BRIGHT young THINGS
When Jessica Andrews moved to London, Tracey Emin’s work helped her to not only find her way, but herself. But when the two met, it wasn’t the union she ’d hoped for...
When I was 19, I went to see Love is What You Want, a mid-career retrospective of Tracey Emin’s work at the Hayward Gallery in London. I’d only been living in the city for a year and I didn’t know who I was there yet. I’d moved from Sunderland, where there was one small gallery. In London, I spent weekends wandering around cavernous white spaces, wonderstruck by the splattered canvasses, towering sculptures and flashing lights. I was full of chaos, and I marvelled at the way artists could unspool their own feelings and make them into something, giving their experiences form and colour that other people could touch.
The only thing I really knew about Tracey was her famous unmade bed. I read that she was wild and subversive, that she did what she wanted and caused a stir. That was the kind of woman I wanted to be. As I walked around her exhibition – reading the words, ‘A terrible wanting’ and ‘My brains all split up’ on her appliquéd blankets, staring at her searing neons and studying her trembling, painful monoprints of the female form – a hot, dense redness swelled inside of me. I listened to her talking about her abortion on film and I watched a video of her naming the men who sexually assaulted her when she was a teen in Margate, spinning in circles to a Sylvester song in her silky red shirt. I was at uni studying English literature and often found the academic language used to discuss art and writing alienating, but my connection with Tracey’s work was immediate and visceral; I felt it in my blood. It was the first time I’d seen art that felt as though it was speaking directly to me. I didn’t know that it was possible to tell the story of your own life like that; to take the hurt and the dreams caught beneath your skin and make them visible. Tracey pulled her shame from her mouth like a thread of light and hung it on the gallery walls for everyone to see.
In retrospect, I loved Tracey because she was an outsider and I felt like an outsider, too. She was a working-class woman who grew up in Margate and moved to London when she was 15 with one suitcase and two David Bowie records. She made work about her body, misspelling all of the words in her textbased pieces, keeping the mistakes because they were part of her. She didn’t care what anyone thought. I was also working class and I wanted to be a writer. I felt small in London, where money and power ran beneath the streets like electricity cables. My dreams were big and embarrassing.
I swallowed my shame and stored it in my body, deep in my stomach and thighs. I knew the sadness and fury that Tracey described but I didn’t yet have the language to articulate it. I bought her memoir, Strangeland, in the gallery bookshop, even though I couldn’t afford it, and I read it in a feverish rush. I hunted down every piece she’d ever written for her Independent column, poring over her descriptions of her friends, her illnesses, her travels and her dreams. I read about her dancing to Marc Bolan, slotting pound coins into the jukebox in her favourite East End pub.
During my first year at university, I needed a job because I didn’t have any money. I traipsed around Brick Lane with a wad of CVs. Nowhere was hiring and I was about to give up when a landlady in a glittery cardigan and a slash of coral lipstick looked me up and down. ‘Do you want to work in my pub?’ she asked. Before I had chance to reply, David Bowie burst from the jukebox and she climbed up onto the bar and started hula-hooping, waving a framed picture of the Pope. ‘You start on Friday, alright, babe?’ she called down to me.
The landlady’s name was Deborah, and we became close. She was known for looking after young artists in the Nineties – when Shoreditch was full of industrial spaces that could be used as art studios, before the rental market exploded and Nike and Costa moved in. One afternoon, Deborah’s best friend Tracey came into the pub. She slipped behind the bar, shy and softly spoken. ‘Deborah said I could have a Guinness,’ she said. ‘Will you show me how to pour one?’ I guided her with shaking hands, showing her how to draw a shamrock on top. I couldn’t believe that I was showing her how to do something: Tracey Emin, who had taught me so much.
She often came into the pub. I dug my nails into my palms to stop myself from grabbing her and telling her I understood how it felt to come from nowhere and to want everything; to feel trapped by the weight of your body as it dragged you through the world. I wanted to ask how she learnt to push the darkness out of her; to name it and give it form. Instead, I stocked fridges and wiped tables until my arms ached as Deborah went to art openings, leaving me to empty the bins.
Tracey treated me with disinterest. She never learnt my name. She said to me, unkindly, ‘You dress the way I did when I was about 16.’ I was afraid of my body and wore turtlenecks beneath ankle-length dresses, never showing an inch of flesh. I knew Tracey understood that feeling; I’d seen it in her work. I watched her dancing by the jukebox in her long leather boots, wiggling her hips and miaowing like a cat.
One night, we had an argument. She asked me where Deborah was and I answered. She prickled, protective of Deborah and suspicious of me. ‘You can’t just tell strangers where she is,’ she snapped, as though I was a child. I was frustrated, because Tracey wasn’t a stranger. I’d been working at the pub for three years. I thought Tracey might recognise me, as she came in so often. ‘Tell her to put the TV on at 6pm,’ she said. ‘It’s really important. Will you remember? Do you need me to write it down?’ ‘I’ll remember,’ I said, and she left. At 6pm, I turned on the television. Tracey was sitting on the edge of her unmade bed at Christie’s auction house. It had just sold for £2.5m.
After university, I worked full-time in the pub. I didn’t know how to build a life and I waited for the glitz and glamour that shimmered around the bar to change things for me. One of Tracey’s neons hung above the toilet. It flashed, ‘Stand still and rot’ as I collected glasses and swept the street outside. I watched the clock slide through the hours and I began to realise that my dreams would decay if I didn’t do anything about them. If I was going to carve out a space in the world, I needed to do it myself.
When I was 27, I published my first novel. I used material from my life to convey how it feels to be a young, workingclass woman in a world that doesn’t have space for you. I wrote through my body, giving words to my flesh and fear. I learnt how to pull the hurt and dreams from beneath my skin and make them visible; to push out my darkness and give it form.
Women who were younger than me came to my readings. They looked at me with a hot, dense redness in their eyes, as though I had the answers to the questions they were carrying. ‘What should I do?’ A young woman asked me, trembling, in a bookshop, a ghost of my former self flickering beneath her skin. I looked at the woman helplessly, because no matter how much I wanted to, I knew that I couldn’t change anything for her. She had to learn how to do it for herself.
Now, I’m working on my second novel. I’m writing about the body in a way that feels exposing, shameful, raw. I find myself returning to Tracey’s work and the lightning feeling it gives me to remember why I wanted to write in the first place.
I have a copy of one of her monoprints above my desk. It reads: ‘Just remember how it was’. As I try to find the language for my own memories, I look at it and remember how I used to feel when I walked around art galleries, in awe of the way artists pushed their feelings into shapes and colours. I remember how impossible it once seemed that I would ever get here at all. I remember my years working in the pub, watching Tracey. I remember how strong she looked when she danced to Sylvester in her silky red shirt. I remember how she taught me to illuminate things, to name them for myself, to take my shame and turn it into power.
“I loved Tracey because she was an OUTSIDER and I felt like an
outsider, too”