Tracey Emin

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I'm always feeling like some sort of longing that I just want all the flowers to open up

and metaphorically speaking to have some sort of sense of renewal.

We are currently here in Marge, and today has been a very windy day and very, very icy

cold, actually, which feels odd for March.

We are here in Calthread, and I am with someone who in many ways has helped me to renew myself

and my life over the past two decades through our friendship.

She's a mentor to me and to many others in the community of Marge, and obviously a world

class artist who has currently got a solo show at Tape Modern in London as well.

But rather than being in Tate, we felt like we wanted to be here in Marge, which is both

of our homes, but also a gallery called Calthread, where I work.

And it's a show curated by today's guest.

It's called Crossing Into Darkness, and I'm really looking forward to exploring this

show with the one and only Tracey Eman.

I'm laughing.

I'm really laughing.

It's like, you know, keep it close to home, or literally on the street where we both live.

Yeah.

What brought about this exhibition is interesting thinking of Tracey Eman as the curator.

There's a few things, one, if anybody knows me really well, they know that I love curating

anything and everything.

So I love organising, and I like looking at things, I like thinking about things, and

I like to have complicated visual problems.

That's what excites me and stimulates me.

So curating is an obvious thing which I enjoy doing.

And so I said to Carl Friedman a few years ago that I'd like to curate some shows, and

we decided that I curate three shows.

The first show I curated was a solo show by artist Laura Foots, who was an artist working

at my studios in Margate TK Studios, that was last year, and then this year I've curated

crossing into darkness, which was an idea that I had about Margate, the fact that I wanted

to celebrate Margate's, not just like the summer and the sunsets and the tourism and

the beach and the kiss me quick hats.

I wanted to celebrate Margate's sort of darker side, the sort of black clouds, the 20-foot

waves, the howling winds, you'd get off the train and it's freezing cold, and that the

wind is howling and I grew up here, and we used to have this sort of gale-force wind

warnings before we went to school, knowing how windy it was going to be, whether we should

get the cabaret covered up to stop the warriors from swelling up and things, and I thought

this is the side of Margate I want people to know and see, so decided to do this show

in the winter called crossing into darkness, and the idea is to bring people to Margate

in the winter.

So that was my original feeling.

It really has worked as well, because on the opening weekend I think on one day we

had 2,000 people, and every day we've been getting like 200, 250, 300 like crazy visiting

figures for winter.

Yeah, no, but also the other weekend you had like about 1,000 people over the weekend,

and also the gallery's only open from 12 to 5 or something, so that is a phenomenal amount

of people for a provincial gallery, you know, not in a city, you have to get on a train

to come here.

Most of people in Margate who were interested in art saw it weeks ago and still the figures

are great, but also we've got really big artists in this show, we've got local artists,

we've got young artists, we've got dead artists, and we've got massive, super, super international

artists.

That's a really unusual thing, especially in a provincial town like Margate.

It's pretty incredible that you can go to your local art gallery and you can see in

Edvard Munch and you can see Mark Mander, so you can see Louise Bourgeois all together

in the same room.

Yeah, and I think it's got a real ambitious scale as well, like it's got really significant

works, and we had one of these international leading artists you're talking about actually

come to the opening, which was Anthony Gormley, and I thought it'd be interesting to start

the discussion of all the artists in the show with him, because I know this is a work

called Home of the Heart, number two, and it's from 1992, and it's a concrete block,

one of his famous kind of concrete sculptures, and it's really interesting thinking about

you, because your career obviously began in the 90s in terms of critical reception and

exhibitions and things like that.

So how did you first see this work from 1992?

Back in the 90s, I went to Anthony's studio in the early 90s when he was making the Angel

of the North, and his studio is in Peckham then, and it seemed like a giant studio to me,

but now I know in where Anthony works, it wasn't really, and in this studio was just a

giant firt from the Angel of the North, the biggest firt you could ever imagine.

And I was saying, for Christ's Anthony, how big is it going to be?

And Anthony said, you know, I didn't really like big giant monumental sculptures, most

of the kids gone off his rocker, his like, you know, what is he doing?

And I've always been friends with Anthony, but for me, the works of Anthony's are like

the ones that are much more obscure, more subtle.

Anthony is always poetic, but Anthony is an artist for the people, the people love his

work, people relate to it, like we've got, I call it man in the sea, but we've got this

man in Margate, and the tide comes in and goes over his head, and then the tide goes out,

and it's really lovely to watch people wait him for this man's head to appear.

This is the work, but people know of Anthony Gormley and celebrate, but for me, I always

talk about these encarsment pieces, for me, they're really brutal, and it's like the body

form is inside, and there's a concrete mass surrounding the body on the outside.

And it's just like a block of concrete with their holes for the head and the arms and

the legs, and there's something so almost sinister about it, as like as if it would be the

most awful way to die, or the most awful way to live, to be incarcerated in a concrete

block, to be that track, to be that heavy, but yeah, there's something sort of poetic and

beautiful, and if I could own any piece of this work, it would be this particular one.

I absolutely love it, and it's minimal, it's unapologetic, and it's really, really

hardcore, and this work is the first work I thought of for the show, before I had the

title of the show, I just knew I wanted one of these works, 100%, absolutely, and it

was the work that started off my idea for the whole show, so it's good, it's the first

work that you see when you enter the gallery.

For me, having seen it for the past few months, it's really changed my understanding of

how a sculpture can kind of present what's inside of our bodies, so the inner world and

the consciousness in a way, and I feel like his work is so much about the human body

as a place, almost as a location, and this work really does seem to bring all those

themes together.

Yeah, I mean, it's incredible, and also how it's made, as well, it's so scary, it's just

too much, it's just too heavy, it's dark, dark, dark, yeah, I absolutely love it.

To me, it's just so fantastic.

Thinking about inner worlds, it takes me to some of the other works in this room, actually,

it's really interesting selection because you have one of your own works, which is a

self-portrait, which is interesting because when I first knew you, there weren't that many

images of your face in your works at that time, because a lot of it was like a pleakay

text works like you can see in the tape, modern exhibition, or drawings and things like

that, but the drawings never really had your face, whereas this is a really confrontational

piece in the way as a viewer, like you're presented with you kind of life-size, a bit larger

than life-size, but it's your face staring out, and it's called like I vanished and reappeared,

and it's a work that you made here in Margate after you've survived cancer, and can you

speak a bit about this? Because I see this as a kind of introspective inner portrait.

