Tracey Emin

Just Waiting 2014 is one of six related works on paper by Emin in Tate’s collection, all of them dated 2014 (see Tate T14230–T14233 and T14235). It is painted in black gouache on white paper and depicts a reclining female nude. The gouache paint has been applied in a gestural, sparing manner, with swift brush strokes. The composition focuses on the hips and legs of the figure so that her upper body and feet are cropped out of the image. This cropping characterises all six drawings, although in one – All for You (Tate T14231) – Emin has included all of the figure’s upper body, depicting her with arms raised and hands clasped behind her head. The title of each work underlines the sensuality of both the subject and the medium, and might also suggest an element of narrative and personal experience.

While there is an immediacy and looseness in the handling of the paint, these drawings are the result of repetition. Emin has returned to painting and drawing throughout her career as a means of reconsidering her relationship with the medium. The headless figure itself is a motif that recurs throughout the artist’s drawings, and has also appeared in works in other media such as Something’s Wrong 2002 (British Council Collection, London), an appliqué blanket displaying a headless figure with money pouring out from between its legs. In these six drawings Emin, whose work is often candidly autobiographical, scrutinises her relationship with her own body, using drawing as a way of exploring the possibilities of self-representation and self-expression. She examines, albeit with a compassionate eye, the mutability of the female body over time.

Emin has acknowledged the influence on her work of turn-of-the-century expressionist painting, particularly the works of Egon Schiele (1890–1918) and Edvard Munch (1863–1944). This can be seen most directly in the painting style of her monoprints and other works on paper, such as Just Waiting. But the artist’s highly personal practice is also informed by a feminist approach that presents often controversial subject matter through the revelation of intimate personal details, frequently demonstrating vulnerability and audaciousness at the same time. In an interview with the critic Stuart Morgan in 1997 Emin commented on this aspect of her work:

For me, aggression, sex and beauty go together. Much of my work has been about memory, for example, but memories of violence and pain. Nowadays if I make a drawing I’m trying to draw love, but love isn’t always gentle … Being an artist isn’t just about making nice things, or people patting you on the back; it’s some kind of communication, a message.
(Quoted in Morgan 1997, pp.56–61.)

Emin, who is known for the confessional tone of her work (see, for example, My Bed 1998, Tate L03662) uses sculpture, installation, video, photography, drawing, printmaking and written text to reveal the minutiae of life. The series of six related works of which this drawing is a part offers a different – and somewhat less autobiographical – aspect of Emin’s practice as an artist, exploring drawing as a medium for the expression, scrutiny and representation of the self.

Further reading
Stuart Morgan, ‘The Story of I: Interview with Tracey Emin’, Frieze, no.34, May 1997, pp.56–61.
Tracey Emin: Borrowed Light, exhibition catalogue, British Council, London 2007.
Tracey Emin: 20 Years, exhibition catalogue, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 2008.

Leyla Fakhr
November 2014