborted fetus. I don't know if it's from medical self experiences or if someone who was diving into the unknown at that experience; at first I was unsure about the set up and the room, as I said at the start I felt desperate to get out of the exhibition and whizz through (knowing in my mind I had paid to see her, it also kept me from walking out), the more I delved the more I didn't want to stay. In my 90 minutes of being there, I felt her and felt myself in a way I haven't for a long time. I don't believe its the finding someone else who has experience all of this pain, I didn't feel like finally someone else who has felt similar things. I believe most of all I felt, it was nice for someone to let it out. She's let it all out, again something of which we can all learn from.

There was also a girl who I heard mutter 'why on earth did she get herself pregnant'. I'm not sure if this girl believe in abortion or not (abortion I am totally for), perhaps she didn't understand Tracey's motives behind it. The layout for me was perfect in the 'Trauma' section because for someone like me who doesn't know her history, you piece together her emotions in a pattern, unknown to how it all happened. We also read a marvellous piece written by Tracey's madness in working out whether she was pregnant or not (this time she wasn't) though we sense she has a strange relationship with fertility. It's only then when we move onto a dark room (with the film name I am unable to remember) that she goes on to explain her fertility is 90% odd positive to not get pregnant and that the Doctors totally cocked up her chances in being put through for an abortion.

We all will roll our eyes at the NHS. All money aside, health shouldn't be messed with especially just because our treatment is free.

Tracey's self portraits of masturbation, words gashing out heartbreak and signs of penis hope. It is a bleak cold and hot pursuit of love unattainable to ones self. I've felt it myself, in a way you want to abuse yourself because you feel so ugly, so rejected and thrown, smashed to pieces in a way you clamour onto methods and ways to stretch your mind from thinking about them. And these to be released. To be performed. Discussed, let go of, and freed.

I loved Tracey Emin's documentary on being free, with dancing. Out of all the shit she has become free for her and no-one else.

I'm sure I will have more words to add to this piece.

Whats natural about being 'natural' these days?

An article from the guardian discusses 'the natural look', to what extent this idea has evolved at present for women.

Naked Shots

This is awesome!

Perspective Shots

Here are a few photographs taken from journalists in risky war situations. I think they put into perspective the value of life when we are willing put ourself in danger too.

Tracey Emin, Review Two

The Cultural Expose write a piece about the artist.

Tracey Emin. Guardian Review

'Emin has had to develop in public. One of the difficulties is that much of what she does is a kind of performance, one she has had to work out as she goes along. This is true for all of us in our multifarious ways. Life is performative – but Emin has turned it into her art...

One outdoor sculpture court appears to be just a windswept stretch of concrete, until you discover the painted bronze infant's shoe, the teddy bear and the sock scattered on the ground. A missing child, in other words. There's an indelible sense of abandonment, a silent sense of loss.'

Naked Ballet Dancing

Naked ballet dancing. Fantastic. For those that walk out or hide, well. Silly. Why would one fear the naked form, it's not like ballet dancers will have the most grosteque appearance.

Clearly, it is self contained issues. Is it vulnerability in looking at anothers naked human form?

'What's the justification for such aggressive nudity? St-Pierre, who is fascinated by taboos and the breaking of them, is trying to create a raw physical intimacy between dancer and audience, and he wants to make us laugh, too. Michael Watts, one of his dancers, says most people find the naked scenes funny. But, he adds, "we're being very childlike – we're behaving like six-year-old boys, and we get a lot of taps on the bottom from old ladies". They do occasionally encounter angry resistance, though. "One woman just hid her face completely," recalls Watts. "She put her jacket over her face. Another man got up and tried to run away. And a few dancers have got hit or pushed."'

Perhaps we forget that whilst growing up we have all in a sense, been conditioned to believe when and where is appropriate to take off our clothes and be naked. In a sense, when people say it is a form of expression; well on the one hand you could say it is the least form of expression as after all we were naturally born this way to begin with. In 'expressing' what we naturally posses, slightly baffles me. It's taken conventions of history to produce such a turn around effect. Sure, we enhance our hair as we naturally have that on display anyways; nudity holds its reputation as 'expressionism' as it goes against our conditioning to cover up. Less covering up becomes individual itself because the norm is to wear clothes, and express with material instead.

Most know if we went to the shops in our pyjamas, just thinking about the reaction we may receive would certainly effect our choices in 'expressing' in that way. If one doesn't become accepted by others this seems to largely affect the individuals choice. We grow up being taught how to behave, when and how we should eat, most of our decisions or instincts become confirmed by our parents before being allowed to do anything. I do wonder whether it is the same in relation to nudity. Unmissably, our parents-without fault as this would be the norm for them too, have encourage one to dress nicely and appropriately for each occasion. No wonder we hold the fear that, if walking to the shops in our pyjamas is a dialema, to take a further step into a nudist world seems almost possible for some.

I find myself enlightened by the prospect that dancers are encouraged to perform nude. With so many body issues in the media, and discussion that such ideas should be discussed as part as the national cirriculum; I do hope to see much more development into enhancing what we have already. I enjoy seeing the turn around and regurgitation of fashion, classic values and even now we return to expressing our raw elements. It somewhat suggests that we had most of the answers already towards great ways to 'be'. I am glad they are starting to be recognised once again.

Tracey Emin

This is on my things to do within the next couple of months!!

Love Is What You Want

Tracey Emin:

People Like You Need To Fuck People Like Me

Tracey Emin:

Tracey Emin

I REALLY want to go to this, there is something about her work which I really like. Whether it's the lights, the meaning behind them. I love it. She is beautiful. I think I find her work quite, exposing, raw and blunt. Something of which I find I can relate to at the moment.