Well, it's really funny because it's a giant monoscreen print, and a screen print,

a monoscreen print, you paint on the screen, and then you pull the printing ink through,

but by the time you finish painting on the screen, you have no idea what you've got underneath,

so you never really know how it's going to turn out. So as I was painting myself, I thought

it looked like me, and then how it came out, it strangely didn't look like me at all,

but yet, of course, it was still me, and that's how it is with ourselves. The other day I did a

talk, did a talk on stage to about 800 people, and before I went on stage, I back combed my hair a

bit, and I put quite a lot of eye makeup on, and I felt really good, much better than I normally

feel, and I liked what I was wearing, I was just wearing a jumper and trousers, and I felt

cool and casual, and I thought, yeah, I look really good, and went out on stage, and I felt

really good, and I gave this really good talk, and I felt really positive. Later on, when I saw

film of myself, I didn't look very good, if that didn't look good at all. I looked quite

disheveled, and kind of a bit tired, and a bit knackered, and quite plump sitting in the chair,

but the point is, I felt good, I felt brilliant. My friend said to me, it's better to feel good,

and look bad than it is to look good and feel bad, and that is a lot like this portrait,

because it is me, it was me, but it doesn't look like me. Not because I can't draw,

it's because of the way that it's all come out, and the way the inks work and everything,

but yet it definitely is me, so maybe it's me when I was angry, when I was 35, maybe it's

a me in 10 years' time, maybe it's me if I had been a mother, maybe it's me when I'm asleep,

dreaming, maybe it's me when I can't see myself, it's still me, so it's a bit like Anthony's work,

Anthony's work is him, but you don't see anybody forming it, or is this, it's me, it's a self-portrait,

but it's not me. No, it's almost like a palimpsest as well or something, it's got all these kind of

layers, it feels like it's had lots of, you know, lines over lines over lines, like sort of

ancient, it could be like an ancient you, do you know what I mean, like a past life you or

something, almost like Egypt or something? Yeah, that's what I'm saying, it was definitely me,

so why doesn't it look like me, but a past life me wouldn't look like me necessarily with it.

No, of course not, yeah, it's interesting, and I was also thinking a lot about how it feels,

so the idea of making a self-portrait, and obviously you have your famous film called How It Feels,

but I know that phrase kind of recurs in your work, but I was really interested in this idea

of making a portrait without a mirror, so it's kind of how you imagine yourself to look. Yeah, so

this is what I was talking about when I put the makeup on and did my hair, I felt really good,

I thought, I feel like really good, but I didn't know what I looked like. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, it's really interesting. So the direct connection in this room with that black and white

monotype is actually the work by Edward Monk, which I have seen before because it's actually in

your private collection. Yeah, it's actually in my house most of the time in my library, so it's a

self-portrait of Edward Monk, and he's got this skeletal arm below him, it's not a particularly

big print, it's a lithograph and it's about like maybe 20 inches by 15 inches, and the brain

is much bigger in the mouth, and I treated myself to this and decided I was going to hang it

above my bed in my bedroom, and I went in and I studied it above the bed and I just thought that

looks weird. Then we put it in another part of the room, asking, oh my god, he's looking at me,

and then we realized it was like one of those paintings for the eyes move. Yeah, for real,

this scared me when it was in my bedroom. This is Monk, my man Monk, but the vibrations and the

sort of like, it was like it was a living entity, this image, and it's a very, very famous Monk

image, and it isn't because I know the image or have seen the image, it was when I put it into my

space, I realised I couldn't live with it. He made this in 1895, and for some reason, because it's

on paper, you sort of are more aware of his hand in a kind of, I don't know, you can really feel

his presence in this, like the paintings, of course, are incredible and they wear his hand, but

there's something so personal about this, I think because it's a lithograph, like maybe the

lightness of his line in it or something, but it does feel really intimate. It is really intimate,

it's totally intimate, and you can see his face and his eyes are so somehow lost and sad and

everything, and I know this skeletal arm as well coming across, it's like as if he's fading away,

and it does go really well with mine, totally. Yeah, and it got me thinking as well about

in the times we're in right now, I felt like crossing into darkness as a title for a show,

and works like this over a monk one, there's such a kind of, I don't know, like a search for

meaning, it's like he's trying to work out what is the meaning of life, like what is my existential,

you know, like that is not the happiest picture I've ever seen in my life, and he is really thinking,

like what is it all about, why are we here, what is happening, what has happened, who am I,

where am I, where am I going, and my life, and my dead, should I be dead, can I feel anything on

my feelings, on my emotions, all of this comes out in this image, which is pretty incredible,

and as for the times that we're living in, you know, I wonder what it was like for him back in 1895.

I know, and it's interesting thinking about, again, like the body and, you know, the skin and bones

that make up us all as humans, and he's just literally put the bone there, you know, like the

skeleton hand, there's something so kind of poetic about it, I think.

Yeah, it's quite funny, because I know this image since I was really young, really young,

19 or something, and if you had asked me before what was there, I would have said sperm.

Really?

Yeah, because I'd mix it up with one of his other images, but it's not, it's bone.

Yeah, bone.

With no flesh, with nothing, just bone.

Yeah.

Where sperm is like life, the beginning of life, everything.

Yeah.

And then this is like death.

Yeah, and it's quite almost brutal as a viewer to like stand in front of this work and actually

face it, and that's how I felt with your work over there, your portrait too.

They're both very like confrontational in a weird way, and it's a powerful thing for an artwork

to do that.

Yeah, I know, and also before I put the monoprint in here,

I know, I didn't even make that connection with them both, which sounds a bit silly,

a curator, but I was thinking munk, and I was thinking work of traces, but oh my God,

you can see how influenced I am by him.

Even now, it's phenomenal.

And I find it interesting and beautiful that I'm still looking at him, still subconsciously

thinking about him.

His works are still reveling around in me, it's a good positive thing.

You can see it in this show.

So that's another aspect about the connections between the works.

Well, move on now, there are three very large self-portraits in here by a local artist

who moved to Margate about a year and a half ago or so.

Two years ago?

Yeah, two years ago.

And she's Dutch, called Jolene Quackenboss.

How did you come across Jolene's work?

We sent out a thing on Instagram and everything saying that we had a first studio go in apply.

And Jolene was one of the people who applied.

We gave her an interview.

She came over from Holland.

We gave her the studio and there's been no turning back.

So she's a Dutch artist, young, Dutch artist.

And she makes all these images of herself in this sort of like costumes and kind of theatrical.

I'm not making it sound what it looks like.

And the painting I'm looking at in a moment is really gory.

And it's like a paintbrush with blood spilling between her legs.

And she's got this pair of blue satin shoes on and white socks.

And she looks like a sort of 18th century artist.

But she's surrounded by her own blood and by self-portraits that are little red drawings,

which she makes millions of these little red pencil drawings.

And in this painting they're all on the floor.

And she's got blood oozing from between her legs.

It could be period blood.

It could be a miscarriage.

It could be, I don't exactly know what it is.

But her gaze looks directly at us very confidently.

And the blood that's coming off of her paintbrush is matter-effect.

