#yba

Glenn Brown, Architecture and Morality, 2004, Oil on panel, 140 x 98 cm

TRACEY EMIN (British, b. 1963) "I Followed You into The water Knowing I would Never Return", 2011 Neon, 84.1 x 185.3 cm

A gang of us went to see Tracey Emin’s latest exhibit (entitled ‘I followed you to the end’) yesterday at White Cube Bermondsey (19 September – 10 November 2024). It’s described on White Cube’s website as “a presentation of new paintings and sculptures that journey through love and loss, mortality and rebirth. Drawing from a recent, transformative experience, Emin continues her exploration of life’s most profound and intimate moments, with renewed intensity.” Quick thoughts: the show is dark, despairing and profoundly un-consoling. I dug it! The fiercely confrontational Emin has been typically brutally candid about the hardships of life post-cancer. She’s never sugar-coated anything, and it’s most definitely NOT her job to make anyone feel better! Utilizing a deliberately limited colour palette (and featuring lots of crimson paint splatters evoking dripping blood), the latest works includes titles like ‘I don’t want to have sex because my body feels dead’, ‘The End of Love’, ‘Tears of Blood’ and ‘I Kept Crying’. Many appear to be what I assume are autobiographical portraits of agonized women splayed out in bed, often with their pet cat hovering protectively nearby (which made me reflect how my own cat Eartha Kitten would NEVER deign to do this for me). The White Cube was absolutely thronging on a Sunday – and bizarrely, loads of people were snapping perky smiling selfies in front of the works! Pictured: ‘I Waited So Long – Too Long’ (2024).

Dominic Johnson, professor at London’s Queen Mary University, is writing a book on Butt, whose work he considers “the most sophisticated response we have in British art to HIV/Aids”. “He produces these environments that are both fearful and seductive, and that just seems so fertile for thinking about sexuality in that moment. At the same time he’s thinking about his own body as a vector of fear, as an HIV-positive body, a brown body, a Muslim-appearing body – all these other ways in which he’s this fearful outsider figure,” he says. “All that makes the work very powerful; it’s also really beautiful.” In uniting seemingly opposing ideas such as science and the supernatural, emotion and intellect, the sacred and profane, high art and gothic horror, Butt’s work feels astonishingly fresh and resonant today. Restlessly curious, he understood that science did not have all the answers and was equally invested in art and alchemy. In a poignant moment of [his brother] Jamal’s home video, Butt laments the disappearance of demons, familiars and magic in the shift from “medieval alchemical witchcraft to modern rationalistic chemistry”. Despite his weak condition, he laughs, saying: “It’s this dangerous spirit that I like and think should be revived.”

Guido Mister in all of its old glory, i need help in drawing arms, guns and perspective x)