For a woman I have only met from a distance for about 10 minutes, I have seen Tracey Emin’s bottom an awful lot. I have seen it in ink, in paint, in bronze and on film. Sometimes it is pink and shapely, other times it is tilted in provocation or in the grasp of a lover. It appears in much of Emin’s new work at Jupiter Artland in I Lay Here for You, which includes sculpture, monotypes, paintings and work on paper, and details the artist’s recovery and rediscovery of love after suffering from bladder cancer.
Not to confuse artist with subject, but there is no question here as to whether it is Emin – even in the works where her face is scrawled out the artist is there, inviting us (quite literally) into the most intimate crevices of her life. Her bed and the life-affirming activities that happened therein are the subject of 11 monotypes created in 2022, and the revelatory titles of I Know You Loved Me – I Know Because I Loved You Too and Because I’m So Fucking Sexy. I Was Born Sexy and I Will Die Sexy read like diary entries.