She's done her work.

She's done her business.

And she's aligned with us visually and mentally and staring at us.

And it's really, really, fantastically fascinating.

It has like art history, it has costume, it has feminism, it has many things.

Yeah, and also it has life.

There's something so vital about these three paintings.

They feel like she's living breathing right in front of us right now.

And that could obviously be to do with her age,

because she's an emerging artist in many ways, like probably 30-ish.

And I don't know, they feel very present and alive.

Yeah, and there's lots of references to art history in them as well.

It's really funny, some really famous well-known collectors came to Margate

and they saw her work and they said, she's done.

She's obviously so influenced by Van Gogh.

And I had to explain, no, actually she's doing it on purpose here.

She's working with that.

She's working with all these references.

Saying that she's not cynically post-modern.

It's quite raw and very emotional and evocative.

Yeah, and I think quite honest.

She's not sort of shy to share her influences,

but also just to even the outfits that she wears.

She collects vintage clothing

and often makes clothes or adapts clothes that she's found.

So the whole kind of presentation of her as the self,

as the artist, is a really interesting one too.

Yeah, it's very singular.

Yeah, and I think she's starting to make films now and do all kinds of things.

So it's really interesting.

But I'm also fascinated in this one

where there are three kind of green shadows of the central figure.

So it's almost like this shadow cell for a spirit cell

or herself, you know, splitting up into different people.

It's complicated, but you can look at it

rages and think, what is it about?

What's happening?

Is she pregnant or is that like a tiny jolline inside her?

Her shorts sort of half fallen down.

She's holding a breast to represent

for quantity and milk and mother's milk and all that kind of thing.

So there's all these references taken from history.

Yeah, I've never seen a picture like this before in my life.

Yeah, I also just love her use of colour,

all the greens and the purples and the pinks.

There's a lot of colour, but it doesn't look like it.

Oh, I'm talking about colour, we should say.

The walls in here are a dark, dark, dark,

pharample blue.

And it's really kind of cave-like and dark and dream-like.

It's not like going into normal exhibition.

And it's even much darker than my show at the tape.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's related, but it's a darker blue.

And also the lights in here feel very museum-like as well.

And that itself creates a sort of level of intrigue

when you walk into the gallery space.

Especially as Marge, even if it's very, very stormy,

can be really bright light,

because we've got some amazing north lights,

light fantastic.

We're not in the south, we're on the north,

north east side.

So we had this blinding white line.

And then you come into this gallery

and it's all dark and sort of cozy.

So now we're stood in front of a sculpture,

which is of a head,

which looks sort of very life-like,

but also completely handmade.

Like it's a really baguiling, strange sort of uncanny experience

looking at this.

How did you come across this artist?

This is David Altmech.

I love David's work.

I've been friends with David Altmech for a long time.

And I used to often see his work at Artfers,

because I always thought his work was quite dark and quite sinister.

And this work is like a small head, not that small.

Well, it's sort of life-sized actually,

like the shape of the head.

And then the face has just become a big hole.

And inside the hole is just about a thousand crystals.

And so you look at,

and especially if you put a light near it,

you see it's so medicine.

It's so torturously aggressive and scary.

It's like a nightmare.

And then to the side of these beautiful little ears,

which are like perfect.

And then on top of the skull is like this scratch marks

and these sort of indentations and writings.

And they look sort of like some sort of like kufik script

or whatever it's telling us a message or,

if you found this object, you would be afraid.

Yeah, for sure.

When I first saw the text, it says,

be the haze.

I spent ages trying to work out what it said.

And it made me think, actually,

weirdly of like Jimmy Hendrix,

well, not weirdly because the haze,

because he had that in his lyrics and stuff.

Be the haze.

But it's also in multicolored text,

but it's almost like a tattoo or something.

And then I started thinking,

like, who is this person with this tattoo on their forehead?

Like, it's really intense.

It's sinister and dark and it's funny.

It's not like witchcraft.

It's not like the occult.

It's nothing like that.

It looks so primal.

It looks like it could be three, four, five,

thousand years old or something.

It looks like something you could dig up or find in it

in a cave somewhere.

It's mine.

That's cool.

Oh, yeah, it's from your collection.

It's quite collection.

And I find it scary.

I first learned about his work, thanks to you,

because you invited me to Venice in 2007

for your Venice Biennale when you represented Great Britain.

And you were in the neighboring Pavilion to Canada.

And he was representing Canada at the same time.

And I remember walking into his room

and it was so polar opposite to your work,

because it was all sculptural and like an intervention in a way,

like a huge kind of immersive installation.

But there were so many crystals and like tree roots and trees

and nature, you know, brought in with these kind of physical...

When you talk to Dave, he's really, really trippy.

I spent a few hours in his studio in New York once.

And he was doing a busk of me out of clay.

And I sat there for a few hours while he worked

and we chatted while he made this busk of me of my face

and the top of my body and everything.

And it was really long time.

And then finally he said, finish.

Dana!

And he spun it around.

And when I looked, it was like the face of an alien.

Just an alien.

And I'd been sitting there for like three hours.

I was like, oh, all right, okay.

Yeah, okay.

So it kind of had the shape of my head and slightly me,

but it wasn't.

It was definitely like aliens as in flying sources,

as in UFO, as in extraterrestrial.

And he was so serious.

And apparently he said to Zabia Huffkins, he said,

I don't think Chrissy lied to.

And I said, I was shot.

I was shot.

But that's how his mind works.

Yeah.

That's what he really saw.

He's a really, really interesting artist.

Well, he can see things where he can't see.

Obviously.

Maybe that's why you like cats so much.

Because I'm an alien.

Yeah, because cats are connected to other worlds.

Can I say one more thing about this room?

What I really thought about as well right now is

how interesting it is that three of the artists in this room

are actually friends of yours.

And Ed Fobmank, I mean, probably would have been a friend of yours

if you'd both been alive.

And in a way, you have had a kind of friendship

without ever meeting.

But how important is it having artists' friendships

when being an artist yourself is such a solitary pursuit?

So I have a lot of friends that are artists.

So I could have put on a huge show of my friends.

Can I just say that I actually curated the show with the work?

Because I could have done a completely different show

with friends with completely different work.

And there are some people in this show

that I only met through doing this show.

And there's one artist that I've never met.

I just followed their work on Instagram

and liked them and asked them to be in this show.

In fact, there's two artists like that.

So there's some dead artists in this show

who obviously haven't met, not yet.

And to me, having artists' friends,

especially in Margates, really important because I love art.

And also the other thing about this show is not nepotistic.

This is what I'm trying to say.

Because also there's some really big artists in this show

who know I asked, and they lent the work to the show.

So it's pretty incredible.

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Well, let's go through to the next room.

Because in here we actually have numbers.

I should say all artists are big.

I don't mean it like big little.

I mean, it's amazing that these top international artists

would lend a work to this show.

Well, yeah, someone who's really established

is Malena Dumas, for example.

And this is just the most exquisite painting.

It's so sad as well.

It just radiates just a real grief in a way.

And this was made in Norway, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was.

And she made this after what's it called?

The shooter shot all the kids on the island.

And it was her reaction to that event.

And how she felt at the time.

And it's really beautiful.

It's like a black seascape landscape

with a black moon coming down over light

with sad blue.

It's looked quite munk-like

because munk did these moon paintings

with water shadows, water light shadows.

And this is like that, but it's black and it's blue.

And the colors are very sad.

You can see it's the sad painting.

You feel it.

And Malena's known for a lot of her figurative works

and the women and the prostitutes and the street

women and all these kinds of things.

But this is something else.

And it shows when an artist is great,

when they do a painting

and you immediately understand the emotions

and the feelings behind it without actually knowing what it's about.

Yeah, it feels very, again, like a search for meaning,

I guess, at a time when there is no meaning.

And you can't make sense of something, you know,

after such an awful massacre.

It's also interesting thinking just to how, you know,

she's not from Norway, but she was there at the time.

But how we globally can feel, you know,

the weight and sadness of all the kind of oppression

that happens to others.

And I think it's an amazing thing

to create something from that position.

But that goes back to show, crossing into darkness.

I don't think we've ever been in such dark times

in our lifetime, ever, ever, ever.

And everybody wants an explanation

and everybody wants us to speak up

and say how we feel about it.

I could scream how I feel about it.

But is it going to change the situation?

No, it's not.

Me putting on this art exhibition, people coming to see it,

people releasing their emotions by looking at art.

That is at least helping in some way.

I don't know what is going to happen in terms of the future.

But for me, art is really important.

Art to me is a way of us dealing with our souls, definitely.

I was in your show and take modern recently

and there were people crying at the show.

And I remember thinking, like, how amazing

that as a visitor, you can go and experience art

and have a really cathartic, genuinely moving,

purging maybe, experience with art.

And I feel the same in this show.

Like, there's just a depth to it and a seriousness to it.

Each and every work in this show

like has a kind of power that will connect with you.

Do you think that is like a purpose in art

or is that just something that happens?

No, I think art has many rooms.

So you can have art that is about humour.

You could have art that is about

Matisse, beauty, beauty.

Make us feel good by looking at something beautiful.

But you could also have art like Edward Monk

or Louise Bourgeois or Eugensielo,

someone that provokes another emotional response.

And for me, I need heightened emotions.

I need to have feelings.

So when I'm looking at art or painting,

I can say, yes, this is beautiful.

That beauty makes me feel good.

But I actually prefer to be shaken.

I want to be emotionally shaken.

I want to have to recalibrate and rethink

how I feel about certain issues, certain things.

So this is the kind of show that I would like to see.

And that's also why I curated it.

This room particularly has a real sense of material

in terms of the handmade.

And this idea of as an artist,

you create something from nothing.

Before you made the work, it didn't exist.

And I love that idea that you can just sit

at a kitchen table and make a drawing.

And suddenly the idea becomes bigger than the initial impulse.

If you look at a work like this, Mark Mander's bronze here,

that's such an interesting work.

If you think of collage or assemblage

or like, I don't know, brick a large,

whatever the words are, it's so interesting

because I could not believe this was a bronze.

It looks like On Fire Clay.

He really wanted to put this work in the show.

He said, I've got the perfect work for it.

This is the right work for it.

And so beautiful.

So beautiful.

And it goes so well with my painting.

Connects so well with everything in the room.

And I was just talking about beauty,

but this for me is beauty.

But there's something so defiantly about it.

Yeah, and it's got a bandage.

I mean, literally wrapped around its neck

and out of the bandage or what could be rocks

or even like, I don't know,

something like pouring out from within you.

You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty hardcore.

Yeah, and also the expression on the face,

this is sort of like silence

and this sort of peaceful silence with this face.

But it's like one of like no resistance.

Like, it's time to go.

And it looks like it's sort of on a platform

of what could be wood or books or, I don't know,

it's very kind of like almost my all just fall apart.

When you're around the back and you see the neck

and it's a lump of wood, you go, oh my God.

Because you've been looking at this beauty from the front.

So it's quite shocking.

And Mark Mendes work is shocking.

It shocks me.

But Mark is one of my Instagram friends.

Oh, really? Yeah.

Mark is someone's work that I found on Instagram

and then don't behold.

My colorist in Brussels, South African skin,

we're showing him.

And then I'm like, oh, wow, I love this person's work.

I love this person's work.

And he makes giant, giant work as well,

which is really interesting.

And when you see images of it,

you don't know what the scale is.

And then you see someone standing next to it.

And it's a head that's about eight foot high or something.

I also really appreciate the kind of,

the very, it's very sort of handmade.

And this real expression of something,

of like something that, you know,

almost like a mad genius,

or something he's just like with his hands.

But then the idea it's been put into bronze

and then it's painted bronze,

but it sort of looks like clay.

It's just really intense work.

It's brilliant.

And then there's a group of very small paintings,

which are newtes.

And this is an artist called Janis Noinsky.

How did you discover this artist?

On Instagram again.

Really?

Isn't that cool though?

On Instagram, like, yeah.

Introduces us all to new people.

Yeah.

And then when I was going to New York,

I contacted her and said,

well, I'm coming to New York.

I'd love to, if it was possible, visit your studio.

And I did.

I really love these paintings.

She paints very small in a delicate way,

but it's not delicate.

There's a sort of roughness to it and a rawness to it.

But the paintings, these painters I'm looking at,

they're like six centimeters,

five 10 centimeters, tiny.

And they're of a figure, bathing.

And there's something about her work,

which is very old school from a time long gone,

but then again, not.

So she's just works very privately in her own world.

She's extremely focused.

And that's what I like so much about the work,

because when you look at it,

you enter into her world.

I'm also really into her work

because there's some kind of like erotic charge as well.

And I feel like she's,

because when we went to her studio in Brutland,

I remember her having lots of found imagery as well

and was kind of looking at the history of the nude

in ancient paintings or modernist paintings.

So it's quite interesting thinking about those body positions.

It's sort of like a bit daygarish as well.

You know, we've got this sort of figure

that looks like she's sort of bathed in

or looks like she could be in a mirror

or looks like she's washing after she's had sex.

Or it's something definitely going on

before and after and you sense it

from these tiny, tiny paintings.

They're evocative and they're very much alive as well.

Yeah, and they kind of radiate color too.

So you might initially look at them

and see the browns or this kind of graze

or you know, very muted palette,

but actually the closer you look,

they almost like radiate some kind of...

Yeah, I'm looking at red screens, pinks, purples.

Yeah, and as you look at it, they come out.

It's very, very beautiful.

And the face is as well.

It's just like a sort of smudge.

Yeah, somehow there's just all this expression in it.

Some artists are so good as well

at just having like a sensitivity with the paintbrush

and it is their language

and you immediately know it's theirs

and I feel like she has that.

Like it's almost like an identifying thing, isn't it?

Like a DNA.

Yeah, I love them.

Of course I love them, I don't know if it's going to be in the show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

What about the Louise Bourgeois?

Well, I was friends with Louise

and I am connected, still with Louise

through Jerry Gorovoy and Philip Laritz Smith,

whose curator for Louise's work.

And I asked for a work and I was amazed to be given

like this fantastic cloth, soft sculpture, head,

basket and either choice of which ones I wanted.

And strangely, instead of going for the much darker ones,

I went for this pink white one,

which is sort of still incredibly intense and ugly.

And what I love about some of Louise's work

is you don't have to make beautiful work to be a great artist.

You can make some of the most ugliest, intentional,

painful things to look at.

And this is like a figure screaming, having a nightmare.

Eyes pinched and closed, mouth open,

but it's all sewn together with cloth,

like this crazy, crazy sewn stitches.

And it's quite big as well.

The head is much bigger than life size.

Yeah, it's almost bulbous or like bulging from within.

Just with the anguish or ecstasy or agony,

you can't quite work out what the emotion totally is,

but it's definitely, it feels sort of dark

or at least a cry for help or a cry for something.

And she made it in 1998, which is actually quite early

for this kind of series of work, I think.

Yeah, I mean, I've seen some really tortured ones.

You know, this isn't as tortured as some of the others.

And the fact that it's pink and white

means that it's pretty light colors.

But for some reason, it makes it even more darker

and more menacing.

Yeah, it's disturbing for sure.

It's very disturbing, yeah.

But there's an echo in the show of that as well,

this kind of undercurrent of anguish or agony

or because even in the Lindsey Mendes works,

which are facing the Louise bourgeois,

they sort of reference like maybe horror

or at least some sort of female strength

of having to be a fighter or a survivor of some kind.

Also, and so Lindsay's work is a sort of,

it looks like a sort of 18th century

bask of a woman with it like a sort of Romanish,

sort of Greek cloth over her, over one of her breasts.

And the other breast looks like it's just rotted away

and fallen off and the flesh has been eaten.

But yeah, it still looks actually very sexual

and very much alive.

And then there's a head on the other side,

but it's really good in this room,

by the way, there's three heads,

which is kind of like, I've got four heads

in the show altogether,

but that Lindsay's head is definitely like something

which has rotted away.

The flesh has fallen off, it's rotted away

and it sounds a bit like a horror film situation,

but it isn't.

Well, it is, it's kind of like something really gothic.

Yeah.

Like the next book that Mary Shelley wrote,

my rotten self, or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's good with the body and with the head.

Yeah, and I love how the body's on that pedestal as well.

It's like this sort of handmade pedestal for it

as well, sort of positions it somewhere.

And she's spoken to me before about Mary Shelley

and how she was a female writer, right in Frankenstein.

And it's really interesting, I think,

within Lindsay's practice the way she always looks

at these hidden histories of like women.

That's not really that hidden.

No, not that one, but, yeah.

Yeah, but I mean, the fact that from the greatest horror

stories of all time, Frankenstein was written by a woman

is pretty incredible.

And what about this painting here by Danny Elmockany?

Another of someone whose work I came across on social media

and really loved, I just couldn't work

at how the paint worked, how it was done

while looking at images.

And I just really loved a subject matter.

I really loved the deepness of it all.

And also the way it's painted is like so beautiful

and unusual.

It's yet again, incredibly simple paint,

but so charged up.

It's real, real painting for me.

I really liked this interior domestic space

within the context of the show.

I think it adds something so different.

And it's, it really got me thinking about

funnily enough through social media,

how we're sort of live streaming so many tragedies

and horrific injustices and how the domestic

and even just, I don't know, having a chair

that you can sit in and feel safe in

and to protect that kind of private, intimate place of rest,

you know, whatever that might be for each person.

But there was something about that domesticity

that I just thought was really powerful.

Yeah, but I see it like the figure's crying,

you know, it's kind of like, I know something really

pervious happened, definitely.

Yeah, and she's smoking a cigarette,

having a drink, but she looks really sort of serious,

doesn't she?

No, to me, she looks like she's crying.

Yeah.

Really crying.

And then you've got the figure behind

that's like this sort of Matisse cut out.

Yeah.

But yet definitely looks like, oh yeah,

like a figure from a sort of like 1960s

or something like a sort of, you know, the whole thing is

the kind of slightly broccoli as well,

the whole image like the light or whatever,

but it isn't that and it's got this sort of coffee table book

which tells you that there's books,

there's some intellectual going on as well

or is it just a book for show and then the painting,

the more you look at it, the more you sort of really wonder

what is going on.

And then there's lots of cushions on this sofa

and you then start seeing things in the cushions

and the painting starts to really, really talk to you.

It's a very small painting,

like maybe 13 inches by 15 inches

and the longer you look at it, the more you see in it.

Yeah, and also Danny on the Kinney's

body of work that I've seen.

It's so much about light as well.

And I think that's another theme in the show,

like if you think of Giannis Nuinsky, Marlena Dumas,

all of this kind of looking and painting at light.

And Celia Hempton, who's painted these demolition sites,

they almost look like kind of contemporary

Franco back related, I don't know,

intense abstract painting,

but actually they're very like figurative

because they're actually of a place.

Yeah, I know.

I mean, like, imagine thinking,

oh, I'm going to paint that demolition site.

I'm going to paint that JB, whatever,

what's it called, you know, like a bulldozer.

Bulldozer, yeah.

And yeah, I'm just going to get in there

before everything's bulldozed and do a few sketches.

It's kind of insane in a way.

And I like these images because,

unless you know the titles,

unless you know what they are,

you don't know what the images are,

they really, really abstract.

And I like it because they work so well as paintings.

And the idea of destruction,

everything being destroyed,

everything being smashed to pieces,

it goes so well with the show.

Yeah.

And also the idea of renewal,

and I think that's sometimes like a fake promise

in gentrification or money's being made

through that process.

So it's like a sad,

there's always a sadness to it as well.

So all this idea of hope,

it's kind of a duality, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly.

I also love the fact that I read that the paint itself

has debris in the paint.

So like mixed into it is actually mud and dirt.

And I haven't asked a where that debris is from,

but I love that as a materiality again.

You know, if you think about the material,

see the sculptures in the room,

even this painting's got a real materiality.

Yeah, but I also, I like her early works,

those screenshots of men master,

or she did Chechi painted them,

which was watching them master painting or whatever.

Yeah, on like chat,

random websites or something,

like a Skype thing, yeah.

Yeah, really hardcore.

And then she's out here doing these, what's it called?

Oh, like planaire paintings, almost.

Yeah, of like demolition sites.

Yes, of demolition sites.

And also she went up on top of Mount Suvius

and painted Mount Suvius from as high as she could get

or whatever.

It's like Turner being tied to a mask

or something like that.

Yeah, she's very much like an artist in the world.

Yeah.

Like right now.

Yeah, yeah, doing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seeing it, living it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And there's an urgency to her work as well, I think.

And then we have a work by one of your students

who is in the Tracey Amin artist residency here in Marga

eight called Anna Packosh.

And this is a really intense painting

that makes me weirdly, the first time I saw it,

I thought of Turner.

And slightly of cave paintings too.

Yeah, it's hardcore.

It's the hardest work in the whole show.

It's Anthony Gormel's favorite work.

Yeah, he loved it.

He really loved it.

Other people have really loved it.

And some people can, what is that?

You know, it's like some old oily rag or something.

It's unstretched canvas.

And the painting on it is made up not just of paint,

but of scars and soiled messes

and being dragged through and chemicals

and different things happening to that piece of cloth.

It ceases to be a canvas and becomes a cloth

with stains of life and emotions put into it.

And it's kind of like gone too far.

You know, you could say, well, a truck drove over this

and something happened.

You don't have to know it's a work of art.

You don't have to know it's painting.

And you do need to know that it is just full of emotion

because it's just like something happened to her

and she expressed it on that canvas.

Yeah, and I mean, this work to me feels very cathartic.

Like it feels like she's gone from one position

to another in the making.

Yeah, and all the time I look at it,

I can sometimes see a figure.

Then I can see this, then I can see that.

And then all the red, it looks like fire.

It's like a fire going on or something.

There's a level of absolute anger and despair in here.

It's not like an artist made it.

It's someone who is so angry, so immersed in their emotions.

And that's why I like it so much.

And that's why it's in the show.

There's a painting of yours in the room,

which is a brand new painting.

And this is the first time it's been seen.

It's called I Am Protected.

And it's a portrait of you in bed with your cat pancake.

And there seems to be what I once thought was an angel,

but it could also be kind of a medicine ghost.

You're not quite clear in the sky.

And the frame of the bed really echoes up

Bob Monk's skeleton arm.

I noticed that the leg on the left hand side of this painting

almost looks like a skeleton bone.

Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, I didn't do that on purpose.

I did it by accident, but my God, you're right.

So quickly underneath this painting

was another painting of a woman

really sexy laying on the bed sort of masturbating.

And then I painted over it

and then painted this curled up little fat

trappy figure that's much more like me.

And she's laying there sleeping, dreaming.

And she's been protected by pancake.

Not she, I am being protected by pancake

who is warding off this sort of apparition from the side.

So the painting areas of it are quite unfinished to look at,

but there's been too lots of paintings on here.

And you just see one and it just looks like a casual black drawing

of a figure.

But underneath that was another figure.

You can still see a bit of the red

or whatever and a bit of the other feet and things.

And the red kind of radios through your body.

So there's this kind of, I don't know,

like vibration through the body as well.

And it really got me thinking about the sea

and the ocean, obviously, just not because of the colour palette,

but more because I saw it as you,

like maybe dreaming about the sea

or dreaming about Marguerite.

I know that's sometimes a theme in the work.

Yeah, I have these dreams with giant tidal waves

this world who rush over me and then go back again.

But also there's something quite not sexual,

but there's some for quantity in it.

There's a lot of visual sort of live sort of like energy

in it underneath in the canvas, but not her.

She looks, I look very much asleep

and just cold up and dreaming.

And what I like is my tummy is fat in it.

It's like point shield fat.

My legs are a bit chubby.

It's much more how I am.

Except the face looks quite pretty.

So that's kind of unusual.

There's another recent painting that's in the tape show.

I think it's in the third room

where you've got the kind of rollercoaster sculpture,

the giant installation, the wooden sculpture.

And there's a film of the ocean of you in the water

being filmed by, I think, your dad wasn't.

And you're talking to your dad from the ocean.

But that painting felt like a kind of,

almost like a related work to this somehow.

The painting that's next to that

is this large figure role in the sea, yeah, definitely.

So it is a reoccurring theme, you're right.

But anyway, that's enough of mine.

Okay.

I just thought I'd mention it because I've got a painting here.

So I'm acutely aware as well as a curator.

I think you get a real joy out of it

because of your love to communicate and share ideas.

Is that true?

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, the idea of crossing into darkness

and the idea of bringing all these artists together

and connecting them, that gives me a thrill.

If it gives me a thrill, I'm sure

that the people who come and look

give them a thrill as well.

So like behind you, you've got Goya.

His friends just go Goya, yeah, yeah.

And these are really intense.

I think the one on the right

is like Pelling Teeth or something.

It says Akaza De Deenters.

No, I think it's got fingers in a mouth.

It's like really intense.

No, I think that he's hung, he's hanging.

And she's trying to touch him and bring him back to life.

That's what I think.

I think he's dead.

And I think she loved him.

But that's how I relate to that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the middle one's called Love and Death.

Yeah, and he looks like he's dead

and she's trying to get...

But it also looks like he could be drunk.

And she looks like she's been carrying him,

unholding him.

And it could be a couple that have been drinking all night

and they just perched on these stones.

But then also it looks like she's sort of pulled him

up out of the graveyard, like she's dug him up

and she's carrying him off.

I'm just telling you what they look like to me,

I'm not necessarily what they're supposed to be.

And then this one is definitely a bit of grave robbery going on.

It's like a tomb that's been pushed up

and this strange sort of like childlike bone like creatures

that coming out, it's very, very dark.

And these were made in the 1880s

and it's just so wild how vibrant and like alive his line is.

Like they feel so like he's just made them.

You really feel the urgency of the line, don't you?

Yeah, yeah, totally.

I love them and they're sort of seemed so relevant.

And the ones that I've chose, I chose these

because I felt like it told a little story

and I think what was great about Goyote's work

is that it is telling us something always

is not just a visual image to look at,

it's the story in itself as a beginning and middle and end.

And these are actually yours now?

Yeah, they will be here.

Yeah, so they're also going to be part of

my collection, your collection, yeah, very cool.

So we're now stood in front of a four panel work

by the artist Laura Fertz

and this is really, really amazing painting.

Yeah, it is, it's like a boardroom meeting

with these figures sitting at it,

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

where she is like six and a half figures and they're shadows

and it's like the city skate with a river to one side

and then the shadow of a castle

and a human castle on the other side

with tarots and you can just tell,

it's almost, to me,

it feels like what's happening in the world right now.

Totally.

It's like the boardroom of hell,

everything's been decided by a certain amount of people

making decisions for us about us

without our control, without anything

and there's nothing we can do about it

and it's dark and it's oppressive and it's evil.

Yeah, and it's called castle and the citadel

and to the left, there's like a city

could be maybe New York or it could be,

I don't know, London or something

and the streets look like the cars are moving so fast

that almost does become like a kind of running stream

or something.

When I first saw this,

I thought it was kind of like some reference maybe

to like how all our rights are being taken away,

particularly women's rights

because there are two women in this meeting.

One is on the left hand side in the back

and then one is in the foreground to the right

and she's got her head in her hands,

the woman on the right

and it got me thinking about the way abortion rights

were taken away in America

and I don't know, yeah,

all of that kind of hideous progression

that's been happening,

largely at the hands of powerful men.

Yeah, but also in this boardroom,

there's a picture painting on the wall

that's this sort of like acidic landscape

that's everything's burnt out

and there's like a dead tree

and it's just like this acidic yellow

as if it's representing like the end of the world,

like some sort of nuclear holocaust or something.

I think it's such an impressive work as well

because Laura's work is often known for images

with herself in them

and while this will somehow be a self-portrait

because I'm sure maybe she even knows this space

or something, I'm not quite sure.

I think Laura looks like they'll figure this figure here.

Really, yeah, like could be her maybe, yeah, yeah.

Half hour ahead, yeah.

I think it's a masterful work

actually in the color palette is insane.

Brilliant for this show

because it also really looks like the other idea

of the crossing into darkness

about what's happening to us all globally,

social media, all of these kind of things

and how we're all being pulled

and controlled as well.

So one of the reasons I wanted to do this interview

in this show and not at the tape

was because of the work we're stood in front of right now,

which is Herman Nitch

and I had never really thought about Herman Nitch

in relation to Tracey Emman

and the more I looked at it,

it kind of was the one work that slightly baffled me

not because I didn't think it suited the show

but how you chosen it

because I'd never really thought about the Viennese

actionist group when I think about your own work

but then I saw your show at the tape

and the final room with your death mask in it

has these paintings

which are single figures a lot of the time.

I think they're kind of,

it's almost like a religious room in a way

but it really got me thinking of this

and then of course all of his blood works

the way he would like poor blood over the canvas

or over the picture plane

in relationship to your paintings

which have red paint.

Where did you first see this?

How did you discover this work?

Where this work belongs to collectors

Andy and Christine Hall

who have a lot of Herman Nitch

and I really wanted him in this show,

I was having this show

and I thought maybe if I asked them they'll let me one

and so they sent me different images

and this was just like fantastic

because it's like this map

of the body, this map of like

it looks like an ancient cave drawing

or something, I know, I can't

and then with the blood at the top

and the blood on the heart

and all these patterns

and then this sort of like the world

on the head and like a sort of halo in a strange way

and it's different from his,

some of his other paintings

some of his painters are just blood

just gashions of blood

and they just always drips in everything

and to me I can't believe

how people don't say oh,

obviously you really must love Herman Nitch

and no one says it to me

but by me being able to put him in this show shows it

and I just absolutely love his work

I love the energy behind it

it shocks me as well

and all the art performances, everything

I don't obviously like everything

that the V&E's actionist group did

because it was too hardcore

and for me, you know, I find it effortfully wrong

but he, it's an amazing artist

yeah and I was blown away when this arrived

because it's actually on a kind of clay board almost

it's almost like a fresco

when you get up close, the materiality of it is so strange

it's like it's almost like a kind of clay

yeah, like a fresco or something

it's like it could be in a cave wall

and it's been scratched

yeah and things have been put in

you just can't understand what you're looking at

but also if someone told you this was a thousand years old

you'd believe it

yeah and it reminds you a bit of things like the cheering shroud

or the way that images appear

or I don't know, some kind of transformation

and they described it as a relic as well

and it got me thinking about how his work

was often relics of performances

and this was from 1983 but he finished it in 2007

so yeah, I just love it

and make sure you get up close

if you ever get to see these works

how come you decided to choose these intimate kind of scale

human scale works by Anselm Keefer as well

well, I definitely wanted Anselm in the show

his definite

so I think Anselm is a strange artist

because he works huge

and when I say huge, I mean like he could make a work

that's four times the size of this room

he makes his giant claustral towers

he makes whole worlds

he makes underground bunkers and tunnels

and he uses industrial materials put together

to make these light incredibly personal sculptures as well

the reason why these ones are in the show

is because they're small enough to get in the show

number one

but number two is they are perfect as well

I couldn't have been more lucky with how they work

with the other works, what they represent

and there's an intimacy with them

that people don't usually see with his work

exactly

so originally I didn't think I'd be able to have sculptures

because I didn't think I'd be able to get any

that would fit through the door

but I was thinking about a certain painting

some early paintings

and then when these came out of choice

I went, oh wow, I'll take all three of them

and there's the corn, the wheat, there's this anvil

and this sort of like heavy iron

what is that thing?

it's almost like a hammer or something

I mean that's a hammer but it's this giant sort of anvil thing

but it also made me think of train tracks

the shape of it somehow

you know those kind of like old fashioned metal train tracks

yeah but also it reminds me of something

like beyond ancient from the Bronze Age or something

and a lot of his references are to the war

to like Nazi Germany

yeah to World War II

World War II

and questioning why it happened, how it happened

what happened, questioning the relics

the things that were left behind

the thoughts, the memories

and he was a war child, war baby

and so he grew up in Germany

carrying that gill

and he didn't let it rest

he questioned it and he showed it

and he made work about it

which meant that the subject should be continued

to be spoken about

and never is a time more relevant

than to talk about what happened in Germany in the 1930s

yeah

than now

because it's happening now

the far right is taken over everywhere

so I know and it really is a global thing

it's in so many different locations

it's just mind blowing

I was really struck by the intimacy of the scale of these

but also because they're like visual poems

they're almost like feel like they're warning you

you know what I mean

because they actually have handwritten

very like ominous looking text

and black ink on the glass of these the trains

I was really struck by the kind of storytelling of them

through that visual poetry

seeing them on the scale and in this room

got the not huge for Gilbert and George

right

but a very very large Gilbert and George on the back wall

and this Gilbert and George is the Barry

and the reason why I chose this

is it to me it looks like the gates of hell

definitely and it holds the whole room together

and when you look when you walk into the room

what I call the gates of hell

the Gilbert and George work

pulls you like a vortex

like you could be pulled all the way through

and out the other side

and the Anzhenkiefers go towards there

and they all pull you

and then to my left side

you have these photos by Johnny Shankid

from a series called Ramshot

and that's the village where he lives in Norfolk

and every morning he takes his dog for a walk

and it's the images just things that he sees

and he photographs on a very beautiful format

large format camera

and they're all hand printed

and they're really poetic and really beautiful

and they are all very deafly

and when you read his writing which accompanies the book

which goes with his photos

it's all about death

it's all about the transition from life to death

and all of these images are like that for me as well

and they go so well with the other works that are in this room

and it's like a sort of mirror to the whole show

yeah totally

they really struck me when I saw them

because I was so familiar with his portraits of people

and in a way young people

you know it's a generation that you were growing up

of artists and friends in the 90s in London

and I saw an installation in a museum recently of his

where it's like a projection

like a film projection of all these people

but these are so different

and these are really for me

they're so spiritual

but also got me thinking a lot about reincarnation

and kind of the cycle of nature

and the cycle of life

and almost that question of like where do we go

like what happens to our souls when we go

similar to that monk image

you know there's this real sort of question of like

yeah it's meant to be a common thing

I think on people's death beds

they often say you know where am I going

like oh my mom said that to me

I really

my mom said am I die entry

am I going to die

and I said I think so mum

and she said but where am I going to go

I couldn't answer her

God didn't know

I couldn't even reassure

I couldn't even say anything

actually I did say something

I said Istanbul

did you

because I thought she'd like that

yeah

where she didn't

oh

she actually like one of the last glances she ever gave me

was like what the hell are you saying

I definitely so that taught me

yeah but anyway maybe that's DV18

well let's talk about

let's talk about art

the Baselites

this is so Baselites is one of my favourite artists

yeah I mean I think he's amazing

and Baselites was a big influence on me

when I was a very very young student

because I read an article about him in a Sunday supplement

this is like really long term

like 30 more years ago

40 years ago whatever

and this article was about this artist

who lived in a castle

and I remember thinking how fucking cool is that

to live in a castle

how amazing

and that I found so inspiring

and it was around time when his paintings

were just going upside down

so yeah

and this one isn't upside down

and this one to me looks quite picasterish

in a strange kind of way

yeah and it's almost like

it's got a kind of woodcutter

again so there's that theme of the axe

yeah but he is also the woodcutter

I wrote a essay on him

about being a woodcutter actually

yeah

so I love his work

and this painting is so it's really really

look at the day on him

yeah it's 1967

yeah I mean that's a long time ago

I'd actually never seen a 60s painting by him

and I absolutely love it

and it's made me kind of look at his work differently

as well like it's interesting to think about people

at different points in their careers

but particularly when they're in you know

yeah but also a George he gets a bad rap

because some of the things he said

people find really controversial

but he's a controversial artist

and like as he grew up in the war in Germany

a lot of his works were questioning that

you know he didn't like what happened

he questions it he makes work about it

and people find that quite confrontational

the way that he creates the body in this image as well

it's almost like a pile of stones

or like rubble or something

every joint is like a separate sort of square or shape

it's a really amazing way of creating that body

and there's a kind of bell on the left side

yeah it's like ringing bell

but it's another kind of work of art

like many of the works in this show

you can look at it for ages and ages

and think different things about it

makes you feel different

makes you think different

it's not one dimensional at all

one of the darkest works in the whole show

I think is probably this final piece

which is by an artist who is based in New York and America

called Juanita McNeely

and she died in 2023

and this is an amazing monoprint of a skeleton

yeah and it huddled up

almost like holding her legs in or something

yeah but also it's got this strange pain or clitoral

strange thing with this skull head

and then we go back to the monk

you've got the skeletal arms and you've got

the whole thing is connected within the show

and you know I've got three artists that are dead in this show

her actually four

four yeah

Nietzsche and Monk

and Anleves

yeah five yeah

well that's a lot of dead artists in the show

yeah this image is just like

when I first saw it I went wow

I've got to have that for the show

I definitely want it for the show

and James Swentus

who works with her estate

made it possible so really pleased

and it's so great to have this right at the end

next to the Gilbert and George

which to me is like as I said before

is the gates of hell

it sucks the whole show through it

and it also works like a mirror

and for me Gilbert and George

the reason why they're in the show

is I think they represent for me

artists who have always made work

which question society

which holds mirror to society

and they're unafraid

they're unapologetic

and they have their own focus

and they are the artist Gilbert and George

and they make work purely for themselves

as a mirror for society

and it works so well for now

for the times that we live in

and I think people aren't looking at Gilbert and George's work

from that perspective and they should

yeah but the photographic presentation

of the heads in this as well

is so intense with this like screaming heads

yeah it sort of makes me think of

above monks the screaming like

also the echo in this whole show of anguish

and despair and anger

and you know almost like violence

it's really prodding you this work

yeah it brings the whole show

it pulls it all in

when you come you know it's good

you're coming through the whole show

and you end up on this like

boom this big work

that is as I said is a mirror

and also like a vortex

and these gates that are there

that are going to open up

and take you to hell

yeah I was also really happy you included

one item it nearly as well because

I discovered her through James's publication

he made this little book about her

it's got a purple front cover

and both of us have that book

and when I discovered her work

I saw a real connection to your own work

because of her tireless kind of investigation

into disability, into abortion rights

there's an amazing piece in the Whitney

museum now in their permanent collection

that she made when abortion rights were challenged

like I think in the 70s

I don't know I just think the physicality

and this idea of the body

and how challenging it can be

just to be alive in her work

really resonates a lot with the work

in your tape show obviously

and works you've made

a number of the artists are dealing with that

in this show

I didn't choose them because of that

but they do

and that's because they're dealing with the self

they're dealing with emotions

they're dealing with a high

questioning of society

and they're doing it for a personal

intimate journey

and so it speaks to everyone

thank you so much Tracy

for this hour and 20 minutes together

walking around the show

I think people are going to be so happy

we recorded this because not everyone

around the world will be able to see the show

and for everyone listening

you can visit Carl Friedman Gallery

until the 12th of April in Margate

to see crossing into darkness

with 17 artists

and we've spoken about each and every one today

and also make sure you go to take modern

and see Tracy Emmons solo exhibition

it's not a retrospective

and it's not a survey

it's actually a curated exhibition

and it is running until August

yeah the end of August

the end of August

yeah and it could say I thought it was 21 artists in this show

oh is there 21?

yeah one more thing

how many times have I been on tour cart

this is your fourth time

yeah

but this time is a bit different

because it was just me and you

it's me and you with lots of artists

lots of artists

yeah

brilliant thank you

well thanks for listening everyone

we'll be back very soon

bye

you've been listening to talk art

with Robert Diamond

follow us on Instagram at talkart

where you can view images of all artworks

discussed in today's episode

with music by Jack Northover

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